How Smart People Slowly Drift from Simple Truth

Before moving on, I want to give you something practical to work through. It is one thing to recognize that we can use thinking to avoid truth, but it is another thing to see where that is happening in our own lives. Most of us are far better at evaluating ideas than we are at examining ourselves. We can analyze arguments, critique positions, and articulate beliefs, all while remaining largely unaware of what is actually driving those beliefs beneath the surface. The worksheet below is meant to slow that process down. It is designed to help you take a real issue you are currently thinking about and work through it more honestly—paying attention not just to what you believe, but to where you may be adding complexity, where your emotions are involved, and where your motivations might be shaping your conclusions. This is not about getting the “right” answers. It is about increasing awareness so that your thinking leads you toward humility and clarity, rather than simply reinforcing what already feels comfortable.

Recovering Hippies, Humble Beginnings, and the Temptation to Outthink God

I have been thinking a great deal about where I come from, not in a nostalgic sense, but in the kind of way that feels more like reckoning. The older I get, the more I realize that much of what I wrestle with—how I think, how I respond to truth, how I carry myself in the world—did not originate with me. It was formed slowly and quietly, in ways that felt normal at the time and only later began to reveal themselves as formative. There are patterns in me that I did not choose, instincts that were shaped long before I had the ability to question them, and tensions that I am only now beginning to understand.

My parents were married in 1970. They were both school teachers, and eventually my mom stayed home. Both of them were deeply intelligent, though my mom would never have described herself that way. She carried a quiet kind of intelligence that did not need to prove itself. It showed up in steadiness, in insight, in knowing what mattered without needing to assert it. My dad had his own way of thinking, but what they shared was something harder to name. I have often said that they were “recovering hippies,” and while that phrase began as a kind of shorthand, I have come to see that it captured something real about the posture they carried toward life.

When I look back at pictures of them, it is hard not to see it. My dad with a long beard, often holding a pipe he never really smoked, as if it were more symbolic than practical. My mom with long blonde hair, wearing clothes that clearly belonged to that era. But what stands out to me now is not simply how they looked, but what that look represented. There was a resistance to status, a suspicion of pretense, and a quiet discomfort with people who seemed too certain or too eager to be impressive. There was something deeply good in that posture. It grounded life in what was real and resisted the kind of arrogance that can grow unnoticed.

At the same time, I have come to see that there was another side to that atmosphere, something more subtle but just as formative. It was not that thinking deeply was discouraged outright, but there was often a sense that it should be contained. Conversations could go deep, but only to a point. Questions were acceptable, but not if they created too much tension. There was an unspoken line that you were not supposed to cross, and while no one named it directly, it shaped how far things were allowed to go. Depth, especially when expressed openly, could feel like it disrupted something people were trying to maintain.

I felt that tension even when I was young, and I pushed against it. Thinking deeply became my form of rebellion, not in an outward or dramatic sense, but in a quieter, more persistent way. I found myself asking questions that lingered longer than people seemed comfortable with. I did not like stopping where conversations naturally stopped, and I did not like pretending that something made sense when it did not. There was always a sense that there was more beneath the surface, and I felt compelled to follow it. That instinct eventually led me into academic life and into earning a PhD, but long before that, there were other forces shaping me just as strongly.

The contrast between my grandparents on each side of my family has become increasingly important to me as I have tried to understand myself. On my dad’s side, my grandfather was a dairy farmer who milked cows by hand. There is something about that detail that continues to stay with me because it represents a kind of life that is grounded in necessity rather than performance. The work has to be done whether you feel like it or not. There is no space for image or abstraction, only the steady rhythm of responsibility. That kind of life forms a person in a way that cannot be easily replicated elsewhere. It teaches consistency, humility, and a respect for reality that does not bend to preference.

On my mom’s side, the story was entirely different, but in many ways even more intense. My grandfather on that side was homeless as a child. He lived under a bridge and spent time with a Hungarian family, surviving by fishing and taking food from gardens because there were no other options. That kind of beginning is not theoretical hardship; it is survival. And yet, that same man eventually worked his way into an executive role at Ford Motor Company, moving in circles shaped by figures like Henry Ford II and Lee Iacocca. The distance between those two realities is almost difficult to comprehend, and it has always carried weight in how I understand my own story.

My grandmother on that same side lost her mother at a young age and had to raise her four brothers. That kind of responsibility forces maturity in a way that is not chosen. It creates resilience and a sense of duty that is forged through necessity rather than cultivated through preference. When I consider these stories together, I realize that I come from people who endured, people who worked, and people who lived in contact with reality in ways that I have not had to. That realization creates a tension in me that I have carried for a long time.

On one hand, I pursued education and entered academic spaces where thinking, analysis, and articulation are central. On the other hand, I carry an awareness that the people I come from did not need any of that to be strong, grounded, or valuable. They were formed by something more fundamental. That tension remained mostly in the background until I spent enough time in academic environments to start noticing patterns that unsettled me.

It was not that academia was inherently flawed. There is real value in careful thought, disciplined study, and the pursuit of understanding. But I began to see how easily intelligence can become something other than a tool for truth. I saw how systems can reward complexity, novelty, and performance in ways that subtly shift the goal. Complexity can become a form of currency, and the ability to present something as more nuanced or sophisticated can become a marker of belonging. Over time, it becomes easy to assume that if something is more complex, it must be more true.

I began to notice this most clearly in theology. I would encounter ideas presented as though we were finally arriving at insights that had somehow been missed for two thousand years. What stood out was not only the ideas themselves, but the posture behind them. There was often a confidence that did not seem to account for the weight of history, a willingness to move beyond traditional doctrine without the kind of humility that such a move should require. It left me with a growing sense that something was off, not because questioning is wrong, but because the posture behind the questioning matters.

There is a difference between wrestling with truth and attempting to reshape it according to our preferences or discomforts. The core truths of Christianity are not complicated. They are difficult, but they are not complicated. The idea that we are not righteous on our own, that we are not self-sufficient, and that we require grace is not intellectually complex. What makes it difficult is the humility it requires. To accept it is to relinquish control and to acknowledge dependence in a way that runs against our instincts.

I began to see how intelligence, when not governed by humility, can become a way of avoiding that humility. We can analyze instead of submit. We can reinterpret instead of obey. We can complicate what is clear because clarity demands something from us that we would rather not give. And as I reflected on this, I realized that this was not simply something I was observing in others. It was something I could see in myself.

I have struggled with a sense of worth for much of my life, often in a quiet and persistent way. It shows up as a question of whether I am allowed to take up space or whether I am truly as capable as others might assume. That struggle is connected to where I come from, to the humility that was modeled for me, but it has also created its own challenges. There have been times when it has manifested as self-deprecation, as a kind of diminishing of myself that I once mistook for humility.

Over time, I have come to understand that self-deprecation is not the same thing as humility. Humility is a right orientation toward God that frees a person from constant self-reference. Self-deprecation, on the other hand, remains centered on the self, simply in a negative form. Both can become ways of managing identity without true submission. When that kind of internal struggle intersects with intellectual ability, it can produce distortion. The ability to think deeply can become a way of avoiding what is uncomfortable, and complexity can become a shield that creates distance from truth.

This is why I find myself returning again and again to the example of Jesus. When I read the Gospels, I do not see someone who relies on complexity to establish authority. I see someone who speaks clearly and directly, often in ways that are accessible to ordinary people. His teaching is not shallow, but it is plain. It exposes, clarifies, and calls for response. He forgives sins before healing bodies, pointing to the deeper problem beneath the visible one. He confronts those who appear righteous but are inwardly unchanged. His authority does not come from complexity, but from truth.

That has forced me to reconsider what kind of authority I am pursuing in my own life. I do not want to be respected because of academic accomplishment, and I do not want to be listened to simply because I can think deeply or articulate ideas well. If there is any reason for me to be heard, I want it to be grounded in something deeper, something that reflects actual transformation rather than developed skill.

That realization has led me to begin making very concrete changes in how I live and think. One of the first changes has been learning to stop when something is already clear. When I encounter a truth that is straightforward but uncomfortable, my instinct is often to keep analyzing it, looking for nuance that might soften its edge. What I am trying to do instead is to ask whether the issue is actually a lack of clarity or simply resistance. If something is already clear enough to act on, then continuing to analyze it is often a way of delaying obedience.

Another change has been forcing myself to express ideas simply. If I cannot explain something plainly, then I either do not understand it as well as I think I do, or I am using complexity to maintain a certain image. Simplifying my language has become a way of testing both my clarity and my motives, and it has reshaped how I approach communication.

I have also had to slow down my instinct to critique. Academic training builds a reflex to analyze and respond quickly, but that reflex can keep everything at a distance. I have had to learn to pause and ask whether I am responding to an idea or protecting myself from it. This has required paying attention to my emotional reactions, not just my intellectual ones. When something provokes a strong response, I try to understand why, asking what in me is being touched and what I might be trying to protect.

Practicing humility has also taken very concrete forms. It has meant choosing not to speak first in conversations, allowing others to contribute without immediately adding my perspective, and receiving correction without defensiveness. These are small decisions, but they expose how much I am still drawn toward maintaining a certain image. I have also had to invite people into my life who are willing to speak honestly, people who are not impressed by credentials and who are able to see what I might miss in myself.

Returning to Scripture has also become a more intentional practice. Rather than immediately filtering what I read through interpretive frameworks, I try to engage the text at the level of plain meaning first, allowing it to confront me before I begin analyzing it. This ensures that interpretation does not become a way of insulating myself from the force of what is being said.

None of these steps are dramatic, but they are shaping me in ways that thinking alone never could. They are helping me move toward a life where understanding is not separated from obedience and where intellectual growth is not mistaken for transformation.

Because in the end, this is what I am coming to believe more deeply. Degrees can prove that you have been trained, but they cannot prove that you have been changed. And I do not want to spend my life becoming more trained if I am not becoming more transformed. I want my thinking to lead me toward humility, not away from it. I want my understanding to deepen my submission, not replace it.

That is the tension I am trying to live in now, and it is one I do not want to resolve too quickly.