Is books better than example? (priest, ritual, myth, experience)

[Master Vigil]

Do you learn spiritually better from someone who can produce valid arguments in his field of study or someone who sets a good example? Like, if you would go to a college and get a professor who did countless research and claims to be the top scholar in the field of religion and all he does is sit there and lecture you, would he be a better religious and spiritual teacher than a person who teaches by example (for example, a monk, shaman, priest, etc..)? Is it better to have book smarts than experience? Is studying about religion better than being a religious?

[cardero]

Master Vigil asks:Is books better than example?

Books are better when you do not want to go through the experience of the example or the example doesn't present itself to you in this life.

[No*s]

Spiritually, I will trust the monk. However, for learning academic things, I will learn from the proffessor. And with professors like that, I learn better when I can actually talk to one. I'm not a cookie to be made with a cookie-cutter.

[Master Vigil]

But is religion and spirituality something that should be learned academically, or is it something that should be learned by experience.

[Scuba Pete]

Academics mean nothing.

Service means everything.

Every good tree bears good fruit.

[Master Vigil]

Than does the bible become overrided by experience? Since the bible is clearly academics. If experience shows that the bible is clearly a man-made myth and holds no wieght factually. Why do people keep going back to it and holding it so close?

[No*s]

Originally Posted by Master Vigil

But is religion and spirituality something that should be learned academically, or is it something that should be learned by experience.

Why not? We are whole people, why would academic learning be incompatible with spirituality. IMO, there were several great masters who were also very learned (St. Basil, for instance).

[Master Vigil]

But take some of the most learned religious scholars and put them up against say, Ghandi. How can they compare? Or take St. Basil and compare him to say St. Francis, Mother Theresa, or Padre Pio. Can academics help a person experience what they experienced, no, it only helps us learn about what they experienced. Sure some of the great masters were learned, but does the greatest spirituality come from academics? I don't think it does.

[No*s]

Originally Posted by Master Vigil

But take some of the most learned religious scholars and put them up against say, Ghandi. How can they compare? Or take St. Basil and compare him to say St. Francis, Mother Theresa, or Padre Pio. Can academics help a person experience what they experienced, no, it only helps us learn about what they experienced. Sure some of the great masters were learned, but does the greatest spirituality come from academics? I don't think it does.

Actually, St. Basil was called a "saint" in large part for his private life. He lived what he claimed. Another learned man is St. Gregory of Nyssa, who purportedly actually had an experience (a contemporary of St. Basil and one of the Cappodocean Fathers, who were all giants). I cited him precisely because he wasn't just a bookworm.

It's not that it's impossible to be spiritual and academic, it's just more difficult. Just like, most great saints are unmarried, but there are more than a few that were. Many lived in monasteries or deserts, but Many were school teachers. It's not the "where," of a person that limits their spirituality but "what" the person is (internally, not professionally) and the "how" he lives. And I believe that not just because of the Church (well, that's a large part of it), but because, well, we are people and whole people at that .