I am often amazed by how afraid we (Christians) are of the brain. Why are we so worried that if we use it we lose our faith? Whether it is said this way or not this means…if you learn too much you will surely lose your faith because no smart person would believe this stuff! Or more bluntly Christianity is for stupid people!

Oh the irony! One of the major critiques of Christianity by nonbelievers is it is a crutch for the weak or ignorant. And as much as we bristle at this notion when it comes from the “outside” we perpetuate it from the “inside.” The church is making the argument for them, our fear of learning is all the proof they need that Christianity is for stupid people!

Let us become a people who love God with all our mind!

Moreover, it’s not just Christian scholars and pastors who need to be intellectually engaged with the issues. Christian laymen, too, need to be intellectually engaged. Our churches are filled with Christians who are idling in intellectual neutral. As Christians, their minds are going to waste. One result of this is an immature, superficial faith. People who simply ride the roller coaster of emotional experience are cheating themselves out of a deeper and richer Christian faith by neglecting the intellectual side of that faith. They know little of the riches of deep understanding of Christian truth, of the confidence inspired by the discovery that one’s faith is logical and fits the facts of experience, of the stability brought to one’s life by the conviction that one’s faith is objectively true. – William Lane Craig 

If what we claim about Jesus Christ is true, then evangelicals should be among the most active, most serious, and most openminded advocates of general human learning. Evangelical hesitation about scholarship in general or about pursuing learning wholeheartedly is, in other words, antithetical to the Christ-centered basis of evangelical faith. Mark Noll

At root, evangelical anti-intellectualism is both a scandal and a sin. It is a scandal in the sense of being an offense and a stumbling block that needlessly hinders serious people from considering the Christian faith and coming to Christ. It is a sin because it is a refusal, contrary to the first of Jesus’ two great commandments, to love the Lord our God with our minds. Os Guinness