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Office Hours: Tired to the Bone, Part 1 of 2

Each of my visitors has a pattern, and each pattern is different.

Some are my students; others aren't. Some talk only about course material; others never mention it. Some engage me in conversation; others make speeches; others ask questions; others complain. Of those who ask questions, some ask quick ones, others long. Still others come with notebooks full of questions, sit down, flip silently through the pages, then look up and say "First."

Mark had been visiting for years. I knew his pattern pretty well. He wasn't following it. Mark is a one-question-at-a-time sort of guy, but he'd brought up several topics one after another — from whether animals have souls to whether democracy is the best form of government. Then he'd came full stop.

"Prof," he asked, "do you mind if I ask you a question?"

I raised an eyebrow. "You've been doing something else maybe?"

"This is different."

"Go ahead."

"I'm tired."

I studied his face. "Tired? How do you mean?"

"Just tired. Tired to the bone. Exhausted."

"Are you sick? Overworked? Short on sleep?"

"No. No. No."

"Depressed?"

"Not that kind of tired."

A thought struck me. "Are you tired of something?"

"Yes."

"Burned out?"

"Yes."

"Burned out from what?"

"From talking with people about Christianity."

I offered a wry smile. "You could have fooled me."

"Not from talking with you. Or people who know they're Christians. Other people."

"Other people like —"

"Agnostics. Atheists. People of other religions. People who don't know what they believe. People who think they know what they believe but don't. People who —"

I held up my hand. "I get the picture. How have you been talking with them?"

"You know how I've been talking with them."

I laughed. Ever since his freshman year, most of Mark's conversations with me have been about his conversations with other people. "I know you've always thought you had a sort of calling to rational apologetics. Is that what you mean?"

"Yes." He fell into a broody quiet. After a little while he began again. "I've been like that ever since high school. I always believed all the Christian beliefs, but they weren't very important to me. Then I read a book about reasons for Christian faith. Or maybe it was answers to objections to Christian faith. I don't really remember, but anyway it changed my life. I thought, hey, you mean there are reasons to believe all this stuff is true? It set me on fire. I wanted to learn everything I could. I've done a pretty good job of that. And I wanted to tell everyone —"

"You've done a pretty good job of that too."

"Yeah," he said. "Say I hear some guy say in class discussion, 'Well, everyone's got his own truth.' I say to myself, 'Wow, is he confused. Like there could be more than one reality and we're all in different ones.' So I say to him afterward, 'Do you want to get a Starblunks or something?' So we get some coffee and talk about why relativism couldn't be true. Or I meet a girl, and we're talking, and she says 'I think Jesus was just a good man but not God.' I say, "Whatever Jesus was, He couldn't have been just a good man, you know, because good men who aren't God don't go around talking like they are.'"

"But now?"

"I'm so tired of all these conversations. I feel exhausted. I used to think that if I read enough books, I could learn the answer to every objection, but I'm beginning to realize I can never do that. There's no end to objections. People can object to anything. Sometimes they do. They say such crazy things, like, 'Maybe we don't exist, did you ever think of that?' and 'Maybe a statement can be both true and false in the same sense at the same time.' The problem isn't that I can't answer. It's that I never know what's coming next. Since I can't possibly anticipate every objection, I feel like I don't really know why I believe."

He seemed to have run out of words. "So do you see why I'm burned out, Professor?"

"I do."

"It's getting hard to be interested in anything else. My studies — I'm doing OK, but I don't really care any more. You know?"

"I think I understand."

"So what's the answer?"

I smiled. "You haven't told me the question."

He widened his eyes in surprise. "The question is what I should do."

"You want me to advise you?"

"Yes!"

I studied him again while I considered how to answer.

"Why don't you take a break for a while?"

"A break?"

"Sure. Take a little rest from all this talk. I don't mean forever."

"How could I do that? It's my duty. Isn't it?"

"Mark, I agree that everyone should be ready to give an answer if someone asks the reason for the hope that lies within him. I'm not telling you to turn anyone down. You might even —"

"First Peter 3:15," he said.

"Yes. And you might even be right about your calling, though you still have a lot to learn."

"I'm reading every —"

"That's not my point. There's a difference between a calling and an obsession."

"An obsession?"

"That's what I said."

"You think it's an obsession with me?"

"I think it's becoming one."

"But I have to talk with everyone, don't I? Otherwise I'd be letting Christ down."

"Mark, there are more than six billion people in the world."

He grinned. "Well, that's a point." It was the first time he'd shown any sign of humor. I smiled back.

"So —"

"Yes?"

"So what's my problem? I don't get like this about other things. I'm not what you call an obsessive personality. So why am I getting like this?"

"That's not easy to say."

"Take a stab."

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Well," I told him, "if you really want to know, I think there are two problems."

"Spill it. What's the first one?"

"A lot of people who talk with me are afraid to reason about their faith. They've never read, or maybe never thought about, what Jesus meant when he told us to love God with all our minds,¹ or what Paul meant when he said that God requires our reasonable worship.²

"But I'm not like that."

"No, you're at the other extreme; you make the opposite mistake. Faith and reason have to work together — just like a bird needs two wings to fly. Some young Christians don't get it because they think faith means not having reasons for what they believe. You don't get it because you try to turn faith into reason. Both ways of not getting it are trouble."

"What do you mean, I try to 'turn faith into reason'?"

"The fact that there are things you don't yet understand throws you into a funk. Isn't that what you've been telling me? You want to anticipate all possible objections and have all the answers ahead of time."

"But if I just learn enough —"

"Learning is good. God is for it. He made your mind. But Mark, you can't ever learn enough to abolish the difference between the way we know things in this life and the way we'll know them in heaven. "Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face."³

"Well, I don't know. I'll have to think that over. But you were saying that I have two problems."

"So I was."

"What's the other one?"

I glanced at my watch. "My next class begins in a few minutes, so I'll say this quickly. I think you're instrumentalizing the Christian life. That's one of the reasons why I think you need a break."

"I'm doing what with the Christian life?"

"Instrumentalizing it."

"I know the word, but I don't have the foggiest idea what you mean."

"If you know the word, then what does it mean?"

"To instrumentalize something is to treat it as a tool, as a means to an end instead of an end in itself."

"That's what you're doing."

"How?"

"Tell me, Mark. What is the meaning of the Christian life? What is its point, its core? What is it all about?"

"Are you setting a trap?"

"No, I'm springing the trap that you've set yourself. Answer the question."

"I think the meaning of Christian life is the Great Commission. It's all about bringing other people into the Christian life."

"So Christian life is the process of bringing other people into Christian life. Is that what you're saying?"

"Oh, wait — I see the trap now."

"I'm sure you do. Care to explain it?"

"If I mean what I said, then Christian life is the process of bringing other people into the process of bringing other people into the process of bringing other people into the — well, if that's the core, then it doesn't have a core. I'm on an endless treadmill, going nowhere."

"If that's where you are, no wonder you're tired."

"Yeah. But — Professor T?"

"Yes?"

"What is the core, then?"

"The core of the Christian life is being taken more and more into the life of Christ Himself. It's because of what we find there that we share it with others. But we can't share what we don't live."

He gave me a funny look.

"You didn't know that, Mark?"

"I thought I did. I've even used those words. But I'm not so sure. Go on."

I glanced at my watch again, and stood up. "Walk with me to my classroom. When you were baptized —"

"Prof."

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"Yes?"

"I never actually was. Do you think that matters?"

I stopped.

Mark stopped.

"Maybe," I said, "you should come back tomorrow."

THE REST OF THE STORY: READ PART 2