I have a really dumb dog. A seriously unintelligent animal. How do I know this? I used to have a smart dog. A really smart dog. When we first got married we (stupidly, I know) bought a Border Collie. These dogs are the Einsteins of the dog world, which I guess isn’t saying much, but they can have the intellect of a toddler. And the mischievousness if you don’t keep them occupied. You could look into his eyes and it was like he was seeing into your soul. He knew lots of tricks and lived to work.
But all that intellect came at a price. He had a tendency to panic if he wasn’t in control (watching him “swim” was oddly humorous). He would sometimes trust his doggie judgement of a situation over the command we were giving him. He longed to explore far beyond our boundaries.
After growing up with dumb dogs (I had a Cocker Spaniel and Brian had a series of small mutts), we looked at this smart dog and said we would never buy a dumb dog again. And then through a series of events I won’t get into here (when you don’t own where you live, sometimes decisions are made that are out of your control), our beloved dog had to go live with friends of ours who he lives with and loves to this day.
And then we left ranch living, we moved to the city, we had kids. We had lots of kids in a little house in a state that spends most of the year in either deep freeze or hades hot with a husband who has allergies. Clearly not a good time to get a dog. But we had this son who loves animals. And he is also very cute. Very. Very. Cute. So we brought home this ridiculous hypoallergenic dog that a friend just today called “an old lady dog”. Now you’re getting the picture. He’s small, he’s fluffy, and he’s dumb.
I’ve tried to teach him tricks and he just stares at me. Or worse, he feels pressured so he pees before running to hide behind the couch. But he is intensely lovable and tolerates all kinds of terrible fierce love from our animal loving son (did I mention this particular son is very cute? Even the dog can sense it). So I value this little dog and the joy he brings to our family. At this moment he is sleeping curled up beside me as I write. The other day he got out of the backyard and just before I could panic I heard some whining at the front door. Yep. He used his big break for freedom to go sit on the front porch until I let him in. All these experiences with this dog have given me a different perspective on intelligence.
I know a lot of smart people. Nerds are the new jock, right? We read to our babies and play them Baby Mozart and feed them the organic carrots so they will be as smart as possible. We push our kids to do well in school and take personal pride when they’re successful. We pray they’ll grow up to be doctors or professors or something else that brings us status. . . I mean, brings them happiness. But maybe life is about more than what society perceives as intelligence.
You know what? Not every kid is going to get into Harvard. As much as we push for it, not every child is academically gifted. So many of us feel the intellectual status of our kids is a reflection of our parenting. Smart = Good. What an idol we’ve made of intellect!
Of course, we want our children to learn the value of working hard. I firmly believe it’s important to teach kids to do their best and guide them through activities that help them develop their skills, but should their identity rest on how they perform in school? Is it possible we could have a child that is smart and gifted, but obnoxious to live with and has an undisciplined heart? Which is more important in the long run?
I don’t know if my kids will go on to graduate school or if we’ll be just breathing a sigh of relief if they graduate from high school. So much about their life is left unwritten at this point. We had our first parent/teacher conference for our oldest in October and I so longed to hear that he was exceeding expectations and impressing his teachers with how bright he is. I left that meeting so proud of my son.
But it had nothing to do with his grades.
Turns out my little guy has volunteered on a daily basis to be the buddy for a kid in his class who has Down Syndrome. He’s there to help him at lunch or recess if there’s a problem a peer can help solve instead of involving a teacher. We had no idea. His teacher told us how the couple special needs kids in his class gravitate towards him and how helpful and kind he is. I’m sure his teacher shared more with us about his academic successes and failures at school, but I already heard what I needed to know.
My priorities were in the wrong place coming into that meeting, but there was a lesson I needed to learn from my son. Intellect doesn’t make you a person. Being smart doesn’t make you worthy of love or friendship or compassion. Maybe intellectual riches can be like the wealth that caused the rich young ruler to stumble in Mark 10. They can cause us to think we know best. They can keep us from trusting those in authority over us. They can make us think we deserve control. They can lead us into trouble.
Just like my Border Collie, I can think I’ve got a pretty good handle on how things ought to go and I can pursue my own way of making that happen. I need a reorienting of my intellectual priorities. I need to learn from the ball of fluff sleeping contentedly beside me. God has things under control. My job is to love and be faithful.
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