Dose of Conviction

A few months ago, I discovered a blog written by Tim Keel. Tim and I worked at the same summer camp for several years while we were in college, and he's since become pastor of a church in Kansas City. It's been a blast to drop in on his blog and eavesdrop on his life a bit. He's become a pretty sharp guy :), and I've become a regular reader. A while back, he shared this quotation from Dostoevsky, which has lingered with me for a couple of weeks, as it forces me to consider contemporary views of the intellectual life--especially my own.

These men do not understand that the sacrifice of life is, perhaps, the easiest of all sacrifices in many cases, while to sacrifice, for example, five or six years of their ebulliently youthful life to hard, difficult studies, to learning, in order to increase tenfold their strength to serve the very truth and the very deed that they loved and set out to accomplish - such sacrifice is quite often almost beyond the strength of many of them.

~ Narrator, Dostoevksy’s The Brothers Karamozov