A Wisdom of the Head and a Wisdom of the Heart

 


I've been thinking a lot lately about change--not global change or political change or climate change or religious change. My focus is more personal than that.  I want to consider why I change and why you change your beliefs, opinions, attitudes, and actions, and I want to use a literary and a biographical example to do so.

This spring I reread Charles Dickens' novel Hard Times with my Great British Writers class. As one of his shorter novels, it's a great introduction to Dickens' world. It contains all the glories of character and all the faults of sentimentalism of this great Victorian writer. To me, the most interesting character in the novel is Thomas Gradgrind, the retired merchant turned schoolmaster, who speaks these words at the opening of the book:  "Now what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to the Facts, sir!"

Within the societal context of the novel, Gradgrind (whose name describes his educational philosophy well) stands for the Utilitarian philosophy that scientific principles could be applied to social problems and thus create the greatest good for the greatest number of people. What Dickens reveals as the novel progresses, however, are the tragic consequences of Gradgrind's philosophy when applied to his own children. His son, Tom, becomes  a thief, and his daughter, Louisa, forced to accept an arranged marriage with the much older Josiah Bounderby (because it is the practical and sensible thing to do), grows unhappy in her marriage and comes dangerously close to adultery with the unprincipled aristocrat, Harthouse, saving herself at the last moment by running to her father's house and confessing her deep unhappiness to him.

His daughter's confession is both crushing and life giving for Gradgrind. "The ground on which I stand has ceased to be solid under my feet," he says to Louisa the next day. But it turns out that this disorientation was necessary to bring about change in one who had been so firmly committed to his system of "nothing but Facts." Gradgrind is essentially the only dynamic character in the novel. Dickens shows us the extent of his transformation through this climactic speech: "Some persons hold .  .  . that there is a wisdom of the Head, and that there is a wisdom of the Heart. I have not supposed so; but, as I have said, I mistrust myself now. I have supposed the Head to be all-sufficient. It may not be all-sufficient: how can I venture this morning to say it is! If that other kind of wisdom should be what I have neglected, and should be the instinct that is wanted, Louisa--" Gradgrind's experience gives him the courage to end the marriage between his daughter and Bounderby, and his transformed beliefs and values are demonstrated by his actions in the rest of the novel.

We see the same principle of change operating in the life of C. S. Lewis. In the 1940s, Lewis published his first apologetic work, The Problem of Pain, in which he took on the question of human suffering, specifically: how can a God who is both good and all-powerful allow suffering? It was the book that launched his career as a popular apologist for the Christian faith. It attracted the attention of the director of religious broadcasting for the BBC and led to the series of radio talks that were later published as Mere Christianity. In The Problem of Pain Lewis explored intellectual and philosophical questions about human suffering. It demonstrated, in Thomas Gradgrind's words, the "Wisdom of the Head." Some twenty years later Lewis was to experience something that caused him to question much of what he had written in that early apologetic work: the struggle with cancer, remission, reoccurence of cancer, and death of his beloved wife, Joy Davidman. As he saw, up close and personal, his wife's suffering and the ultimate ineffectiveness of his fervent prayers (in which Lewis even asked God that he be allowed to take Joy's pain into his own body), he came to the realization that "Experience is a bitter teacher. I've just come up against a bit of experience" (Shadowlands). Following Joy's death, Lewis wrote a book under a pseudonym called A Grief Observed, which recorded his grieving process. The emotions in the book are so raw, so honest, that it makes for difficult reading. I would suggest that if Lewis' early apologetic work expressed the "Wisdom of the Head," A Grief Observed expressed Lewis' "Wisdom of the Heart."


So what makes people change their beliefs, opinions, attitudes, and actions? I don't know all the reasons people change, but I do think that a big one is life experience. People don't change easily, so I'm thinking that often it takes some pretty significant events, perhaps even dramatic and catastrophic ones to bring change about. A couple of biblical examples come to mind. Near the beginning of the book of Acts we have Pentecost: a rushing, mighty wind; tongues as of flame; and people hearing the gospel in their own language. I imagine those pilgrims who came expecting the same old Pentecost celebration got more than they bargained for--and, as a result, their beliefs and lives were changed forever. Later in Acts, when God wants Peter to go preach to the Gentiles, he sends him a dramatic vision on a roof to declare that all foods are clean, rocking Peter's world, introducing him to a new reality in which "God is no respecter of persons." That life experience would change Peter's worldview and practice forever (though one does wonder why the Pentecost experience wasn't enough for Peter).

So one conclusion I want to draw is that life experience is a catalyst for change. These experiences are often surprising and unsettling and often unpleasant. They disorient us. After such an experience we may say, with Thomas Gradgrind, "The ground on which I stand has ceased to be solid under my feet." But that disorientation is temporary and can lead to a new way of seeing and being in the world. It may even lead us to the recognition that there is a whole realm of understanding and a way of relating to other human beings that we never knew existed. As a result, we may attain to the Wisdom of the Heart.

Have you had those kinds of experiences in your own life? In a future post, I hope to explore this idea of change more and use a personal example of how I've been led to change my beliefs, opinions, attitudes, and actions based on life experience.