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His Name Is
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Grace Church
257 Kendall Street
Burlington, WI 53105

(262) 763-3021

Email:
Pastor Scott Carson

Secretary Patti Hall

PASTOR'S PENS 2005

Grace Church of Burlington January 16, 2005  “Most Christians would rather die than think, in fact they do.”   Bertrand Russell               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.  In his penetrating address at the dedication of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College in 1980, speaking as an Orthodox believer to evangelicals, Ambassador Charles Malik warned, “I must be frank with you: the greatest danger besetting American Evangelical Christianity is the danger of anti-intellectualism. The mind as to its greatest and deepest reaches is not cared for enough.” Jesus said that the first commandment was to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matt. 22:37). We can’t really love the Lord as we should if we do not think. And it is virtually impossible to think if you don’t read, and then study.             As our culture becomes entertainment driven, we have ceased thinking and worse, we are allowing others, often godless others, to do our thinking for us. For example, two of the more popular shows are Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives. Both glorify infidelity and immorality. What’s unknown by the unsuspecting public being fed this warped worldview is that the show’s creators are gay men. In both, homosexuals do the thinking for an unthinking public.             Morals are just one small area, though an important area. While most Christians know what they feel, they too rarely know what they believe. And if they “believe” something, frequently it is not because they have done the hard work of thinking through the issues but are often just miming what someone else has taught them.             That’s why we are working our way through the Apostles’ Creed in our We Believe series. Each of us needs to exercise our mental muscle so that we can love the Lord our God with our mind, as well as our heart. Please don’t stop with the morning message. Determine to be in your own Bible on a regular basis. Then, study for yourself. Stretch those mental muscles with which the Lord has entrusted you. Learn to think Christianly.             Loving God with all of our minds means that our minds are the grid through which we filter everything we think so that we have a Christian worldview. We all look at life through some lens or another. Paul speaks of the Christian worldview in II Cor 10:5, of “taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.”             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: Who am I? Where did I come from? What is the purpose of my life? Where am I going? As to the universe, where did it come from? Is there a Creator, or are we the products of blind chance? Is there any grand theme to history and human life? 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! 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. 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. And failing to love God with my mind is a sin!             C) By becoming a reader of solid Christian literature. Most Christians, if they read at all, just read Christian fiction. That’s little more than mental entertainment. While there is a time and place for Christian fiction, we need a balanced spiritual/mental diet.             D) By cultivating the practice of seeing the world through the lens of His Word. "All truth is God’s truth!" For example, can I understand history–indeed, does history make any sense–apart from an understanding that there is a God Who is behind history. 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” 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!             Many of us have started an exercise program with the New Year, be sure that you start a mental exercise program too and begin the work of thinking Christianly.