Individuals who have undertaken graduate and post-graduate studies would acknowledge that these pathways to knowledge and wisdom affect who they are and what and how they do things in life. Fr. Ron Rolheiser, a trained academic, has worked at various universities, teaching within university circles and having university professors as close friends and colleagues. He writes that for academics who follow the pathway of Faith, the challenge is remembering Christ’s teaching that the deep secrets of life and faith are hidden from the learned and the clever and revealed instead to children. He goes on to say that intelligence and learning are good things. Intelligence is the gift from God that sets us apart from animals, and access to learning is a precious right God gives us. Ignorance and lack of education are things every healthy society and every healthy individual strives to overcome. Scripture praises both wisdom and intelligence, and the health of any church is partly predicated on having a vigorous intellectual stream within it. Every time in history that the church has let popular piety, however sincere, trump sound theology, it has paid a high price, as The Reformation attests. The fault is not with intelligence and learning, both good things in themselves, but in what they can inadvertently do to us. Intelligence and learning often have the unintended effect of undermining what’s childlike in us. When we are “learned and the clever,” we can more easily forget that we need others and consequently don’t as naturally reach for another’s hand as does a child. It’s easier for us to isolate ourselves. The very strength that intelligence and learning bring into our lives can instill in us a false sense of self-sufficiency that can make us want to separate ourselves from others in unhealthy ways and understand ourselves as superior in some way. And superiority never enters the room alone but always brings along several of her children: arrogance, disdain, boredom, cynicism. All of these are occupational hazards for the “learned and the clever,” and none of these help unlock any of life’s deep secrets. It is never bad to become learned and sophisticated; it’s only bad if we remain there. The task is to become post-sophisticated, that is, to remain full of intelligence and learning even as we put on the mindset of a child.