Ernest Hemingway is reported to have once said that happiness in intelligent people is the

rarest thing I know.

Pastor John, what do you think of this?

Is this true?

Are the deepest thinkers the most unhappy people?

First of all, I doubt that Ernest Hemingway ever knew an intelligent, red-blooded, unashamed,

thoughtful, articulate, happy Christian.

The circles he functioned in and the jaundest view of life that led him to blow his brains out

when he was 61 years old with a shotgun didn't give him a very good exposure to the possibilities

of a kind of happiness that thrives precisely amid the sorrows of knowledge.

But he does put his finger on a truth that is biblical, and it's Ecclesiastes 118.

In much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.

That's what he experienced, and that's true.

So my answer is yes, it's true, because the Bible says so.

And at the end of the book, it says, of making many books, there is no end, and much study

is a weirdness of the flesh.

That's true.

So the intellectual life, the life of the mind, the life of thinking, and wrestling with

problems, and trying to solve them is a life of increased sorrow and weariness.

Yes, it is.

But notice, it does not say that increased knowledge leads to decreased joy.

Increased sorrow?

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