Love the Lord with all your mind
This article, produced by OCCA The Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics was based on the original video by OCCA author & speaker Tom Price.
Christian faith is perpetually and continuously misunderstood. It is so frequently mischaracterised and misrepresented that perhaps we should suspect that there is a deliberate attempt to discredit and relegate it. Among these misunderstandings are two great towering errors: a misconception about the Christian mind and a misconception about the Christian way of life.
The tragic misunderstanding concerning the Christian way of life sets it up as a pathway towards self-improvement, rather than a rescue from exactly such an endeavour. The truth that must be declared to counter this error is that the Christian way of life is not primarily a moral code, but a moral rescue. Human beings need a new nature and a new relationship. We do not need principles so much as we need friendship with God; we do not need to be better so much as we need the humility to stop trying to be better without God’s help.
The Christian way of life sits upon our humility to accept this failure of our own ethical self-transformation and our willingness to open our minds and our hearts towards God’s forgiving grace.
The Scandal of the Mind
The second misunderstanding concerns the mind. It is a simple rejection—a belief that the mind of faith cannot exist. The mistaken belief used to support this is that Christian belief is a matter of only faith, rather than faith being concerned with reason, logic, and evidence.
This denial of the mind in Christian faith didn’t arrive as the result of some fundamental conflict between faith and evidence. It came instead from a historical and cultural sequence. As the new scientific understanding of the world raised questions, instead of meeting these head-on, we inflicted a dreadful wound on ourselves. As described in The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, there was a tragic loss of Christian intellectual traditions.[1]
This was then communicated to the world: that faith was inhospitable to the mind. In fact, faith is a holistic proposal. We see God as He shows Himself clearly and objectively in time and space. There was a real Jesus of Nazareth, a real death, and a real resurrection. This invites us to relate to God intellectually, emotionally, morally, and personally.
Sadly, the role and dignity of the human mind are often disparaged from within the church. The fact is that a summary of Christian belief contained in statements like “it’s all about faith, not evidence” is simply false.
Here are four ways that show how God values the mind.
-
The Deep Nature of God
The deep nature of God shows us the value He places upon thinking. The Triune family—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—is a thinking, planning, and reasoning family. Scripture reveals that God has a plan; He is not unpredictable or irrational.[2]
Furthermore, the overflowing love for the Son motivated the Father to initiate creation. As the “Alpha and Omega,” the Son is not only the motivating origin of creation but its ultimate goal.[3] Each member of the Trinity has reasons for acting that are always rooted in pure moral love.
-
The Creation of Human Beings
In the creation story, we discover that God communicates with mankind differently to the way he interacts with animals and the rest of the created order. He expects man to cooperate with Him intelligently in tilling the garden and to discriminate rationally between what is permitted and what is prohibited.[4]
As John Stott writes, “God made man in his own image, and one of the noblest features of the divine likeness in man is his capacity to think.”[5] While our minds have been affected by sin—a state described as “futile” or “darkened”—this is no excuse for a retreat from thought into emotion.[6] Stott argues that the emotional side of man’s nature is equally fallen; indeed, sin often has more dangerous effects on our feelings than our thinking, because our opinions are more easily regulated by revealed truth.
God still invites us to use our brains, explicitly inviting humanity to “reason together” with Him.[7]
-
Divine Revelation
God is a self-revealing God who dignifies our minds by the means of His revelation. This isn’t “rationalism” (the idea that we figure it all out alone), but rather the rational nature of God’s self-disclosure in the order of creation and the linguistic masterpiece of the Bible.
When Jesus invites trust, He does so on the basis of evidence. When John the Baptist requested confirmation of Jesus’ identity, Jesus didn’t tell him to “just have faith.” Instead, He pointed to the data: the blind receiving sight, the lame walking, and the dead being raised.[8]
-
Transformation and Growth
Finally, we see God’s view of the mind in how He transforms us. A central summary of the renewed Christian life emphasises that we are not to conform to the world, but to be changed by a specific process.[9]
The primary focus of Christian discipleship is not just lively worship or reading books, but the transformation of the person through the renewing of the mind.
Conclusion: The Smartest Person You Will Ever Meet
A humble, well-formed Christian mind is an expression of worship. Jesus is the smartest person you will ever meet; He has more insight into reality than anyone you have ever talked to. He has given you the gift of being able to think, reason, and reflect. But who is actually forming your mind? Whose disciple are you?
The mind is a gift from God; the Christian life is a gift of grace. Neither can be achieved without Him, and both are utterly vital and transformative.
References
- M. A. Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1994
- Ephesians 1:3–4 (NIV-UK)
- Colossians 1:15–16; Hebrews 1:2 (NIV-UK)
- Genesis 2:18–23 (NIV-UK)
- John Stott, Your Mind Matters: The Place of the Mind in the Christian Life. InterVarsity Press, 2012
- Romans 1:18–22 (NIV-UK)
- Isaiah 1:18 (NIV-UK)
- Matthew 11:4–5 (NIV-UK)
- Romans 12:1–2 (NIV-UK)
Learning More
OCCA The Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics was established in 2004 to raise up the next generation of evangelist-apologists. By 2021, around 350 emerging evangelists from around the world had studied on the OCCA one-year programme. This course equipped each of them to share and defend the gospel message and to come alongside others to help them with their intellectual objections and heartfelt concerns about the Christian faith. Subscribe to our weekly newsletters to see our latest articles from our team of speakers.
Tom Price