I spend a lot of my time around preachers and teachers, people entering the fray week after week offering sermons and talks to congregants and parishioners, members of the public, saints and sinners, together seeking to make sense of it all.

Claims are made, arguments are formed, stories told, illustrations tendered, questions raised, answers given, each in search of the truth about existence, meaning, life, and everything.

Some of these talks are good. Too many are weak. But the effort is made.

And it should be made, not only because the preacher or teacher may have something to say. People have a longing to hear, reason, wrestle, question, think, and apply what makes sense. We’re all seeking wisdom. Step in the box. Learn to discern between a ball and a strike. Learn how to pick out a pitch worth the chance. Learn which pitches to let whiz past. When a good pitch presents itself, take a swing.

You might hit a slow dribbler to first. You might fly out to the catcher. You could get fooled on the curve and hit a chopper to short. You could even take a mighty swing and, whoosh, miss.

Even a failed attempt can lead to gain, if you learn from the experience. That first missed swing has a name. We call it “strike one.” Step back in. Take another swing.

If you stand in there, keep your eye on the ball, time it right, and everything comes together at just the right moment, a liner might find a gap between the chalk populated only by green grass. If it’s rolling, you’re running. Or, if you connect on the sweet spot, crack, that ball might carry over the wall. Round the bases. Touch’em all.

Fear of criticism, social media backlash, the appearance of looking foolish, or the possibility an argument will fall flat keeps too many from taking the bat off their shoulder or stepping into the box at all. Don’t quiver and qualify and then go quiet. Instead, form convictions and make claims. Reason calmly. Argue boldly.

We’re here to take swings. We’re here to search for meaning, divine right from wrong, distinguish good from evil, develop a moral vision, answer ultimate questions, and build a life based on conviction. That’s what it means to be human. Once we arrive upon solid answers, we offer them up. They’ve helped us. They might help someone else. Pass wisdom along. Wisdom is the kind of thing that increases in value the more it is shared.

If we encounter others on an identical quest, we may help one another. Dialogue can sharpen arguments, solidifying the footing. Better to know you stand on a shoddy foundation before a crisis comes. Socrates exposed the weaknesses in arguments, and for that, he is remembered as one of the greatest and wisest philosophers who walked the earth. When what’s underfoot is discovered to be sandy or shaky, you can continue the search for bedrock elsewhere.

It’s tough to learn how to take a good swing if you have never taken the risk of committing a few bad ones. Get in the box. When a good pitch presents itself, turn it around with a good swing. Encourage others to do the same.

I serve in higher education, where most of the people around me know a whole lot about a few things within a narrow field. They are specialists. It is very good to have specialists. It is even better when specialists talk to other specialists across specialities. Occasionally these conversations yield fresh insight that breaks new ground, all because of a profound connection.

Yet, generalists can be helpful, too.

Last week I heard someone bemoan the lack of generalists in the academy, people publishing in multiple fields across multiple disciplines, offering grand theories of everything in the study of politics, economics, and social science. This same pundit said scholars who were generalists did exist in a previous age (a few decades ago), but cannot exist in today’s academy.

I’m skeptical about that claim. I think someone who is intellectually curious and prolific enough can roam wherever they would like, though I do agree that the incentives run in the other direction. It is good to have generalists, so long as they talk to specialists and glean enough deep knowledge to then put pieces together in a way that hangs together, that makes sense.

(An aside: I don’t know how much better off we’d be, if at all, if generalists talked to other generalists about generalities, because if that’s all they did, their theories would never become comprehensive nor coherent or deep and detailed enough to ultimately do anyone any good.)

The remark about specialists and generalists did lead me to think about wisdom and where it comes from. Wisdom is not less than abiding by a designated set of moral rules, but certainly it is much more. Wisdom is taking the right course of action in the vast majority of life’s situations where the moral rules do not clearly apply. A wise person may have some specialized knowledge. But the sage goes beyond specialized knowledge, arriving at a general set of principles and practices encompassing a number of different fields of endeavor, even all of life.

I thought of examples of a wise person. This then led me to think of the office of pastor. Then, thinking beyond the pastor, I thought of the congregation, and congregants. A Christian minister, or a Christian congregant, has some specialized knowledge, each according to the areas of mastery. Pastors, hopefully, bring forth wisdom from the Scriptures, and plumbers, hopefully, can correctly install pipe.

But Christians in any field will also possess general knowledge about how the world works, not just specialized knowledge applicable to their profession. The Bible contains a great deal of information about politics, social dynamics, morality and ethics, and more. The Scriptures tell a story that touches on various aspects of what it means to be human, as well as what it means to be in relationship to the divine. If you read the Bible, or regularly hear it preached and taught, you’ll glean a great deal of generalized wisdom about how the world works. And if you are part of a community of wisdom, you’ll talk across specialities and gain a greater overall picture of how human beings can best move forward in view of a comprehensive approach to reality.

As a Christian person, there are incentives to being a generalist. A generalist can connect with a broader range of people and address a broad range of human problems. You don’t let go of your specialities while doing so. You also don’t hoard all of your treasures and keep them to yourself. You share them, not to increase your status, but to serve the community. You build everyone else up in knowledge. You love your neighbor as yourself. You give witness to God, who is the source of all knowledge.

We live in a day and age in which people chafe against grand claims and sweeping narratives. But even the claim that there is no big story, no all-encompassing truth, is itself a story. We may be more comfortable with specialists, because first, few of us are equipped to argue with them. We can live and let live. And second, they have a narrowly defined lane which we may seldom enter.

Generalists are more dangerous. Their ideas challenge us all. It’s why Christian people who tell their story boldly yet humbly have often found themselves getting into trouble.

We need generalists. In some respects, generalists will be shown to be wrong, usually by specialists. But generalists also shift the ground, change the frame, help us to see things we may have missed, help us to arrive at new conceptions that can move us forward.

Let’s continue to equip and encourage specialists. But let’s have more generalists.

Alan Jacobs, in a recent edition of his newsletter, quotes Oscar Wilde on choosing what to read (and what to recommend):

Books, I fancy, may be conveniently divided into three classes:

1. Books to read, such as Cicero’s Letters, Suetonius, Vasari’s Lives of the Painters, the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, Sir John Mandeville, Marco Polo, St. Simon’s Memoirs, Mommsen, and (till we get a better one) Grote’s History of Greece.
2. Books to re-read, such as Plato and Keats: in the sphere of poetry, the masters not the minstrels; in the sphere of philosophy, the seers not the savants.
3. Books not to read at all, such as Thomson’s Seasons, Rogers’s Italy, Paley’s Evidences, all the Fathers except St. Augustine, all John Stuart Mill except the essay on Liberty, all Voltaire’s plays without any exception, Butler’s Analogy, Grant’s Aristotle, Hume’s England, Lewes’s History of Philosophy, all argumentative books and all books that try to prove anything.

The third class is by far the most important. To tell people what to read is, as a rule, either useless or harmful; for, the appreciation of literature is a question of temperament not of teaching; to Parnassus there is no primer and nothing that one can learn is ever worth learning. But to tell people what not to read is a very different matter, and I venture to recommend it as a mission to the University Extension Scheme.

Pall Mall Gazette (1886)

I am occasionally asked for reading recommendations, and I tend to share what I have read, or what I have seen, or what I am confident rests along the lines of interest of the inquirer. And I occasionally have people ask me if a book is worth reading. That is an entirely different question. When that is the question, more often than not I answer, “no.”

Ecclesiastes 12:12 reads, in part, “Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body.” That verse came up repeatedly during my days in seminary, and I think of it from time to time. There are more books in print than any one person would every have time to read. More and more books are published each day. Not every concern that rises to the level of public debate is worth addressing. Not every question is worth the time and effort it would take to research. While it is delightful to learn new things and to explore new frontiers, conceding that others have more knowledge in a given area and admitting that you do not know is perfectly okay. Some books are not ours to read; some topics are not ours to master.

My advice to aspiring readers is to ask those who are well read what they are reading, to build lists, and to diligently and patiently chase authors and interests. I’ll add an admonition to pray and bring to one’s reading a faith that God is with us in our studies. We do not always appoint or choose our influences, rather, they find and grip us. This can be interpreted as a sign of divine providence. I have often heard it said, or testified, that the right books seem to find us at the right time. (Do the wrong books ever find us at the right time, or at the wrong time? Lord only knows how often we’ve been spared!)

We should not put aside our responsibility to seek faithfulness, to be discerning and discriminating with regard to what is ours to read and what is ours to set aside. We should also seek wisdom, and choose reading material that is timely and profitable for the season of life in which we find ourselves, or the line of inquiry that has been appointed for us to pursue. We should also choose that which is true and edifying, rather than trash. More reasons to be prayerful, all. In all things, desire that the Lord directs your steps.

We take one ride on this rock we call Earth. If you’re going to spend time with books, think before you read.

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In authority and power in the free church tradition, Paul Harrison observed, ‘It is clear that Baptist history is freighted with ambiguity, and those who strive to establish the singularity of the tradition are on a weak foundation.’ Any attempt to write a history of Baptists must begin with such an admonition. From their beginnings in seventeenth-century Europe, Baptists have demonstrated beliefs and practices so diverse as to make it difficult to compile a consistent list of distinctives applicable to all segments of the movement at all times. Brief examples illustrate an interminable dilemma.

Bill J. Leonard, Baptist Ways: A History, p. 1

Is this a strength, or a weakness?

Leonard goes on to list various Baptist compilations of those characteristics that make Baptists, Baptists. In the 1640s, Anglican Daniel Featley said the “Dippers” “dipt,” and I don’t mean snuff. The immersed people all the way into the water. No pouring or sprinkling. The didn’t baptize children, they didn’t follow a Prayer Book or set liturgical form, but worshiped God “onely by the Spirit.” They refused to take oaths under any circumstance, and they thought no Christian could, in good conscience, “execute the office of civil magistrate.” Baptists were antiestablishment. Maybe they are still. Depends on the Baptist.

A list familiar to me, written by Robert Torbet, claims the Baptists distinctives include: “(1) the authority of Holy Scripture; (2) regenerate church membership; (3) baptism by immersion as the sign of new life in Christ and membership in the church; (4) the autonomy of the local congregation; (5) the priesthood of all believers; and (6) religious liberty.”

That leaves room for a lot of nuance, and a great deal of quibbling.

If you asked me for a seventh Baptist distinctive, it would be quibbling. I prefer it when the arguments are edifying. But I guess that, too, is something to argue about.