Intellectual Irreverence
Reflections from a religion major misfit
As a child, I was known for putting on “shows” for my parents. I’d dress up in a costume, child-sized Cinderella heels, a feather boa and maybe throw on a pair of my dad’s sunglasses. I’d march into the living room, stamping my feet and tossing about a baton with little to no dexterity. I’d sing, or I’d dance, or I’d do both, and expect to find my parents equally enamored with my talents (usually, they were holding back laughter).
There’s a story my mom loves to tell: When I was four, they’d gone to a doctors’ appointment where they received some hard news. I’d been staying at a family friend’s house that day, and after they picked me up, it’s as if I spent the car ride home intuiting that the air was thick with tension and sorrow. When we returned home, they both slumped on the sofa, eyes heavy with tears. I snuck off to my bedroom and, after a few minutes, returned to the living room, donned in one of my father’s dress shirts draped over a princess outfit, blonde hair mussed and tangled by several haphazardly placed barrettes, my toes swimming in a pair of my father’s flip flops. My mom said that I began to perform, singing loudly and obnoxiously, in an impressive effort to revive my parents’ mood.
I have always been a bit silly. Enamored with the irreverent, a bit too fascinated by the fleeting. For me, serious things are rarely fully serious. I always want to find the golden nugget of humor in any situation, no matter how bleak, and bring it up. I want to help you crack a smile, I want to cut the weightiness with a sprinkle of joie de vivre.
There are many times in my life I’ve been made to feel small for this quality. What first comes to mind is my time as a religion major in college. For some context: I went to a Christian college in the South where people get oddly competitive about their spiritual lives. Christianity, there, at times felt more akin to a cultural convenience than a deep and abiding relationship with Christ. When encountering a friend while walking across campus, it was not uncommon to hear “How’s your walk with the Lord?” or “How’s the Lord speaking to you today?”
My college is an institution revered for its well-known Biblical studies department. There, I spent four years studying alongside some incredible scholars. My classmates were deep thinkers—academics wise beyond their years, writing papers on complex topics like catechisms and systematic theology at twenty. My professors nurtured their niche interests, enthusiastically directing them to thick dissertations stowed deep within the library’s shelves. Some students clamored for office hours with beloved professors, hoping to debate theological wanderings roused from their studies. Others walked around campus lugging Hebrew lexicons and annotated commentaries in their backpacks.
There is a part of me that feels right at home in this kind of work: engaging earnestly with Scripture and performing an exegetical study, or examining a parable for its hidden metaphors. I was an English major, too, so textual study has always been a favorite pastime.
But there is an even bigger part of me that always felt like an impostor in this department. I felt like I was never quite serious enough for its students—if only I’d been born a bit more subdued, and a bit less excitable. I spent four years trying halfheartedly to dim pieces of my personality in order to appease a part of me that felt inaccessible: the restrained, contemplative student whose intellectual work was paramount to her existence. I was once again the little girl putting on a show, except this time I found myself donned in the clothing of a play-pretend scholar.
These were the concerns I spent most of college considering: Is it okay for me to cherish Christ yet still care about my appearance? Is that foolish? Is it sinful for me to wake up in the mornings, get dressed in a cute outfit, do my hair and makeup, get my nails done every few weeks? Is that too materialistic of me? Is it okay if I don’t always want to listen to worship music? Is it too worldly-minded of me? Is it bad that I keep up with People magazine? That I’m far too aware of celebrity gossip? That I love The Bachelor franchise and Lululemon and pop music? Is it unholy to read fiction novels and watch reality TV? How much of the world is too much? Do the trappings of a secular life have me securely in its clutches? Can all of these interests cohabitate within the same body?
I did not know, then, that I felt this way. I did not know, then, that I was at odds with myself.
Spring of my sophomore year I was taking my final semester of Hebrew, a class so challenging that it nearly drove me to the brink of madness. Learning a new language is hard enough, but learning a new language with an entirely new alphabet is a whole other ordeal.
Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 10am, I’d go to class with these bright minds, each student fluently reading and interpreting the text while I staggered miles behind. While these students seemed to grasp this new material with ease, I felt out of place, insecure for all that I didn’t know.
At the same time, I joined a Bible study within my sorority. The leader, Mollie, was a senior who I admired, a gentle encourager whose interpretation of Hosea has stuck with me to this day. Over the course of the semester, Mollie made a point to take each of us out for coffee individually, to learn more about us and find out how she could be praying for us.
Mollie took me to my favorite coffee shop in town. We sat at an outdoor table with globe lights hanging overhead, overlooking the lawn with tables strewn across it. I sipped my iced coffee as we discussed her upcoming graduation, my recent decision to tack on an English major, her family life back home. At some point, our conversation turned to the Hebrew class, the depth of it, my struggle with it. For the first time, I spoke out loud the words that had been running through my mind for the better part of a year: “Sometimes I think maybe I’m not supposed to be in this major.”
Quizzically, she cocked her head. “Why do you say that?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” I said. “I think… I think I care less about this stuff than the rest of my classmates. I’m not as intellectual as everyone else. I don’t take it as seriously.”
She furrowed her brow. “Do you think you care less?”
“No,” I admitted. “I actually find it all interesting. I think I’m just wired differently, maybe.”
“What makes you feel different?”
I paused. I hadn’t pondered this yet.
“I think… maybe, I don’t know. I’m more lighthearted about it all, I guess. I just don’t think anyone takes me seriously since I can be…” I stopped, chewing on the thought. “More playful? Jokey?” I couldn’t land on the right word. “And everyone else is so… studious and contemplative; I admire that. I wish I could be more that way.”
She looked me straight in the eyes, not breaking contact once. “I think that God delights in your spirit.” I blinked, surprised. “I think it’s one of His most favorite things about you.”
I did not understand. I did not understand how humor and holiness could be compatible. I did not know how to reconcile the irreverent parts of myself with the parts of me that longed for deep friendship with God. That was it: I’d spent all my life fighting the notion that, in order to be a real believer, I’d have to stow away my enthusiasm in favor of stoicism.
“Do you like that quality about yourself?” Mollie asked, her eyes prodding.
“I… do, actually,” I replied sincerely. “I do.”
“He loves your joy, Eva,” she said. “Don’t forget that.”
There are many things I’ll always love and cherish about my undergrad years. I will always love my college, and given the choice again, I would always choose to go there in a heartbeat. But I’ve spent the past three years since graduating trying to shake a lie that somehow built itself a home in my bones: That, in order to love and know God, we must be totally pious at all times.
It left me wondering: Can one be reverent and giddy in the same breath? Can one be intellectual and superficial in the same human body? Can one be contemplative and unceremonious in the same existence? I think so. I think we are, if nothing else, complex beings with DNA as fine as crosshairs. I think we are built to be hysterical and analytical in the very same flesh.
If we are this complex, this layered, so too is our God. If we know how to laugh, so too does our God. If we are created in His image, and we laugh then laughter must be God-given. Silliness is an instinctual release, a response to all that is too much to bear. Lightness of spirit is not superficial—it is innate.
As God in flesh, Jesus was famously a “man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” as Isaiah 53:3 tells us. But we also know that he was anointed with the “oil of gladness,” because he was untarnished by his own sin (Hebrews 1:9). When translated to Greek, the word “oil” more closely aligns with the definition fatness or excess, and “gladness” might mean joy—so the phrase literally means excessive joy. I picture a cruet, filled to the brim with olive oil, spilling over and leaking down the sides—too much of a good thing. Slippery and greasy and almost always useful; a gift received with deep delight.
When it comes to the superficiality of it all—the overindulgence in pop culture and reality TV and the like—these things are not all bad. In measured moderation, we might even find them to be charged with the glories of God—the blessed imperfection of humanity, the ever-present call to return to Him, conviction resting squarely at the base of our conscience. Where, in the superficial froth of the world, might I find You?
In the hollows of my soul, there lies a craving to find God hidden within the irreverent. Because He’s never really hidden, is He? He’s always there. Where, in the clustered chaos of worldly concerns, does the Spirit dwell?
This is how I want to spend my writing life: Peering through the fogginess of this earthly life, searching for God in the mundane and mystical and broken and superficial, trusting and knowing He will meet me there, because He is in all of it.
What I’m Currently Reading:
Women Talking by Miriam Toews
I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron
What I’m Currently Listening to:
“Black Friday” by Tom Odell (it’s been an obsessive problem this week)
“Reflecting Light” by Sam Phillips
“one more touch” by joan
“You + I” by Young the Giant
One Thing I Want to Share with the World Right Now:
After completing this post, I finished listening to the audiobook of Women Talking by Miriam Toews, which is linked above. I think everyone needs to read this book. It is heavy, but a beautiful and truthful portrayal of womanhood in the faith, and what must be sacrificed to know God-given peace. I recommend it highly.
So well-thought out and delivered, as usual! I think this fits in the vein of a re-appreciation of girlhood and childlike faith.
As I've studied the gospels recently, I find it fascinating who Jesus chose to follow Him as His disciples and then apostles. He didn't choose those with the most theological acuity. He chose those with a willing heart to trust Him, follow Him, serve Him and serve humanity. God wired each of us uniquely to serve as only we can.