With All Your Mind . . .
Restoration Review · 1980
(Volumes 22)
YOUR MIND MATTERS
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. --- Mt. 22:37
I first decided to entitle this series The Thinking Christian, but that sounds a bit prosaic, even if it does convey my intention for these ten installments in this new volume. The idea is that it is not only appropriate for the Christian to think, really think critically and responsibly, but it is a duty before God and man.
With All Your Mind is a title taken from the Bible itself, from both Testaments, where Jesus makes it part of the greatest commandment of all. Not only are we to love God with all our heart, which is the seat of our personality; and with all our soul, which is the seat of our feelings; but also with all of our mind, which refers to the whole activity of our being as it centers in our thinking.
Not only are we to think but to think for ourselves, and we are to think with minds dedicated to God. Our redemption in Christ includes a redeemed mind; our sanctification before God includes a sanctified mind. A key passage for our theme is Rom. 12:2: "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect." We will contend that the renewed mind is a mind that thinks for God, for self, for man, for a better world.
We will therefore warn against having a herd mind, a sectarian mind, a provincial mind, a stereotyped mind, and certainly a closed mind. This will include an exposure of what Francis Bacon called "the idols of the mind," for we do not have to have an icon in the corner of our den to which we make genuflections in order to be guilty of idolatry. We can have idols in our minds to which we bow down in humble submission. And it may be more difficult for some of us to root out the idols from our minds than it was for some of the ancient Israelites to tear down the Asherim during the time of Josiah's reformation. We too need a reformation, one that includes a renewal of the mind, for clean, straight, fair-minded thinking can turn the modern church in a new direction. This may call for an attack on idols that do their thing deep within us.
This will call for an examination of some of the fallacies that work havoc in the religious mind, and there are scores, if not hundreds, of such fallacies. One logician wrote a book he simply named Fallacy, in which he illustrated how prone the mind is to err, especially in dealing with social, political, and religious issues. I will mention only two of these in passing, one of which is referred to a "poisoning the well," which is all too common in church circles. It is sometimes called the genetic fallacy in that it attacks the source of an idea rather than to consider the idea on its own merits. Many a worthy suggestion has never had a chance because of someone poisoning the well with such a put-down as That's what the Catholics believe. Many a truth has had to await a more opportune time to be accepted because of an assault upon the person or persons advocating it.
The other fallacy is much more subtle but equally destructive and is known as the reduction fallacy. It is fascinating to watch this mental demon do his deadly work, which is to reduce sensitive, complex, weighty issues into distorted simplicities. I shake my head in disbelief when I read some of the things being written about divorce and divorced people. It is grossly fallacious to presume to settle intricate problems in human relationships by quoting a few passages and applying them arbitrarily and dogmatically. It hurts people, and when our minds are renewed by the Holy Spirit we are no longer in the business of bruising and battering people who are already hurting. But this fallacy is expressed in many ways: over simplifying some of the stubborn problems in biblical interpretation, neglecting the deeper meaning of the Supper through a preoccupation over the frequency of its observance, reducing the need of the modern church being in fervent, meaningful prayer to an issue of whether the sisters may pray. If sacrificial love cannot be reduced to a biological explanation and if Mother cannot be adequately defined by simply turning to a dictionary, then much of life in and out of the church does not lend itself to easy answers. But this business of re-complexifying the issues of life, which is the task of the thinking mind, is dangerous business. That is how Socrates got himself killed.
In quoting Moses on the greatest commandment Jesus did not say that we are to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind, but he placed emphasis on each: love God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind. He does not want but part of us, but all of us. He does not want just the "religious" part of our minds, but the whole of our minds. This is something to think about in the choices we make in TV programs, the books we read, the thoughts we harbor. To have the mind of Christ, as Philip. 2:5 urges upon us, is the essence of our high calling.
The title for this initial essay is borrowed from John R. W. Stott, whose little volume, Your Mind Matters, reminds believers that they are not to be conformed to this age of unreason, but are to be logical in a world where logic is a dirty word. He reminds his readers that religion can be mindless, for it is presumed that to be spiritual is only a matter of the heart. Quoting Paul's words, "I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but it is not enlightened," Stott makes it clear that he wants believers to have both zeal and knowledge: "Heaven forbid that knowledge without zeal should replace zeal without knowledge." He calls for zeal directed by knowledge and knowledge fired with zeal.
He quotes from Dr. John Mackay, former president of Princeton Seminary: "Commitment without reflection is fanaticism in action. But reflection without commitment is the paralysis of all action." Stott notes that the world is more likely to ask Does it work? than Is it true?, and this attitude has permeated the church, so that we give greater place to action than to thought. Experience thus matters more than mind. Even college people quit reading when they close their textbooks and go out to make a living. It is time to accumulate rather than cogitate. Stott thus refers to "the misery and menace of mindless Christianity."
He makes it clear that while the church must escape from a superficial anti-intellectualism it must avoid an arid hyper -intellectualism. "I am not pleading for a dry, humorless, academic Christianity," he says, "but for a warm devotion set on fire by truth." He states that Christians are to use their minds because in all of world history there has never been a powerful movement, whether for good or evil, that has not gripped the mind and been inspired by ideas. On one side of the coin there are such examples as Karl Marx and Mao Tse-Tung, who have captured the minds of over half the world by their ideas more than by gun or sword. On the other side is the likes of John Locke, whose ideas inspired three revolutions for freedom, thus giving birth to what we now call "the free world."
One cannot but be impressed by the influence of such great conquerors as Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon, but the total impact of such men upon the world shrinks into insignificance when compared to the changes for good inspired by the long line of men and women of ideas.
Since the world today is dominated by ideologies that are alien to the gospel of Christ, the church is challenged to enter the fray where the spoil is men's minds. In a battle for minds as well as souls we ourselves must be intellectually responsible. Ultimately our goal is to reach people's hearts with God's love story, but the way to the heart is through the mind. Perhaps this is what the apostle is saying in 2 Cor. 10:4-5: "The weapons we wield are not merely human, but divinely potent to demolish strongholds; we demolish sophistries and all that rears its proud head against the knowledge of God; we compel every human thought to surrender in obedience to Christ."
This is not to suggest that we are to be a sophisticated people in terms of worldly wisdom. It means that we are to have the mind of Christ and to rely upon the power of the word of God. Paul spoke of his message as without any display of fine words of wisdom, but in terms of Jesus Christ and him crucified. Then he said: "The word I spoke, the gospel I proclaimed, did not sway you with subtle arguments; it carried conviction by spiritual power, so that your faith might be built not upon human wisdom but upon the power of God" (I Cor. 3:3-5 NEB). Paul was after their hearts, but he invaded their minds.
We must come to terms with a basic question, Do we believe in the power of truth? Is this really what we rely upon in our approach to the world, or is it impressive architecture, attractive programs, polished speakers, and gimmickry?
The blind John Milton wrote that the purpose of learning is to undo what sin has done to this world, and that out of that knowledge men are to come to know God, and to love and imitate him. If this be our mission, then we are to think and think courageously and resourcefully, with the word of God as our constant text and the Spirit of God as our teacher.
If this be our task, then our minds
do matter --- the Editor