Intellectual Humility and Deep Convictions

Can you demonstrate intellectual humility while maintaining deep conviction? Or does holding to one preclude holding the other? In fact, holding these together is essential. On today’s episode, Tim and Rick speak with Biola Provost Matthew Hall (Ph.D.) on ways that intellectual humility in its truest sense depends upon conviction. They explore the difference between tolerance and intellectual humility, the relationship between conviction, courage, and intellectual humility, and they work through some positive examples of intellectual humility.

Show notes and a full transcript are available.

Transcript

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Rick Langer 0:01

Welcome to the Winsome Conviction Podcast. My name's Rick Langer, and I'm a professor emeritus at Viola University. And one of my favorite things that I got to do, but all of them still get to do now, is work with my good friend Tim Muhlhoff on the Winsome Conviction Project, and especially doing the Winsom Conviction podcast. So, Tim, good to be here with you. Who do we have with us in studio today? And uh, what are we going to be talking about?

Tim Muehlhoff 0:24

Well, we have a special guest. We're going to find out a little bit about intellectual humility, but also how a university is run. Some people may not know exactly what a provost does, but a provost is the um senior vice president who basically runs the academic wing of a university. Very important role. We have had the pleasure of having Dr. Matthew Hall since the summer of 2022. How is that possible that time has gone by that fast? Tell me about it. That is crazy. But he's the chief academic officer of the university, and his job is to implement academic priorities. And as part of the university's senior leadership team, Dr. Hall works with the deans, academic officers, and faculty to fulfill Biola's mission. Now you would think, Rick, who in the world is qualified to do that? Well, Dr. Hall is qualified to do that. Dr. Hall holds both an MA and PhD in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. All right, this is an inside joke, Rick. Wow.

Rick Langer 1:35

Wow, I can't believe you pulled that one out with Matt sitting right there in the room.

Tim Muehlhoff 1:40

Right. He is my boss's boss's boss. Um uh so it's actually the University of Kentucky, Rick. But Tar Hills and Kentucky often are involved in fierce basketball wars.

Matthew Hall 1:55

But we have one thing in common is our shared hatred for all things Duke.

Tim Muehlhoff 2:00

Our biblical hatred of Duke.

Matthew Hall 2:02

Fair enough. Right? What is I would say that winsomely and with conviction.

Tim Muehlhoff 2:06

What does Psalm 139 say? I hate the enemies of the Lord. I hate Okay, so Dr. Hall holds an MA and PhD in history from the University of Kentucky, as well as degrees from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, both an MDiv and a THM, which is an advanced degree on top of the MDiv. So, Matt, one, thank you for being with us, and thank you for serving Biola University.

Matthew Hall 2:32

Thanks, Tim. Uh, I'm a longtime listener, first time guest. So thankful for Winsome Conviction. And I also want to make clear if you have any donors or supporters who are Duke alumni, that was a joke. And the cards and letters coming to Biola University.

Tim Muehlhoff 2:48

Hey, but on a serious note, uh when you have a provost who is supportive of what you do, that is a very uh important relationship. And the great thing, Matt, honestly, is your door is always open. Uh I often pop in to say hi to get your advice, to give you updates and your support of us. Really, we don't take that for granted. So thank you very much. Oh, thanks. I almost feel bad about the UNC Couple Hill joke, but I really don't. No, you don't. I really don't. Uh so in addition to being Provost, uh, Dr. Hall has Substack and uh love reading it, by the way. Very uh informative. And uh you wrote recently about intellectual humility. Uh, we've tried to trumpet uh that virtue. And so when I read it, I thought, boy, we need to have Matt on the show to talk about your observations of intellectual humility. Because you start the short blog by saying intellectual humility has become one of the most abused phrases in leadership circles. That's an interesting opening comment. Can you unpack that a little bit?

Matthew Hall 4:01

Yeah, I mean, I think there are every five to ten years, there are certain phrases and ideas that get traction and kind of what we might call leadership culture uh articles, books, magazines that deal with issues of leadership and organizational dynamics. And I think a lot of us have noticed intellectual humility has surfaced. But, you know, there's that famous character in the Princess Bride who says, I do not think it means what you think it means. And intellectual humility, or put it another way, can either sometimes what gets presented as intellectual humility is neither intellectual nor very humble. Uh, and so just because you call it that, I don't think it is that. So why when I say that it's um abused maybe in certain leadership circles, what I mean is is maybe two primary ways in particular. I think one is is a pretty obvious and conspicuous way to delegitimize any appeals to objective truth claims. So like if if you there are some corners in our culture where if you are a leader who holds to certain deep convictions and you're willing to argue for those convictions uh and to lead according to those convictions, there are some who will say, well, you're not you're not being intellectually humble, just by virtue of appealing to certain transcendent truths. So I would say that's, I think, really dangerous and it's not new, right? That's been around since the Garden of Eden. The second, maybe more recent way that I've noticed it is a softer form of that that says, well, you can hold your convictions, but just don't be too bold about them. Like hold them quietly, maybe, maybe in the privacy of your home, hold your convictions, but don't bring those convictions to bear on your organization, on your community, on your political activity or whatever it might be. So it's kind of this uh almost, you know, evisceration, I think, of any meaningful conviction. And so that's what I'm worried about. But I think that the virtue itself of intellectual humility is so important. That's why we have to clarify what we mean and what we don't mean.

Tim Muehlhoff 6:08

I I immediately thought of UNC Chapel Hill, they had national uh coming out week every year. And they had put a huge banner across campus that said, it isn't wrong to think you're right, but it isn't right to think other people are wrong. And I thought, wow. Wow. I'd walk across one of us has to be wrong. Yeah. Wow. That's an interesting way to say you can have your conviction, just don't judge other people with those convictions, which isn't what Biola University is about, nor the Winston Conviction Project's about. So so with that popular view of intellectual humility sort of out there, what would be your take on intellectual humility? Um, because you say in your substack that has a long-standing philosophical and intellectual tradition. So maybe give us your understanding of a robust understanding of it.

Matthew Hall 7:05

Well, and I don't I would acknowledge the term itself is probably more recent, right? Like labeling it as intellectual humility, that that's a maybe a more recent term. However, what we're uh describing, I think what we're articulating, is something that goes way back in philosophy and theology, for that matter. Um, just by way of example, you know, the Enlightenment gets a lot of bad press these days. It's easy to beat up on. And I think unfairly, I think actually that some of the people who are the most quick to beat up on the Enlightenment are the ones who benefit most from the social goods that are brought about for human flourishing and the dignity of individual human rights and things like that. However, um there we we would say I think it it's rooted in these questions of epistemology, right? That when we're talking about epistemology philosophically, as you know, we're talking about what do we know, how do we know it. And I think um whether you whether you like Descartes or Locke or Hume or you know uh Kant, um, they're all writing and thinking in the wake of pervasive religious wars that swept through Europe that were uh led to massive mortality rates in Europe. And they're trying to figure out, okay, what did we fight these wars over? Why did so many people have to die? And they're dealing with these questions then of what do we know and how do we know it, because the assumption was the way we answer those questions questions will affect how we live, both in our local communities as well as in our nation states and as free societies. And I think they had the hope that perhaps they could mitigate the risk of these recurring uh horrible wars that swept through Europe uh in that period. Um so the the the w whether again, whether you whoever you read in that period, they're all dealing with these questions and they're all trying to chasten a bit this kind of hubris or this um overly, we might say, brash sense of like, well, I uh of confidence in in what we think we know. It had some dark sides too, uh obviously that came out of that and kind of the destabilizing of some truth claims. But it at its best, it did represent a chastening of this kind of arrogance of, well, obviously, what I know, everything I know has to be what is true. Um and I think the Christian worldview actually has something really meaningful to say about that. But my point would just be, yeah, when we talk about intellectual humility, we might be using a term that's more novel, but we're we're talking about something that, in terms of the history of philosophy and thought, uh it's it's been a constant conversation.

Tim Muehlhoff 9:39

Rick, let me jump in. You can jump in in one second. I just want to point out one thing that Matt did that I think is really important is understanding the context of the Enlightenment. Like what was happening in the background that led to the questions they were trying to answer. I I just was recommended a book called The Cloud of Unknowing. It's a book on contemplative prayer. Uh, Todd Pickett, our friend Todd Pickett, suggested that to me. But to read the preface, the backdrop is the is the black plague. I mean, that is the whole backdrop of this uh ancient letter about um how do we approach God? So when you know that's the background, you know the kind of things this anonymous writer is trying to address. So I love the fact that you put the background to what people in the Enlightenment are trying to wrestle with. They just didn't exist on an island without any kind of a back. It's so good to stop and ask what is the history of a person, a community, what's the context that they're operating in, helps you understand some of the things that they were trying to address. Rick, did you want to jump in?

Rick Langer 10:48

Yeah, just a quick question, just following up exactly on the on this issue of the, you know, kind of the backstory uh in the context of the Enlightenment uh and the importance of the wars of religion for understanding motivations behind. I think, I think John Locke is a guy who was very worked up about the the impact of the wars of religion as well as should be. I don't think we appreciate that they were as devastating or more devastating in terms of per capita death rates to World War I and World War II. I mean, they were absolutely catastrophic. And the same way World War I and World War II led to a lot of soul searching about the modern world, those wars of religion were doing the same thing in the background of the Enlightenment. So I think that's a great thing to keep in mind. One thing that that brings to mind is so I I'm thinking, I got a foggy memory now of when I was actually studying Locke. But as I recall, there's a fair bit of language about tolerance that sits in this relative to religion, but the language of tolerance, would you make a distinction between tolerance and intellectual humility? And if so, what what how might you nuance the difference between those two things?

Matthew Hall 12:10

Yeah, I don't know that I would go to Locke for that. Um, you know, so much of what Locke's doing and get that has such a uh formative influence then right on the English uh revolution or the what was sometimes called the glorious revolution of 1688, right? It has to do with the what's the role of the state in relation to uh religious expression or other other things that we take for granted, maybe in our Bill of Rights in the United States. Uh but Locke's really kind of the seed form of that expression of tolerance, at least as it relates to the state. Um, but yeah, I think you're right, uh, Rick. I mean, again, tolerance is one of those words that it means something in late modernity in our kind in our context in the 21st century that I think had a different definition. Tolerance now seems to be kind of almost, if it's not hurting someone, then it must be morally, it must be permissible by a society. A free society must make permissible anything that doesn't hurt someone else. And I don't think that's the classic um we might say Western, but I don't think it's just in the West. I think it just kind of a more classical sense of tolerance, which is um maybe a bit more more moral or tied to virtue, like that um there are things that are intolerable, uh, even if they aren't necessarily directly injurious to someone. But I that we might get into like a pretty wonky discussion about ethics there. But um yeah, I think I think uh there's a there's a connection with tolerance for sure. That's my short answer.

Rick Langer 13:37

Yeah, well, and and I feel like tolerance in our current cultural moment, without thinking of the background you just gave us, but how we use the terms right now, I feel like tolerance almost has a negative connotation. It is to say, I don't really like you and I'd like you to know that, but I'm willing to tolerate you.

Matthew Hall 13:59

I'll put it up with you.

Rick Langer 14:00

Whereas intellectual humility seems to have the opposite, it seems to have a positive connotation in your Google search kind of how is it pervasively used in our culture?

Matthew Hall 14:14

Do you sense that as well? I do. Actually, I think what you're alluding to, I had a conversation a few years ago with Cherie Harder, who I think you guys might know. Yeah. The um president of the Trinity Forum, right? That Os Guinness started years ago, and Cherie's done a remarkable job. And Cherie talks about uh intellectual hospitality, which I think is a really beautiful way to put it. Um, and it's less common, so it kind of forces you to go, oh, what do I mean by that? Intellectual hospitality. But her that's her argument is it's different than tolerance. It is an inviting in, like, let's have a conversation. And uh, I'm gonna kind of invite you into my home, so to speak, for us to have that dialogue. Doesn't mean that it's your home. We might severely disagree. There could be severe disagreement, but it is it is saying something a little more intentional, uh, and I think deeply Christian than just, okay, I'll put up with you.

Rick Langer 15:03

Yeah.

Tim Muehlhoff 15:04

That reminds me of the Pomona dialogues that we've been doing. This is the fifth year that we've been partnered with Pomona College, a classic liberal arts college, that if you talk about politics, social issues, even religion, their understanding of those things is going to be pretty diametrically opposed to the um Biola University. So that this hospitality, though, you can easily be criticized for it because I'm inviting you onto our campus. And that's what's so cool about the Pomona dialogues. They come and spend a day at our campus, we go spend a day at their campus. But to walk in there and just start blasting, right? Just start with the disagreements and not be hospitable to their views sets us on a negative communication pattern. So, but to be hospitable, some people would look at and say, why are you entertaining thoughts that are clearly unbiblical? So, what would be um your thoughts about people saying, I'm not sure I like this intellectual hospitality idea? I think there's certain things we shouldn't entertain or even uh want to dialogue about.

Matthew Hall 16:14

Yeah, I mean, I I would say uh I understand the question and the and the concern. And I think anytime Christian people have a concern for holiness, uh for what will honor and please the God who made us and uh has redeemed us, like that's a good thing. I I I never want to be misunderstood in any way to try to squelch that desire that Christians have to honor Christ. Like that is a that's a wonderful thing. I think there can be a misrepresentation of that or uh or maybe driven more by fear than by faith. So it's one thing to say, I want to honor Christ, and I'm gonna live at a because of that love for Christ, I'm gonna live in a faithful, bold way. There's a liberating dynamic that comes with yielding our lives to Christ. There's a counterfeit form of that, I think, that can look like faith, but it's actually just fear-driven. And um, so are there things where I think, you know, yeah, we don't really need to have a debate about X, whatever X is. Yeah, actually, I think the Apostle Paul kind of alludes at that. There's some there are certain practices and things that like we don't even need to have that conversation. And I think, you know, uh we could probably come up with a list of things that you're like, I actually don't think that has it merits that kind of discussion. But that's those are pretty few, right? Yeah. I mean, if you think most of the things that we deal with in our neighborhoods, in our communities, on our school boards, in our churches, where we do have those disagreements, even sometimes really severe ones with our non-Christian neighbors, um, those merit conversation. Those demand love, those demand neighbor love uh and hospitality. And um, I would argue the way you do that, at least, and I've tried to write about it a little bit, is you have to have kind of the foundation and scaffolding of deep conviction that gives you then the freedom and the ability to engage in those kind of sometimes a little intimidating conversations.

Tim Muehlhoff 18:11

That brings up a great quote from your substack saying intellectual humility in its truest sense actually depends on conviction. Unpack that a little bit. And let me just um with a little bit of a preamble. So when I got to UNC Chapel Hill for my master's, I'm on staff with crew. I'm on staff with Campus Crew Save Christ. And a good friend of mine, Tim Downs, you remember Tim Downs, Rick. Uh, he said, listen, you don't need to lead with the fact that you're on staff with crew. Just go be a good student, your first year of your uh MA. So I was privy to backdoor conversations simply because they did not know I was a conservative evangelical. And the way they talked about evangelicals, their side could easily say, Yeah, we don't need to talk about that. We don't need to talk to those people because they're, you know, X, Y, and Z. So we have to be, I think, careful of excluding certain people from conversations because their side is saying, last thing I want to do is talk to an evangelical because they're homophobic, they're anti-this, anti-that. And I want to say, whoa, let's at least open lines of communication so that I can explain the background of my beliefs. So I do think we need to be charitable in engaging even views that we find a little bit uncomfortable or maybe even a little off-putting, uh, because they definitely view us that way in certain circles. So let's keep that line of communication open. So uh unpack that for us. That intellectual humility in its truest sense actually depends on conviction.

Matthew Hall 19:47

Yeah, I I think having the courage of conviction makes all the difference, actually. And um I actually would I might even go as far as to argue that conviction, Tim, is this hinge that connects um courage and humility. So, like we have a lot of people in our culture right now who traffic in a form of courage. I'm not sure it's genuine courage, but it's kind of bravado, and they, you know, they they want to be the the warriors, right? And they've got the the they've beat they've decapitated decapitated enough enemies to show for it, right? Yep. And then on the other side, you've got people who, man, they they're the humble people. They're they want to be the meek, the kind, but they never actually stand for anything. They look they're like jellyfish. And I think what holds those two together, courage and humility, in in kind of our public discourse, is this hinge of conviction. Where um, you know, it's been said that our beliefs are those those commitments that we hold to, but convictions are those things that lay hold of us. They're they're kind of imposed on us and they and they constrain us, they bind us. And those that's true for individuals. I think it's also true for institutions and communities, like for a church to have certain, we as a church have certain convictions. The the apostles' creed is in a sense a corporate conviction. It's a confession of faith, but it is, we're articulating every time a church says, we believe in God the Father, maker of heaven and earth. We're kind of saying this is more than just something that we kind of hold to today, but we'll we'll have a conversation and decide whether we hold to it tomorrow. Or no, we're saying we are saying in front of the universe, until Christ comes again, this is true, as true as anything. Um, and I think actually having those convictions, when you're when you're deep in those and you're settled in those and they're not up for debate, ironically, that frees you up in some other cognitive areas, so to speak, where you're like, Well, I don't know that I don't think the Bible is abundantly clear on you know, fill in the blank on this. Like the scriptures don't have anything to say about, you know, thou shalt have this view on healthcare reform. Right. I mean, there are principles we from which we would try to adopt a policy view on that, but I can't point you to anything chapter and verse in the Bible that says, thou shalt have this view on policy reform. Uh but so that means I need to have some deep settled convictions about what does it mean to be human? What what does it mean to love my neighbors myself? Um, what is what is the importance of the body? There are all sorts of biblical principles that need to shape my convictions, but then it frees me up to enter into conversation with people who I might disagree with and not just, you know, get into constant arguments, uh, but actually listen and learn and then I can grow too. So uh I'm still trying to figure out that balance, I'll admit. Yep. But that's kind of how I approach it.

Tim Muehlhoff 22:33

But but it's become very attractive, Rick, to people outside of Biola University. I mean, they Rick and I are getting invitations now, the Winsome Conviction Project, right, from Simon Greer, Craig's Conversations, University of Virginia, uh, Vanderbilt, coming to us and saying, we need people of conviction. But we also need people who can have conversations with other people and have that intellectual hospitality. So, how great is it that Biola University, who's going nowhere in our convictions, but we're also now getting the reputation, but these are guys that you can actually talk to and debate in a good way. We're Rick and I are trying to reclaim the goodness of debate because now it's kind of taken on a negative connotation. So, Rick, I think it's kind of cool that now people are saying we need, we want evangelicals because we want to have these conversations and let them be civil, right? So, Rick, I think that's a great place that Biola's in. That we're, I mean, nobody's gonna look at our website and say we lack conviction, right? Nobody's looking at us saying, well, Biola doesn't have any conviction. Um, but we're also getting the reputation of that these are people who can sit down and have pretty robust conversations. I think that's an important uh way that people are viewing us.

Rick Langer 23:52

Well, one of the things I think Tim and I have discovered in the bridge building space is people like to talk about it. One of the things that's kind of uh detrimental to an effective exercise in helping people acquire bridge building skills is exactly the lack of disagreement. We're about to go to Vanderbilt for this one uh um workshop kind of a thing, a collab experience that we've been a part of. And they wanted us to generate a slide that kind of a one-minute slide that you present and talk a little bit about. And so we're gonna be our our our one good idea presenting a slide would be our one good idea is to disagree. And that is this issue of saying we have convictions, and you know, we we we will hold to them, but we need to be able to have others have different convictions, and we need to lay bare our disagreements and talk about them honestly and insightfully, and not make them just go away like they're, oh, well, it's all the same thing, it doesn't really matter. And there's so many things in our culture right now that do away with the possibility of honest disagreement. And that the number one thing is exactly what you were just saying, is that we we don't have convictions that we feel like we really need to hold to. Um, let me pick up one more theme on this. When we think of what do we apply intellectual humility to? And so we need to be humble perhaps about our own opinions or things like that. We need to be humble about the possibility that someone else is right. One of the things I think that we should have intellectual humility towards, but we haven't really thought about this very clearly, I think, is that there's an intellectual humility that we need to have towards God in this sense, where I'm going to give God the ability to actually give revelatory truth to me that I am then obliged to affirm as a matter of intellectual humility. Um, and so sometimes God's teaching is pretty explicit, but at least marginally inconvenient or sometimes unsavory or things that we might not like. You know, some for some people, people get tested about this relative to the doctrine of hell, where you know, people get a good justification doctrine hell, then they really hate it when someone says, I don't think I would have thought up hell or I don't like hell. Um, but I'm I'm kind of the guy who says, Yeah, if if you were to give me carte blanche to drop my own religion, I'm not sure I would have packaged hell into the program, eternal conscious punishment. I think I would have figured out some other plan. But I read the Bible and it's sort of like, well, gee, it's pretty clear. And it isn't just an Old Testament thing by any means. I mean, Jesus talks a lot, uh, an uncomfortable lot about hell. And at some point I have to say, am I willing to say, you know what, Rick, you don't really quite know everything. And there are things really clearly revealed in scripture, and your intellectual humility is going to require you to embrace these sorts of things as a matter of revelation that you don't get to dodge. And so the fact of my intellectual humility directly produces unwavering convictions, the ones that I can't opt out of because I never really opted into them. I never really chose the thought, yeah, I thought of two, and I really like hell. Hell's kind of a good thought. Let me go for this hell thing. That's not the way the process went. And there's lots of things like that. I don't know that I would have thought up a Trinity. And in that case, it isn't so much unsavory, it's just mysterious. But when it comes time to have a conversation with a person who's a Mormon, this is going, you're, you're going to suddenly discover that I don't have the freedom to just say, yeah, those things are kind of mysterious, and you solved it one way and I'll solve it another way. It isn't like that because I have a sense of intellectual humility towards divine revelation, that it is authoritative. And then I need to have a certain amount of intellectual humility towards the human side and understand there's different ways you can interpret things. But I think with any exercise in language, you have to say yes, but there's ways you can't interpret it. Um, there is boundaries on how you can read these things. And so you need to have kind of a discerning mind about reading that. But I hate it when that discerning minds mean, therefore, you're going to say there's nothing absolute that we could ever know. There's nothing clear, um, clear enough that it is incumbent upon me to embrace it. So I'm a fan of divine, divinely pointing humility relative to our thinking. And that does have a side effect for the way we the way we view the the things we hold to be true. We we don't get to opt out.

Tim Muehlhoff 29:01

Yeah. Uh what I loved about your Substack is that you said um there's signs of this of intellectual humility. Let's work through a couple of those. We probably won't be able to get through all of them. So would you be willing to come back?

Matthew Hall 29:17

Let me think about it. Okay, good. Thank you. Okay, yeah, I will. I will. I'll come back. Yeah.

Tim Muehlhoff 29:22

Easy, yes, easy yes. Um, so let's work through maybe two of these. For one, intellectual humility is often evidenced by those who listen first and speak second. And here's a great quote: if humility shows up in listening, hubris is more often than not demonstrated by the person who's rash to speak and seems to be under the illusion that his perspective or opinion is sure to be the most thoughtful or informed. So talk to talk to us a little bit about that. The about this, I mean, listening is thrown around all the time. So your understanding that intellectual humility is evidenced by those who listen first.

Matthew Hall 30:05

I think maybe along the lines of what Rick was just saying, that the truly humble person, including intellectually, uh, is someone who knows themselves truthfully. And that means I think if we know ourselves biblically and truthfully, then we know, boy, we're prone to error, prone to wonder. Well, Lord, I feel it. Um, prone to leave the God I love. And so, boy, I struggle in this. I've I've worked with people who I think model it much better than I do, where you go, okay, they're they're probably the smartest person in the room. And they've got the most experience, and everyone in the room kind of knows it. But they're they just wait and they just kind of sit there at the conference room table or in the seminar session. I mean, I think this is one of the great things about graduate school. If if your listeners ever get the experience to do something like that, is you know, you can be in a seminar with a professor who everyone knows is the best in their field, and 90 minutes can go by with a lot of dumb comments made by a bunch of dumb graduate students. And then, but that, God bless them, that professor waits and then when the time's right, they softly but very directly, almost surgically, bring clarity to the conversation. And we know what the opposite looks like, right? The person who they think they're the smartest room person in the room, then they might be, but they they suck all the energy out of the room. And I think what it does, I'm sure you've seen this too, both of you, in your careers, is when somebody like that comes into the room and they they suck the oxygen out of the room, so to speak, there's nowhere to go. So it actually becomes a really uninteresting experience intellectually. Uh so take even the theology and ethics out of it, you're like, I just find those rooms really uninteresting and boring, and I don't have time for that. So, like, if if there's gonna be a prima donna in the room who wants to just pontificate and who can't express any intellectual humility, then I'm like, I got better things to do. Uh I got I want I got a lot I want to learn from other people.

Tim Muehlhoff 32:10

Yeah. I have an illustration of this. Um, so I'm doing my master's, I'm on staff with crew, and uh Michael Eric Dyson is at UNC Chapel Hill. He's one of the, I mean, New York Times came out and said he's one of the top African American intellectuals. He's written a bunch of books. Uh, Dr. Madison grabs me and says, Have you had a Dyson class yet? I said, No. And she goes, Well, listen, keep this between us. He's leaving. Next semester will be his last semester. You've got to take a Dyson class. So I literally signed up for a class. I did not know what it was. I didn't care. It was Dyson. So I walk in, sit down like a gap representative. And the the class is the politics of gangster rap music. I did not know that was the class. He gets up and says, uh, this class is about the rhetoric of gangster rap music. We need to know what we're talking about. So let's listen. He hits play, and we sat there for almost an hour. I didn't know who Two Live Crew was. I didn't know who you just dated yourself, Doug. Yeah, I know. I just dated myself. So here, but here's the interesting evangelical reaction. Okay. So I get in my Hyundai, I'm driving home, and I call my friend Tim Downs, and I said, Well, I obviously have to drop the class. I mean, I can't tell you the language I heard in those songs. Songs I deeply disagreed with. Like, there's no justification. I don't care rhetorically, get out of here. Tim Downs said, wait a minute. I thought you said the New York Times said he was one of the top intellectuals in the country and that he was a former Southern Baptist minister. Do you know why he defends it? And I was like, no. He goes, I'd give it another week. And I was like, hmm. And I did. Each week I thought, this is the week I'm dropping the clock. It was one of the most challenging classes I've ever taken my graduate education. I still don't know what I think about it. I think I disagree on many levels, but he made me think about things that I still contemplate to this day. So making yourself listen to a viewpoint that you just shake your head at initially, I think is a little bit of intellectual humility. Like, this is one smart guy. I need to know why you're advancing a position I think I really do disagree with. But I need to understand the backstory at least. It was utterly fascinating in class. It later it became a book called Between God and Gangster Rap, as he turned it into a book. It's fascinating. Okay, let's do our second one. Let's wrap up with this one. Intellectual humility is often evidenced by intellectual curiosity. You write this. As we age, it can be far too easy to lose this intellectual curiosity and become ossified in our own ways. Ouch. Intellectual humility thus sometimes looks a little different in different seasons of our life. I think you're absolutely right. And I could see being stubborn in both the beginning of our lives and being ossified later in our lives. Unpack this for us.

Matthew Hall 35:28

Yeah, I feel it myself. I mean, I'm 46. I'm I'm in the prime of life, I would like to point out. Just um that's what I'm telling myself. But I I do think just in my um just even like late 20s, I mean, I could read until four in the morning. I mean, it was just like, give me another book. And now I'm like, if it's after 10 o'clock, you know, I mean, and uh my wife knows, like I'm I'm I'm useless. But but even beyond that, I think that as we get older, unless we fight it, the temptation is to just get narrower and narrower in our curiosity about the world and and even frankly about the God who made us. And um, I think the most the most wonderful Christian people I know um kind of later in life that you want to be around with, that you just think, okay, I can't get enough time with them. They're the kind of Christian people who have not lost that sense of wonder and amazement at what it means to know God and to have the ability to know things about him and the world he's made, not just to know him personally and relationally, that's the core foundation, but they're still curious to learn more about his wonders in the world. Um, so when I meet somebody who's in their, you know, 80s and they're still reading books, whether it's audio books or they're still going to, you know, they want to hear a talk or they want to go to the they still have a library card for crying out loud. I mean, or they get a I mean, in this day and age, you still have a newspaper subscription. That's a good sign. Right. I just think uh, and we now have we have actually, I think, pretty good scientific research on like how good that is for the brain and for aging. Like God made us to be curious creatures. And um, and yet uh Arthur Brooks has written some really interesting stuff on this. There are some things that happen in midlife that we our creative energies start to kind of dilute. We have other wisdom that we can pass on to the next generation, but um, there are some things that happen as we age in terms of our brains, and and uh so I think that intellectual curiosity is so important to humility. Um, because it it's just a constant reminder, oh, there's more to learn, there's more to discover, and that sense of wonder at it.

Tim Muehlhoff 37:47

Don't you think that gets pushed out of us even a little bit? Like I I've I've never had an agent uh except for modeling. I had an agent that why are we laughing, Dr. Oh, that was not a joke. You know, it was not no. All right, so I met with an agent. Fine, finally, somebody said, just meet with an agent. Here is literally what the agent said to me. He goes, dude, you're all over the place. Like you're you're literally all over the place. Like, pick a lane. Like, I would think your lane is marriage, because my um doctoral degree was in marital disagreements. We speak for family life. I'd already written a book on marriage. He goes, be the marriage guy. Like, what do you do in writing? You you like you got this apologetics book. Like, pick a lane. So don't you think it's kind of like branding is to make our mark. That's a good point. You know what I mean? I need to be the guy when it comes to this issue, and to have curiosity is frowned upon.

Matthew Hall 38:47

What's terrifying then, Tim, and I think you're probably right, is that that that pressure is being exerted on people at younger and younger ages now. Yes. So, I mean, I see it, and you do too, on this campus, like, and it's not just at Biola, it's college campuses everywhere. It's high school campuses now, and frankly, middle schools of this, like, who are you gonna be? So you're gonna be the basketball kid. All right, so you're gonna play basketball 365 days a year, you're gonna injure yourself from over or whatever it is. You're you're okay, you're a math kid. And so we we there is, I think, an inordinate pressure that does squelch that kind of curiosity and that sense of wonder that actually young adults should. I I I think actually, this is a little bit of a tangent, but I think one of the great things about a liberal arts education at a place like Biola or other great Christian universities is you're encouraged to study broadly. Because I mean, for crying out loud, if you're 18, did you know when you were 18, I could barely tie my shoes at 18. And and Jeannie can tell you when we met my wife, I mean, like, she basically had to like raise me. My parents, I think, just delivered me in a box to her and said, please, we've done the best we can. Uh, but but I think if I had grown up in the culture that my kids are now growing up in, um, where there is that that pressure that you just articulated, but coming sooner and earlier, I don't think I would have had the f sense the freedom that I did feel and still feel to pick up a book on. I mean, like right now I'm reading, I just finished a Danish novel about it's an incredible kind of story about a woman who wakes up and every day is November 18th, every day's November, it's kind of Groundhog Day, kind of weird Danish literature. A book on 1453 and the fall of Constantinople, and then our colleague Jason Wilson, who has a brand new book on math. And I love reading like that. But I think I don't know that that the kid, the young adults who are coming through our campuses now have that. And for me at least, it's very humbling because reading, for example, Jason Wilson's book on math, I go, good grief, this is heavy lifting. It's very humbling. Right. And it's so good for me.

Tim Muehlhoff 40:51

Yeah, our GE's are just kind of frowned upon. Like, I know what I want to do. I need to know what I want to do heading into college. And I'm like, I'm not so sure you need to know.

Rick Langer 41:02

Well, thanks, Matt. This has been really interesting, Matt. And we're really grateful for you coming in and uh glad you've agreed to be able to join us again as we uh dive into this just a little bit more fully. But I'd like to thank all of our listeners uh and just to let you know that we don't take you for granted. We really appreciate you being part of the Winsome Conviction family, so to speak. We'd love to have you check out the winsomconviction.com where you'll find not only the podcast, but a batch of other resources and things like that, a place you can sign up for our newsletter, uh, and also a place where you can send us comments or notes or things like that. And we'd love to have you go ahead and subscribe to our podcast, give us a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or Google Play or wherever it is that you get your uh your podcast from, and uh just join us and become part of our uh regular listening family. Thanks again for joining us on this episode of the Winsome Conviction Podcast.