The Joyful Pursuit

During my second year of seminary, I launched a book group that would later be named (by an eccentric bartender named Paul) The Scholar's Table. Our purpose was simple: gather together every two weeks at a pub and discuss history's greatest books.  To date, we have read books as diverse as Plato's Republic and Milton's Paradise Lost to Orwell's 1984 and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. Why do such a thing?  Well, I stumbled upon an old year-end note to my fellow member's of The Scholar's Table, and I thought I'd share it with you here.  It gives a glimpse at my love of learning and my continuing interest in education.  Happy reading...

Dear Scholar’s Table,

From Twain and Milton to Thoreau and Tolstoy, from Barnes’ sleeping outside for a year’s supply of chicken sandwiches to the announcement of a new little Barber, 2009 was a year to remember.

I want to thank each of you individually, Barnes, Durkin, Shinnick, Barber, Farmer, and Kell, for a year filled with bright conversations and deep friendships.  Yet I mostly want to thank you for being willing to journey alongside me as we explore the great books of history.  As I grow a year older, it seems to me that the unrestrained pursuit of wisdom is of central importance to who we become as leaders, as fathers, as husbands, and as men.  And this is why.

First, as I’ve graduated from school and entered the work force and the family life, I find myself confused as ever.  As I try to plan out my workweek, I often wonder, what should I spend my week doing?  What is of most importance, and what can be ignored?  And as I sit down at the dinner table and see my daughter throw string cheese and peas across the room, I ask myself, Now what should I do about this? Shall I raise my voice, shake my finger, or throw the peas back at her?  And as I interact with people from another culture regularly, I ask myself, Why is it that after all this time I still have racist attitudes toward Hispanics? How could this really be? 

Everywhere I turn in life, I seek out answers that I can’t simply conjure from thin air.  I need the wisdom of those who have gone before me.  Pursuing truth and wisdom from some of the most able hearts and minds of history sheds light on my path.  As my own ignorance and confusion fogs my view, the light of truth opens new possibilities.  The great authors, of whom He is the greatest, bring not necessarily more intelligence, but more clarity.  True education brings not more complexity, but ultimately more clarity.  Those who pursue wisdom in all areas of life, not just biblical studies, will emerge as capable leaders, fathers, husbands, and men.

Second, people are looking to us for answers.  Our children, our wives, our middle schoolers, our co-workers—they need us to be “shepherds after my own heart who will lead with knowledge and understanding.”  But what so often happens is that we “graduate” and believe that our education is over!  Just when we need to be learning most voraciously, we often times turn to what’s easy instead of what’s right.  After school, the freedom to cut corners is always before us.  But it is just then that people will be looking up to us the most, and need us to study, learn, and to know the wisdom of our ancestors and so provide a wise course for the future.  Fellas, our education never ends!  As corny as I thought learning contracts were, self-directed, life-long learning is a necessity.  It we don’t set the course, others will set it for us.

I will share a secret with you.  What you do with your leisure time determines who you will become. That one I pulled from a lecture by Mortimer Adler---and he’s absolutely right.  It is not primarily your degrees, your grades, your culture or your family background (Kell can argue that one), that determines who you will become.  It is how you spend your free time when nobody’s looking.   This one of the most important factors in determining who you will become.  It’s odd to think that Saturday afternoons set the course of our lives.  But truly, if you long to seek wisdom when nobody’s looking, then that’s what you will become.

Third, and finally, I would argue that the pursuit of wisdom is not only of central importance, but it is a great joy.  I must confess that when I’m reading a book and I come across a line or a scene that permanently shapes the way I think, I completely geek out.  For me, discovering a deep truth in a dusty book that my peers have long thought “outdated” gives me the same pleasure that Sir Edmund Hillary must have got from mountain climbing or Jacques Cousteau from scuba diving.  It is coming to a cool sunrise and knowing deeply that the world is beautiful.  Beauty.  Perhaps that is my real motivation for learning.  God’s world is filled with wonder and beauty.

Friends, I thank you deeply for journeying alongside me.  And who knows what the next year will bring.  A move east, more children, graduation, jobs…the changes will be rapid.  Who will we choose as companions for our travels?  I implore you, even after seminary, choose first the men of God in the Scriptures.  And second, choose not what is most popular, and surely not what is easiest, but choose the path less traveled.  Choose to do hard things.  Choose the wisest guides of human history as your peers.  Keep searching for wisdom through 2010 and into the blazing mid-day of your lives.

Blessings, my brothers, rejoice this Christmas in the Wisdom of God made flesh.

Jeff Haanen

“Get wisdom.  Though it costs you all you have, get understanding.”
-King Solomon