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Renewing Our Minds- #3

In our last essay we looked at the Biblical example of the disciple Apollos for a mind being renewed. Apollos was from the city of Alexandria in Egypt and was highly educated in the classical culture of the day. He is also described as an eloquent man who was also well trained in the Scriptures.

We can conclude from his name and training that he converted to Judaism and also to an early form of Christianity, though we are told he only knew about John’s baptism and didn’t have a full understanding of the Gospel.

At this point he is introduced to Aquila and Priscilla. We are told that they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately. Fortunately Apollos was not too proud to hear what they had to teach him. He was willing to be further renewed in his thinking, and thus be more useful in God’s kingdom.

The story of Apollos and his willingness to continue to study and to be corrected is not always the norm in the church. Let’s explain what I mean.

The Problem

Does it surprise you to know that most Christians in our day do not think? Bertrand Russell, the British philosopher, mathematician, and social reformer has written, “Most Christians would rather die than think- in fact they do.” 

One does not need to look very long at Christianity Today, or watch much TBN to come away with many such examples of non-thinking among our brothers. 

Sadly, there is a great misunderstanding in the Church today about the role of the mind and the necessity for our minds to be renewed. Does it surprise you to hear me say that?

I am an adherent to the Reformed tradition which has a reputation for intellectualism. In fact, some of our Charismatic brothers would claim we have taken this attribute to an extreme. But in their desire to avoid the problem of over thinking they have fallen into the opposite ditch.

If you watch TBN, go to most ‘Christian’ movies, or look into any Christian book sellers catalog you will see little of any substance or weight. What you will find is a plethora of pop-psychology self-help guides, apocalyptic end times fantasies, and “You too can manipulate God,” books. Missing is substantive, distinctly Christian works on practical theology, economics, bioethics, education, or gender issues.

Worse yet, far too many Christians, when asked their opinions on such issues will blissfully parrot what they have seen on Oprah or the 700 Club instead of what they have read and studied from Scripture.

I am not talking here about stupidity, what we would call the ability to think. That is to say, I don’t think Christians are stupid or unable to think. What I am talking about is the desire to think- to think deeply and critically about God, His creation, our interaction with that creation, and what God says about these interactions in His Word. In these postmodern times the Church discounts the importance of truth and the life of the mind.

Does it absolve us of our responsibility to say, “I’m already too busy? I don’t have time to read or think.” Is it enough to say, “All that stuff is beyond me? It makes no sense to me and has no relation to my life.” Or, can we dodge by claiming, “That’s the job of Seminary professors?”

As we hope to show in our examination of Scripture in our next essay these arguments just don’t cut it. As we have already seen, we have been called by God to engage in distinctively Christian thought, and He will hold us accountable to that calling.

What is going on? What is the cause of this problem? I believe that this failure stems from a subtle syncretism of culture into the intellectual life of the church. What do I mean by this?

It simply means that the thinking of the ungodly, postmodern culture around us is slowly seeped into the church until it has polluted her thinking. In other words, our thinking has been taken captive by the media [radio, TV, movies, and the press], the temporal [earthy, materialistic], and the pragmatic [whatever works or is expedient]. These now dictate to the church how she will think.

The result has been the replacement of the spiritual and intellectual uniqueness of our faith by the sensuous and emotional trappings of our culture. We have allowed the transcendent reference points from which we can judge ourselves to be replaced by the ever-varying fads and emotionalism of the popular culture.

The church is no longer looking to the absolutes of God’s Word to guide herself and her thinking. She now looks to the fads in our culture and the ever-changing standards of our culture to judge herself. The church’s desire for heaven has been replaced by a desire for happiness, or worse yet, a desire for acceptance by the culture (John 15:18).

This problem of anti-intellectualism is significant for a number of reasons. Perhaps the most significant is the fact that the modern Church has abdicated its intellectual authority, and so has lost the ability to think Christianly and be the salt and light in the world that she has been called to be. 

There was once a time when the Church and her ministers were revered and respected for their knowledge, wisdom, and ability apply the eternal truth of God’s Word to the important issues of everyday life. 

This is no longer the case and the result of this has been that the Church has been pushed to the fringes of the culture because of her inability to seriously address cultural, moral, philosophical, educational, medical, ethical, and other issues. The result is that She has been left without a witness in the culture.

We must understand that the anti-intellectualism of the modern church has rendered Her culturally irrelevant and unable to address the important issues in our day. She has become a cultural imitator rather than being the cultural originator or leader. She reacts to issues instead of being a proactive leader on important issues.

A simple test will show what I mean- how long has it been since you saw CNN interview an Evangelical Pastor to get his thoughts on the war in the Middle East, or the ethics of cloning? It used to be that the Pastor of a local church was held up as the greatest authority in the town when it came to deciding on important issues facing the town. Sadly, people of religion are now characterized as dolts and close-minded idiots.

This situation has led to the fact that most Christians have now accepted a framework for their mental activity that is constructed by a secular or carnal mind. That is, a mind whose criteria reflects secular evaluations, rather than explicitly Christian evaluations.

That is to say, Christians have abandoned the Word and mind of God as their standards for thought and are allowing something else to inform and direct their thinking.

The world is dictating to the Christian how they should think, rather than the other way around. This is the problem we face. And this is the problem we will be examining in the coming essays.