As the narrator travels west, he begins the long climb across the high plains of the Great Plains to the Rock Mountain Range beyond. As the high country approaches, he contemplates his inner conflicts and experiences. He says,

I want to talk about another kind of high country now in the world of thought, which in some ways, for me at least, seems to parallel or produce feelings similar to this, and call it the high country of the mind.

If all of human knowledge, everything that’s known, is believed to be an enormous hierarchic structure, then the high country of the mind is found at the uppermost reaches of this structure in the most general, the most abstract considerations of all.

He speaks of knowledge here but I don’t believe it is limited to mere cognitive acquisitions. Any and all thoughts, ideas, concepts, information, and dreams constitute this cerebral structure. And it is, as he says, the most abstract of all areas.

For me, this includes all my theological studies, readings, lecture notes, and everything and anything else that has contributed to my understanding of God and who I am as an image bearer, a sinner, and redeemed child of God. I am all of these and more; I have read and reflected a lot about them.

Of course, I did not start out there. No one does. Whether one starts from a false premise (any non-biblical religion) and winds up wandering in the peaks of false knowledge, or starts with the truth as God has revealed it and begins an ascent of Mt Zion – regardless of the starting point the first steps begin at the base of the mountain.

The more I read and the more I began to understand of all the legitimate systems of theology, and how they seemed to be irreconcilable with one another, the more I wondered what was going on. Each step up was weighed down by the gravity of questions without answers, but at least the hope of resolution lay ahead, perhaps hidden by clouds at the summit. So I went on, reading Scripture and reflecting on the diverse understandings accumulated by true believers during two thousand years of New Testament faith.

The narrator continues his description of the high country of the mind:

Few people travel here. There’s no real profit to be made from wandering through it, yet like this high country of the material world all around us, it has its own austere beauty that to some people makes the hardships of traveling through it seem worthwhile.

There are indeed few who seem to travel above the timberline. There is no lack of people who are interested in the stories and tales of those who have been there, but there don’t seem to be many who have the aptitude or appetite for it.

And there is certainly no profit in such theological, spiritual heights. The money is in the traditional, the safe, the so-called certain things of our shared faith. Those who would disrupt the entrenched tranquility are viewed with suspicion and disdain. No matter how big the auditorium of the church, there never seems to be quite enough room for them inside. Harry Blamires wrote about this 35 years ago.

The [Christian] thinker challenges current prejudices. He disturbs the complacent. He obstructs the busy pragmatists. He questions the very foundations of all about him, and in so doing throws doubt upon aims, motives, and purposes which those who are running affairs have neither time nor patience to investigate. The thinker is a nuisance. He is a luxury that modern society cannot afford. It will therefore naturally, and on its own terms justifiably, strive to keep him quiet, to restrict his influence, to ignore him. It will try to pretend that he does not exist. . . .

But the Church is false to itself when it rejects the thinker. And therefore, in so far as it adopts the fashion of the secular world and tries to submerge thought under learning, prophecy under scholarship, wisdom under know-how, it strives to secularize itself; in other words to destroy itself . . . Thus our complaint against the education through which our [pastors] are prepared for their duties might justly be widened into a complaint against the bias of our educational system in general. It is not geared to the production of thinkers. It is geared to their obliteration. – The Christian Mind

Back in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the narrator adds:

In the high country of the mind one has to become adjusted to the thinner air of uncertainty, and to the enormous magnitude of questions asked, and to the answers proposed to these questions. The sweep goes on and on and on so obviously much further than the mind can grasp one hesitates even to go near for fear of getting lost in them and never finding one’s way out. . . .

It’s that one word – “uncertainty” – that is so much a problem. We don’t like it. We like answers and unanswered questions or incomplete information or knowledge troubles us, even when we logically know we cannot comprehend all the truth there is when it comes to God. But we strive to figure it out anyway. Because what we know we can predict and that gives a feeling of control.

And the fear getting lost is a real one, too. It’s the fear, perhaps, of climbing so high that perhaps we’ll discover something that will cause us to lose our faith. As though we found it to begin with. But we’re I’m afraid of what I might find if I go to far and so I want to stop. Maybe some Festus in my life will jump up and say, “”Mike, you are out of your mind! Your great learning is driving you mad.”

The allegory of a physical mountain for the spiritual one that stands between each soul and its goal is an easy and natural one to make. Like those in the valley behind us, most people stand in sight of the spiritual mountains all their lives and never enter them, being content to listen to others who have been there and thus avoid the hardships. Some travel into the mountains accompanied by experienced guides who know the best and least dangerous routes by which they arrive at their destination. Still others, inexperienced and untrusting, attempt to make their own routes.

Few of these are successful, but occasionally some, by sheer will and luck and grace, do make it. Once there they become more aware than any of the others that there’s no single or fixed number of routes. There are as many routes as there are individual souls.

I need to make an important clarification here. I said earlier in this post that some – or most – people start climbing the wrong mountain and wind up worshiping a god who is not there. But for those of us in the biblical faith of Christianity, there are indeed many paths to – not salvation – but maturity. That’s how I apply the previous two paragraphs: if someone is on the right mountain, there are a lot of paths that lead to and through sanctification. The means is always the same: the Holy Spirit causes the growth.

I look over my shoulder for one last view of the gorge. Like looking down at the bottom of the ocean. People spend their entire lives at those lower altitudes without any awareness that this high country exists.

This is the sad existence of a lot of Christians. There is higher ground to be gained, a spiritual maturity that goes beyond mere knowledge of spiritual things. I think we’re all called to this whether we do it or not.

In fact, I’m pretty sure that all our knowledge, which we mistake for a sign of maturity, is just hiking gear. It is what we learn from theology and our knowledge of Scripture that makes the climb possible. If we don’t climb, we’re like consumers who buy hiking gear and talk about the gear and argue over which gear is best and who used what gear to climb to what heights. We do all this but we never get out and climb.

It’s not the heights that reflects maturity: it’s the process of climbing – enabled by the Holy Spirit – that develops us and brings about the growth. It is hard work and it is the best work anyone can ever do.

The knowledge of theology and bible are tools for us to use to draw nearer to God; they are not God themselves. Without the climb there is no growing relationship with God, no true maturity.



Namárië.