“Both my parents are in Mensa,” declared my friend Robin. “They’re really smart. I’m going to be in it too when I grow up.” We were riding the bus home from middle school, and he had gotten started on a frustrated tirade against the bus’s bullies. “We’ll show them,” I responded. “They’ll be cleaning the floors of the office buildings we own.” Nobody is their best self in middle school, future pastors included. Like all kids that age, Robin and I were trying to figure out where we would fit in in the world. We weren’t athletes or preps, rebels or goths. We were in the “smart kid” clique with the school’s other kids whose daydreams involved college admissions and professional success. To win at life, we all agreed, meant that we had to be smart (or at least, smarter than everyone else in school).
The idea that intelligence is the key to life success remains in the ether. Back in April, Amanda Hess wrote in the New York Times about the continuing conversation around Elon Musk’s IQ score. IQ, of course, is a measure of a person’s general intelligence in comparison with the rest of the population. In certain circles of American life, IQ has become the standard measure of judgment and stratification. Hess explains:
For more than a century, psychologists have debated the extent to which an I.Q. test is capable of measuring a person’s inherent intellect (and if such a thing even exists). Now, “I.Q.” has been uncoupled from the test itself and loosed in the discourse to lend a scientific sheen to the consolidation of a new political elite.
I.Q. is the term of choice for the man who doesn’t just think he’s smart, but thinks he’s smarter than everyone else. Americans have long been obsessed with I.Q., and the human rankings it facilitates, but rarely is that fixation stated so plainly, so incessantly, and at such high levels. To some of our most powerful people, I.Q. has come to stand in as the totalizing measure of a person — and a justification for the power that they claim.
Social science bears some of this out, linking high IQ scores with academic achievement, career success, health, and life longevity. Among the predictive measures for worldly and material success, IQ scores are one of the most reliable. And in a country that bills itself as a “meritocracy,” where the best and the brightest are often tapped for public service, it’s not hard to imagine how those in public office should, logically, have a higher IQ than the average American.
The issue with IQ, however, is that it is a fairly unchangeable quality, influenced mostly by the genetics of the parents. To divide society by IQ elicits a healthy level of discomfort from anyone with half a heart. Segregating people based on an immutable character trait is a materially similar philosophy to that of racism and sexism. We cannot change our skin color or our birth sex, and we have not yet discovered a way to increase our IQ. In a world that prizes social mobility and freedom, conversations around IQ are a wet blanket of determinism. If we can’t make “poor” people smarter, then how can we expect them to have “happy” lives? It probably won’t surprise you to find out that the first generation of IQ researchers hoped to use their research to support public policies of eugenics and involuntary sterilization.
Last November, the columnist David Brooks argued in the Atlantic that cultural elites have done America a major disservice by stratifying society based on intelligence. This was accomplished, explains Brooks, by segregating “gifted” kids through college admissions. Because general intelligence is inherited from parents, the result is a sort of remixed American aristocracy. Rich families remain rich, but rather than justifying their wealth through being “well bred,” they can now justify their wealth because of their family’s IQ (regardless of their actual, unverifiable intelligence). Money and opportunity remain concentrated at elite social strata under the guise of “meritocracy.” The very logic that argues that “the best and the brightest” should hold public office has been distorted to say that only “the best and the brightest” have the chance to win at life.
Thankfully, IQ is not the be-all and end-all of happiness per se. Being smart is not a requirement for a life of meaning, love, and purpose. To pretend that a good life is only available to those with a certain IQ is to ignore centuries of ancient wisdom and decades of social science research. The writer Rob Henderson summarizes the research this way: “Knowing the IQ of two random people in the same country tells you nothing about whether one is happier than the other.” Not only, then, can someone with a low IQ have a life full of meaningful relationships and happy experiences, but those with high IQ need something else beyond their intelligence to secure the same.
Certainly, from the perspective of Christianity, claims of worldly wisdom leading to fulfillment are met with derision. The spiritual analog of intelligence is wisdom, and being wise does not necessitate that one has a high IQ. Ancient Israel proclaimed that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” a recognition that following God’s law will, at minimum, act against the ways people commonly self-sabotage themselves in life. St. Paul, throughout both 1 and 2 Corinthians, has nothing positive to say about worldly measures of intelligence in light of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. “Where is the one who is wise?” he asks, rhetorically. “Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” As soon as the corpse of the Nazarene started breathing again, everything humanity thought it knew about God, the world, and itself was rendered obsolete. If intelligence is something biological or inherent, wisdom is a gift, freely available to all, sourced from heaven itself.
This isn’t to say that there aren’t plenty of brilliant Christians, past and present, who loved God with their “mind” alongside their heart, soul, and strength. Johannes Kepler, the smarty-pants astronomer who figured out the mathematical model for planets orbiting the sun, famously described the work of science as “thinking God’s thoughts after him.” There was an epistemological humility involved in his work, a sense that the discovery of truth and the life of the mind were not antithetical to God but an exercise of given gifts. God looks down upon scientists like a parent taking joy in watching their children create out of a box of Legos, a toy designed, created, and purchased by a higher, benevolent love.
And yet, that’s not to say that a parent doesn’t derive equal joy from their other kids, who, instead of playing with Legos, are caring for dolls, painting pictures, or playing catch outside. Nor is it to say that a parent doesn’t laugh with joy when the kids stick the Legos up their nose, or affix them in their lips to feign vampire teeth. In the kingdom of heaven, it’s not just that the smartest don’t get to cut in line. IQ is irrelevant, totally absent on the heavenly score card, a total non-sequitur in matters of faith and love.
Given that the conversation in April was focused on Elon Musk and his supposedly high IQ, and given his recent fall from grace out of D.C. politics, we might ask afresh how far someone’s smarts can take them. Whatever we mean by “the best and the brightest,” it probably needs to incorporate some other measure besides general intelligence. Also, we would do well to excise any talk of IQ from the church and her message, not because of accuracy, but because of its irrelevance. The grace of God displayed in Jesus’ death and resurrection is evidence enough that love triumphs over logic, and any attempt to link the Christian message to someone’s high or low IQ is, to paraphrase St. Paul, a fool’s errand.
I only wish someone had explained that to me in middle school.
