I'm not talking about hair colour.
When I think of intelligent people I think of someone who knows the right answers to things. I think of someone who is able to articulate a specific truth, at the perfect time, in a complex debate. Perhaps you picture scientists or mathematicians, lawyers ingesting hundreds of pages of case data, doctor's pinpointing the precise cause of myriad subtle symptoms, or orchestral musicians bringing black hieroglyphs into colourful, emotive melody.
But more and more I'm realizing that a lot of intelligence is found in the 'grey', the space between facts. Not in any way moving away from a reality of objective and universal truths, but appreciating that life is not as pixelated as the 'black or white' mentality reduces it to being.
Take history for example. In broad brush strokes we can get a feel for how things happened - which goody defeated which baddy to bring about which positive or negative result. But the real story of history is a chain reaction of billions of thoughts from millions of individuals competing, influencing, and relating in a tapestry of complexity that is unfathomable.
While you may be able to give a rough sketch of what happened, an intelligent historian will be able to comment on the actions of an individual with all the nuance that treats them as a real human, not as a black caped villain.
There is a superficiality to saying whether something (someone, or some action) is good or bad. While an intelligent person will be able to comment with accuracy on the positives or negatives in any one thing, it is usually those people trying to seem intelligent who land too strongly on the black or the white.
I can rehearse some jokes about science that my scientifically minded friends will appreciate, but I'm not functioning on a plain much higher than a parrot.
A pet peeve of mine is the talk surrounding coffee. This is an easily observable occurrence of the uninformed 'black or white' statements. So many people want to sound like they know what they're talking about that they'll make a quick definitive statement about each café/coffee/barista they try:
"That was the best coffee in the world"
"Nah, they don't do very good coffee"
"I only drink Campos"
"This coffee tastes burnt"
All of it usually invoking the unspoken law that the more negative you are about a product the more you must know about it. Because somehow the fact that you've handed over your hard-earned $3.50 for that skim cappuccino gives you the right to espouse your nugatory judgment on the work of someone whose fulltime job is to create that exact drink for you. But I digress.
When someone offers me a black or white opinion on coffee (or any such thing) I like to ask them for the grey meaning behind it. What exactly are you saying? Where in the extensive process from plant to cup would you say that this coffee has gone wrong? And an intelligent person will be able to answer.
Interestingly the people who can see the grey have more time for the white in the black and can sense the black in the white – but it's the people who herald themselves as 'coffee snobs' who are locked in a their monochromatic dualism of ignorance. Too harsh? But you see my point.
Of course we all have limits to what we know in any field. To function day-to-day we have to happily accept a 'pixelated knowledge' of some things. For those things we don't have time or capacity to understand we defer to experts who do know. They take the whole greyscale spectrum in view and simplify it for us.
But this collision of black-or-white with grey seems to be what's happening when Jesus comes up against the Pharisees. When they challenge him about breaking the Sabbath ("Why are you doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?") he doesn't engage with them on their level, but goes deeper to the true meaning of the law ("The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath").
Which is not to say that God's law can be nuanced into obscurity, but it does highlight the danger of learning and reciting binary truths without understanding them.
If you know that the cross is the heart of the gospel and that the gospel is good news, it might be worth wondering how many times you could answer the question "why?" to explain that. These statements are sturdy and true, but just how deep does your understanding go?
You can tell science jokes you don't understand, you can order your latte in a mug, you can even insist that James Squire is 'craft beer' – none of those has severe consequences for your life. But it is a sobering and urgent concern if we have the same shallow depth of knowledge in foundations we've built our lives on. Even the potential of such a thing should drive us to some honest introspection, in pursuit of a firmer grasp on the true nature of things.
Sam Manchester is currently a theology student with an inescapable sociology degree behind him. In an attempt to reconcile the two, he reflects and writes about their coalescence in everyday life.
Sam's archive of articles may be viewed at
www.pressserviceinternational.org/sam-manchester.html