Priority 1
Mark 12:28-34
September 22, 2002
Let My People Think!
“Most Christians would rather die than think—in fact, they do!” So said Bertrand Russell, certainly no friend of Christians, but a man who has a point to make.
There exists within the church an unfortunate aversion to thinking on the part of many; in fact, there is almost a hostility in some quarters! I remember hearing it said of one of the old-time preachers of what we’d call the "fundamentalist" label, that he made the following statement: "I’d rather a man say ’I seen’ and seen something, than say ’I have seen’ and ain’t seen nothin’!" Well, umm...in one sense, I see his point, but at the same time, does an air of grammatical ignorance rightly adorn the gospel of Jesus Christ? In fact, does any type of ignorance rightly adorn the gospel? Any dichotomy between rigorous thinking and sincere discipleship is a false dichotomy, because Jesus tells us to love God with our minds! Would you stand together with me as we read our text?
I have to admit: I let out a chuckle, I think, the first time I found out the name of the “Bible” major at Grove City College. They call it “Christian Thought”. I’m sure I asked the first Christian Thought major I ever met what he planned to do with the degree; just sit around and think about Jesus all the time? And then I did something…I thought about it. And the more I think about it, the more I like the idea. Why? Because as Christians we need to reclaim, on the basis of the command of Jesus, part of Priority One, the Scriptural truth that loving God completely involves loving Him with our minds. I get excited when I talk about this subject, so hang on, because here we go!
I. What does it mean to love God with our minds?
Is that just a cliché, or is “loving God with our minds “ something we can quantify? Os Guinness, to whom I’ll refer possibly several times in this message, refers to loving God with our minds as “thinking Christianly”. When we use our minds to think in a way that honors the Lordship of Jesus, then we love God with them, we “think Christianly.” Let’s begin by clearing up
A. What it does not involve
When we speak of “thinking Christianly”, we are not merely speaking, first, of
1. “Thinking by Christians”
Just because you happen to be a follower of Jesus Christ does not necessarily mean that you love God with your mind; it does not mean that you “think Christianly.” It is possible to have a born again soul and to have a mind that still operates by the principles of this world. Paul tells us, in Romans 12, that transformation takes place in our lives “by the renewing of our minds”, and he gives it in the form of a command to Christians! It is possible that you’ve turned your life over to Jesus, and asked Him to forgive your sins; it is possible for you to have placed such trust in Jesus, and yet not have a mind that operates with His Lordship in mind.
I don’t mean to offend when I make this comment, but recently, I was in attendance at a function, on the Grove City campus, with one of the leading Christian proponents of the family in the world. This man has access to the highest levels of U.S. government; he lives in D.C. and speaks almost daily, he said, with the top advisor to President Bush, and of course has had many chances to speak with the President himself. During the Q/A session, questions were raised regarding the disappointment which many Christians have had with some of the policy decisions made by the President. “He claims to be a Christian,” some said, “and yet he seems to have made a number of decisions which we would think run counter to Christian principles.” The gentleman’s answer was interesting. He said that, while he truly believes that our president is a follower of Jesus Christ, the president seems like a man with only a partially-developed Christian worldview. The idea was that the president doesn’t fully grasp what it means to submit his mind to the Lordship of Jesus in his decision-making. Interesting analysis, that, for the fact is that it is possible to do this. Just “thinking by Christians” does not equal loving God with our minds!
2. Adopting the “Christian position”
The rise of the so-called “Christian right” in the realm of politics has been a development with both its positive and negative points. I believe that we have a right and responsibility to bring the Lordship of Christ to bear on the highest levels of power in our land; there is nothing wrong and everything right in principle, if not in the practices of some, with involvement in the political process. At the same time, this has given rise to the idea that, perhaps, there is a “Christian position” on most all of the political issues that come down the pike. This is just simply not the case. To be sure, there are some issues wherein it might be said that there exists such a Christian position—but these issues are not nearly so numerous as they are made out to be. I have, for instance, a point of view on the minimum wage, and Social Security, and the drug war, and gun control, and whether or not we ought to go into Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein (and by the way, don’t assume that you know what my positions are!). My positions are informed by my Christian convictions. At the same time, I’m not sure that there is a “Christian position” in any of these areas or 100 others like them—in other words, there are other Christians, who take the Lordship of Jesus as seriously as I try to if not more so, who would take a different, even an opposite, position! Thinking Christianly is not a matter of finding out the “Christian position” on every issue—because one does not exist for every issue—and then adopting that position!
3. Thinking about “Christian topics”
Yes, we ought to think about prayer in a Biblically-informed manner. Yes, we ought to think about the importance of Bible study, and church attendance, and winning people to Christ. Of course those things ought to be on our “thought-list”. But loving God with our minds isn’t confined to certain Biblical topics; rather, we ought to think Christianly about the Middle East conflict, and global warming, and bio-ethics, and squirrels, and little green apples! To love God with the mind, instead of segregating itself into a Christian ghetto, involves bringing our thoughts of the whole of the world under the Lordship of Jesus.
So, loving God with our minds is more than taking the “Christian position” on issues, more than just thinking about “Christian stuff”, more than simply the thinking that Christians do. If it is more than these things, then what does it involve?
B. What it does involve
The word “mind” in the Greek language is the word dianoia, and it means the faculty of knowing, understanding, or moral reflection. How do I love God with understanding? First, loving God with my mind involves
1. What we think about – Philippians 4:8-9
Here’s a quick question: “is there anything about which a Christian ought not think?” Don’t answer too quickly! Let me put it in clearer terms: ought a Christian to think, for instance, about pornography? Truth is, it’s a trick question, because the answer to the question could be either “yes” or “no” depending upon what is meant, and allow me to explain both! There is a “yes” side to that question, and it is this: I ought to be clear on what the Bible teaches about viewing pornography, about the sin of lust, in this case. I ought to know what the Word says about that sin, and then think through how I can be careful to avoid it! And so in that sense, there is no subject about which I ought not think Christianly, about which I ought not love God with my mind.
But of course, there is a “no” side of the equation as well, and we find that in Philippians 4:8-9, which instructs us on the things we allow our minds to dwell on. Paul says that our thought material, for meditation purposes, ought to be those things that are true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, and of good repute! That rules some things in and some other things out! A Christian who is learning to love God all of her mind will want to run from those things which she knows are likely to lead to a mind that is filled with stuff that is untrue, dishonorable, wrong, impure, ugly, and of ill repute. Conversely, the Word of God tells us the truth, and the right, and the pure, and all of those things, and to love God with our minds is to make these kinds of things the things upon which we focus our attention on a moment-by-moment basis. We evaluate the thought material of our minds by the standards of the Word of God, particularly this passage from Philippians and others like it. But not only what we think, but a mind that loves God is concerned with
2. How we think – II Corinthians 10:5
In fact, this is the heart of loving God with all our minds, I believe: it is the grid through which we filter everything we think, and that is a Christian worldview. We all look at life through one lens or another. The Darwinist looks at life as a cosmic accident, and understands reality through that lens. The Hindu looks at life through a lens called Monism, which basically teaches that everything is part of One great entity, that I’m a god, and you’re a god, and we’re all part of this One divine thing. All of life, at least in theory, is understood through this lens for the Hindu. There is a Christian worldview—Paul speaks, in II Corinthians 10:5, of “taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ”. What does Jesus think about everything?
Os Guinness says that this Christian worldview involves believers thinking about anything and everything in a manner consistently shaped, directed, and restrained by the truth of God’s Word and God’s Spirit. Such a Christian worldview encompasses core issues and answers such questions as
1. Who am I?
2. Where did I come from?
3. What is the purpose of my life?
4. Where am I going?
5. As to the universe, where did it come from?
6. Is there a Creator, or are we the products of blind chance?
7. Is there any grand theme to history and human life?
8. If there is a Creator, what, if anything, does He expect of me?
To love God with all our minds means to submit the answering of these questions to the Word of God and the Truth incarnate, Jesus Christ!
3. What we do with what we think – II Cor. 5:11
What I’m speaking of here is using our minds to advance the Kingdom of God. One criticism of intellectualism is that it can so easily become an ivory tower pursuit thoroughly unconnected with the place where real people live. This is a valid criticism! Thinking, expanding the mind, for the sake of expanding the mind, is a valid way to worship God. Once a mind is expanded, however, it ought to then be utilized to the building up of God’s Kingdom. “Knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade men”, Paul says; in the book of Acts, we find several occasions where the Scripture speaks of Paul “reasoning” with people about the gospel of Jesus Christ. The clear implication is that Paul was loving God with his mind, using that mind to reason with others about Jesus. Paul’s mind was well-grounded in God’s truth, so much so that he stood in the midst of the Areopagus, in pagan Athens, and reasoned with the pagans, who were religious men but not followers of Jesus. You don’t stand up and gain a hearing before thinking people without developing the capacity to think yourself! Peter reminds us that we are to be ready, in the event that someone stops us on the street and says, “why in the world do you follow Jesus?”, to give a reasoned reply as to why we have such hope in us! This too implies a discipline to love God with one’s mind! Loving God with our minds, involves what we allow our minds to dwell on, the Biblical, Christ-honoring grid through which we view reality, and a commitment to use our minds to advance the Kingdom.
II. What hinders loving God with our minds?
Don’t hear me, in any of the areas I point to below, making excuses or painting believers as victims. Rather, these are influences we need to resist in order to love God with all of our minds!
The influence of the media
Carl Bernstein decries what he calls the "idiot culture". He says we have moved "toward the creation of a sleazoid info-tainment culture in which the lines between Oprah and Phil and Geraldo and Diane and even Ted, between the New York Post and Newsday, are too often indistinguishable. In this new culture of journalistic titillation, we teach our reader and our viewers that the trivial is significant, that the lurid and the loopy are more important than real news. We do not serve our readers and viewers; we pander to them...for the first time in our history the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming the cultural norm, even our cultural ideal." And the sad thing is that way too many Christians will cluck their tongues at Bernstein’s words, convinced that they are not taken in by such an idiot culture, when in fact it is almost impossible for any of us not to be, and the mere fact that we refrain from watching Jerry Springer or "Survivor Thailand" or "South Park" convinces us that we are all right. Dare I say this? I’ll soften the blow by not being all that specific: much, if not most, of the stuff that we find offered to us in Christian bookstores, and on so-called Christian television, is not helpful to us in this regard!
Neil Postman puts much of the blame on television; his analysis is that we are "amusing ourselves to death"; he wrote a book by that very title. He bemoans the shift in our culture from "exposition" to "entertainment", and puts the advent of television at ground zero for this shift. Christians are concerned about the stuff that is on TV, but rarely consider the medium itself as being necessarily bad. Frankly, though, it is not a good medium, for by its very nature--that of being a commercial enterprise--it must entertain; it must keep our attention at all costs. If we don’t "stay tuned", then we won’t watch the latest inane commercial, and the whole thing goes kaput. There is little serious discussion of issues on TV. Time prevents us from going further here, but there is much that could be said.
The devaluation of words
Everywhere you look today, we are bombarded by images. “A picture”, they say, “is worth 1000 words.” They are wrong. And yet in our culture today, it seems that “they” are winning. Isaac Asimov, the late atheist author, is right when he decries the devaluing of words in our society in favor of images. “Consider”, Asimov writes, “Hamlet’s great soliloquy that begins with ‘To be or not to be’, the poetic consideration of the pros and cons of suicide. It is 260 words long. Can you get across the essence of Hamlet’s thought…in 260 pictures? Of course not. Pictures will not do; they will never do. Television is fun to watch, but it is utterly and entirely dependent on the spoken and written word.” And they have always called that foolishness that exposition of words which we call “preaching”, according to the apostle Paul, but it is by the foolishness of using words—thinking of words, and putting them together in ways so as to persuade others of the truth of Christ by what we call preaching, or for that matter, teaching or testifying or proclaiming, that God is glorified.
The preoccupation with style over substance
No comment here; think about it later.
The disappearance of truth via postmodern hermeneutics
I spoke about this with our CELL group on Wednesday evening. It’s not like it used to be; Christians understood truth as bound up in Jesus Christ; Muslims in Allah thru his prophet Muhammad; Buddhists in enlightenment. Pomos say, "there is no truth to be found anywhere, except as it might be true for you". We are witnessing the disappearance of what Francis Schaeffer called "true truth." Where there is, as David Wells calls it, “no place for truth”, then the whole concept of thinking becomes illogical and absurd. And yet we dare to believe that not only does truth exist as a category, we proclaim that it is found in Jesus Christ!
III. Practically speaking, how can I learn to love God with my mind?
A. By seeing thinking as an act of worship
To develop the mind that God has given me, to train it to discern truth and error, to employ it in honest thinking, and then to use that discipline for the building of God’s Kingdom and the furtherance of His glory, is a matter of stewardship. A mind is a terrible thing to waste, and as a Christian, it is a sinful thing not to develop my mind in accordance with God’s truth.
B. By committing to the diligent study of the Word
I must "be transformed by the renewing of my mind", and this takes place through gaining a thorough grasp of God’s Word. Why is IBS so important? Because we are engaged in systematically renewing our minds thereby! How to Read the Bible for All its Worth is the starting point of our studies; it’s not too late to get in on this; it is critical to do so! Failing to love God with my mind is a sin!
C. By becoming a reader of solid Christian literature
I won’t belabor this point, though it is a critical one. I’ll just refer you to the bottom of the note sheet for some recommendations I’d make to you; love to speak with you further on this subject!
D. By cultivating the practice of seeing the world through the lens of the Word
"All truth is God’s truth!" One compelling argument for Christian education is an understanding of this truth. Can I understand history--indeed, does history make any sense--apart from an understanding that there is a God Who is behind history, the fact that history is "His story", the outworking of His plan? Can I understand math without understanding that God created an orderly universe, without realizing that, at root, 2+2=4 because God says it does? Can I understand language without an understanding that God is Himself a Communicator, that "the Heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world." "The Word was God!" Can we understand science without having a firm grasp of the fact that "in the beginning, God created"? At root, we cannot understand any of these disciplines fully unless/until we see the hand of God behind them!
A lawyer came to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what is Priority One? What is the greatest commandment?” And Jesus looked him in the eye, and told Him to love God with everything he had—including his mind. Go thou and do likewise! Let my people think!
Points to Ponder:
Make it a point to familiarize yourself with these authors:
24 contemporary Christian authors with whom you should be acquainted:
James Boice
Elisabeth Elliot
Martyn Lloyd-Jones
R.C. Sproul
F.F. Bruce
Os Guinness
John MacArthur
John R.W. Stott
Tony Campolo
Hank Hanegraaff
Josh McDowell
A.W. Tozer
D.A. Carson
Carl F.H. Henry
J.I. Packer
David Wells
G.K. Chesterton
Philip Johnson
John Piper
Philip Yancey
Chuck Colson
C.S. Lewis
Francis Schaeffer
Ravi Zacharias
