"Is a better educated mind the same as a transformed mind?"

Spiritual direction for Leaders

Feb 4, 2026
About the Author

Does faith start at "In the beginning" or at "Follow me"?

CONTENTS
+ When understanding stops being enough
+ Growth comes from the Spirit
+ We are encountered where we really are

Spielberg is a master at miniature fables within the larger narrative - brief, often gigglesome analogies that are the essence of the film’s entire story. These moments unfold in just a few seconds, with minimal dialogue, seamlessly appearing around the first act.

In narrative terms, the living of our Christian faith is not linear, it does not neatly start at “In the beginning”, but at “Follow me”. We are encountered, where we really are. Programme introductions, explanations and orientations are often absent.

"When understanding stops being enough"

With immediate and unprecedented access, is the modern Christian instinct to reach for more content - another podcast, a book, a Substack post, a better sermon series, a new deep dive course - assuming growth will follow from improved ideas from knowledgable inputs? But does Christian formation occur through a library of accumulation, following the right instructions, consuming the right content, or through revelation?

When attention shifts from the Spirit to Christian media, the best material can become a distraction. I don’t want to say academia can mute the Spirit because nothing can silence God, but perhaps I could suggest that academia can lead us to self-mute to the Spirit. We can hide behind mere knowledge rather than engaging with the Spirit in our lives. Knowledge becomes a shield, respectable and admirable, behind which we can stay safely untransformed. Even the Bible can be used in such a way, as it was by Paul and the New Testament Pharisees. Education or knowledge cannot spiritually form us, ask Adam and Eve. The danger isn’t academia itself, it’s the assumption that training gives us access to what only the Spirit provides. Christianity explodes the fantasy that we humans are neutral empty shells to be filled or shaped by education.1

Clever or a little less so, wonderfully, neither are prerequisites for human transformation.

"Growth comes not from the pursuit of digesting Christian insight, thoughts or ideas, but from recognising and attending to what the Spirit is already doing in our lives"

Growth comes from the Spirit

Growth comes not from the pursuit of digesting Christian insight, thoughts or ideas, but from recognising and attending to what the Spirit is already doing in our lives. There are no experts of the soul, there is only the Spirit. He alone forms us.

Obviously this is not an article against Christian media, or education, it is a gentle nudge - to myself, anyone - towards attentiveness to the Spirit in our lives. And with so much error in our own lives it’s tempting to go to work, think, to attempt to fix ourselves and our lives. But only what the Spirit is doing in our lives right now matters, as that’s what matters to Him. And we are addressed personally, within the details of our own lives and formed there. Personal attention given one life at a time.

Feeding our minds with intellectual or entertaining thoughts can be as addictive as any vice, just better disguised, more socially acceptable. Even good thoughts - religious, or secular - can quietly become another form of distraction, self-reliance, to fill ourselves. A busyness of the mind that looks virtuous, yet still keeps us in control.

We are encountered where we really are

Only the Spirit transforms the heart and mind, and thankfully, He does. The Spirit does what discipline, insight and stimulation cannot - He transforms us, our desires, how we think, how we relate, not just our behaviour. There’s rest. Less striving, more trust. Less managing the mind, more surrender of the heart. Relationship.

We are encountered, where we really are.

-Andy.

Journal Ministry of Imagination

"Is a better educated mind the same as a transformed mind?"

Spiritual direction for Leaders

Does faith start at "In the beginning" or at "Follow me"?

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1 "Andy Maitland, iPad drawings, An Imagined Garden One, from figurative to abstraction 2011-22".

This work sits within a wider practice of imagination, art, and reflection: Ministry of Imagination