I was raised by hippes. They didn’t really stay hippies, though, except for the ageless Volkswagen van, a bookshelf full of Carlos Castenada novels, and a few other “hobbies.” But I imbibed much of the classic hippie ideology, including a healthy skepticism toward authority and a respect for good pot. So, it was a bit of a shock to my parents when I converted to Christianity in my junior year of college. I imagine they felt a bit like the parents of Alex P. Keaton in “Family Ties.”

Several years later, when I graduated from college and was living on my own, my father bought me a subscription to Mother Jones magazine. I walked almost exclusively in evangelical circles at that time, and I’m sure he wanted to provide some counterpoint and balance. Reading that magazine was fascinating, but the eye-opening experience came when I started receiving unsolicited mailings from various left-wing organizations. Since I was also on numerous mailing lists for right-wing, Christian groups, I would often receive two nearly identical letters, printed in the same fonts, with the same graphic design and same wording, one from the left and one from the right. Both letters would shout that the “other side” was ruining our country and would soon come for my children unless I sent money fast. The right and left seemed like mirror-images.

Double Agent

It took another decade before I immersed myself into the world of a double agent. I enrolled in graduate school at the University of Missouri and assumed the mantle of a novice (secular) academic. Surrounded for eight years by mostly atheist philosophers, teaching freshman as a representative of the secular state, living most of my waking hours within the confines of the campus, and finally initiated as a Philosophiae Doctor by the academic elite, I became one of “them.”

I now live in a curious juxtaposition between two worlds. It is a sort of “no-man’s land.” My Christianity makes me suspect among the academics, and my academic status makes me suspect among the Christians.  Some, for sure, see me as their “agent,” infiltrating the “other side.” But for me, this has been a double-blessing. I have learned to respect, appreciate and love the “other.” And when you learn to love the “other” once, it becomes all the easier to wash, rinse and repeat with any other “other” you encounter. 

It’s All In My Head

I must confess, however, that what I prize most from this adventure is all in my head. I don’t mean that it is illusory. I mean that it is cognitive and intellectual. Like the philosopher Immanuel Kant, I was awakened from my dogmatic slumber. My core beliefs (e.g., the Apostle’s Creed) have remained solid, but I now hold quite loosely to everything that orbits around that core, and I reject completely the dogmatism that so often accompanies religion. More importantly, being a double agent trained my mind in ways I could not have achieved by any other means.

Being forced, not merely to read and understand, but to step into the shoes of my opponents, enabled me to see the strengths and weaknesses of both sides as with a microscope or X-ray vision. No system, no ideology, no institution has it “right.” The line between truth and error, between justice and injustice, as with the line between good and evil, “cuts through the heart of every human being,” as Solzhenitsyn wrote. Even if you believe that God’s Word is pure truth, the hard, human labor of interpretation inevitably works error into the dough like leaven.

The Point

So what is my point? Why the memoir? The point is this: if you want your mind (and maybe your heart) to be all it can be (sorry, Army), then become a double agent. Don’t just observe and read. Go and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with your opponent, sit knee-to-knee over coffee. Find their humanity, appreciate their genius, learn from them. Incarnate yourself into their community. It doesn’t have to be grad school — discover your own way. You’ll find your mind (and maybe your heart) performing new feats of thought (and maybe love) that you hadn’t even imagined before. The end result is not a different set of beliefs, it isn’t some kind of conversion; it is a sharper mind with better understanding. It is your best beliefs held more beautifully.