Mere Academics

I read an article in the newspaper today that got me thinking. It was about a researcher who suggested that there is evidence to suggest that the Ebola virus may be airborne, and on the off-chance that it is, those who are caring for Ebola patients should be wearing full respirators rather than just face masks. His suggestion was soundly refuted by a chief medical officer who said, "Besides, there likely aren’t enough respirators to go around, something an academic . . . doesn’t need to consider . . . . Researchers have the academic luxury of making comments that don’t have an impact in the real world." (Quote from LFP, October 15, 2014)

I'm not going to talk about Ebola. There are plenty of people who know far more about that than I do. I'm not going to talk about whether or not health-care workers should be wearing respirators. I have no clue. But I am interested in the intersection between "researchers and academics" and "the real world".

I work in an academic setting. I have even been called an "academic" and a "theologian". And I have been repeatedly puzzled by the insinuation that there is this enormous divide between "academics" and "the real world". Somehow, academia is fine for pie-in-the-sky, ivory tower dreaming, and academics and theologians are out of touch with reality and not quite "normal". They have the "luxury of making comments that don't have an impact in the real world". Really? Is that what people think? Do they really think that I and other "academics" (I hate the very term) go around saying stuff just for the sake of hearing our own voice and to show off how smart and wonderful we are, without thinking about the practical implications? Do they really think that being an academic somehow protects us from the common lot of humanity, that somehow our world of ideas and research insulates us from love and heartbreak, joy and heartache, the wonder of a sunset, the delight of a child's laughter, sickness and health, birth and death, fear and courage? Do they really think that the world goes by us like a stream around a rock while the rest of humanity is carried along like sticks in the current? That we'll be safe in our ivory towers from things like loss and pain and cancer and Ebola and death?

Because that's a pile of crock. Which is an entirely non-academic way to say that I am as human as anyone else who walks this earth. If I'm ever tempted to hide in an ivory tower (as others might hide in booze, drugs, sex, work, shopping, TV shows, romance novels, approval, family, etc) life has a way of knocking down the tower and burying me under the rubble.

I love ideas. I have thought about Trinity and divinity, about ecclesiology and eschatology, about the finer points of total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and the perseverance of the saints. I have wrestled with the sovereignty of God, the will of God, free will, and the problem of evil. I have thought about heaven, the new heavens and the new earth, resurrection and death. I have a new stick to chew on pretty much every week. It is honest, deep, and academic wrestling. I have read the Word, and words about the Word. I have learned hard truths, truths which are difficult to live. But just because they are difficult to live, just because sometimes the ideas that I think make me feel bad or stretch me out of my comfort zone, does that make them luxurious ideas that don't have an impact in the real world?

I don't think so. I think it makes me more acutely aware of the complexities of this wonderful, horrible world in which we live. It makes me responsible to line the real world up to the truth, however complicated that might end up being. I love ideas. I love thinking about them and discussing them. But a big part of what I love about them is exploring their implications. I live with those implications as certainly as anyone else who draws breath. Perhaps, dare I say it, I live with them more, because I have thought about them hard.

So don't talk to me about an ivory tower, about "living in the real world", or about academic luxury. It's a stack of nonsense. The logic goes like this: Ebola might be airborne, so we should use respirators, but we don't have enough respirators, therefore Ebola probably isn't airborne. Or maybe this: God calls us to sexual purity, so we shouldn't have sex before marriage, but I really love the guy, therefore when God calls us to sexual purity, he wasn't talking about sex before marriage. Or this: God is totally sovereign, so everything that happens is in his control, but I can't accept that he was in control of this horrible thing that happened to me, so maybe he's only sovereign over the good stuff and not the bad stuff. We cannot talk about academic ideas without understanding and living with the implications. It betrays the very academic integrity we cherish. It is not academic luxury to discuss complicated or uncomfortable ideas. What is luxury (or downright foolishness) is to discount the ideas as mere academics just because the implications are hard to implement.

There is no such thing, at least in my world, as mere academics. There is a such thing as ordinary people who live fully, love deeply, hurt profoundly, cry and laugh with liberty, who think about and discuss big ideas with life-changing implications, and who then seek diligently to make those implications a reality in their lives, no matter how tough that is. From there, they teach those ideas to others, so that they, too, can fully enter into the mix and mess of following Jesus faithfully in an unfaithful world.

On the off-chance that the researcher was right, and I had to care for an Ebola patient, I would want a respirator.

Wouldn't you?