There's a popular notion floating around today that in order to believe in and follow God, you need to put your mind on the back burner. That to be a Christian requires you to cut off your intelligence and pursue a childlike faith at the expense of rational thought. Furthermore, it is widely accepted by those not of the faith that ignorance and closed mindedness are the dominant traits of faithful Christians, and that the Bible wants it this way. These ideas are erroneous and don't line up with scripture, Here's why:
In this 2 part series, we will look further into this issue that I will call "faithful intelligence" (the application of knowledge through faith) and destroy some of the myths about Christian ignorance. We will also highlight the fundamental difference between what the world considers intelligent thought (conclusions of theory based on empirical evidence) and what God considers intelligent thought (conclusions of fact based on the word and testimony of a divine source, indirectly supported by empirical evidence).
Part I : Use Your Noodle
The following scripture gives us what Jesus himself calls the "first and great commandment":
(Mat 22:37 KJV) Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
(Mat 22:38 KJV) This is the first and great commandment.
We will focus on the final part of verse 37, "with all thy mind." The word translated as mind in the King James Version is the Greek word dianoia (dee-an'-oy-ah) meaning "deep thought". The bible tells us in this scripture that we are to love God by using our mind, specifically we are to make decisions for God's Way after considering our options in "deep thought". This is in total contrast to the usual image of blind Christian faith. Rather than mindless drones (as some unbelievers would have you to believe), God wants us to consider the many paths that aren't his and come to the same conclusion as Solomon did:
(Ecc 1:14 NIV) I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.
This is why God created free will; the reason that in the midst of the Garden of Eden there was the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We are to thoughtfully make a choice for God! God told Adam "do not eat" of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Meaning he could look upon it, study it, name it, touch and handle it, but not eat of it. If Adam had used his mind, he may have studied the tree, and explained its full significance to Eve. Maybe Adam would have gone back to God for further explanation. Maybe our maturity as mankind from the babe-like Adamic stage to the filled with the Holy Spirit stage of today could have happened in a few divine conversations with God (with no need of the fall). Even some thought, let alone deep thought, would have given Adam and Eve enough to at least last through round one with the serpent. The devil's temptation required an intelligent and faithful response. The point of temptation was not the time for deep thought, as Eve seemed to be doing once the seed of doubt was planted by Satan. Had Adam and Eve been in deep thought about the one thing that God had forbade them to touch, they may have given us our first examples of how to overcome the devil.
Faithfull intelligence means that after considering all in deep thought, we still choose God because we love him. This is altogether different from the perception of Christian ignorance, where a controlling and tyrannical God enlists mindless drones to do his bidding. We as Christians choose God not because we don't know any better, but because WE DO know better, and have decided that we want a relationship with him. In fact it seems that the unbeliever is the one who is willfully and rebelliously ignorant; Ignorant of God's role in their lives, sometimes unwilling to even acknowledge him in the unexplainable. In his mind, the unbeliever will sometimes choose to create his own super-natural myth to explain God out of existence. This is the case with ALL other religions that do not recognize our God. Ironically, we have used God's gift of imagination, creativity, choice against him and created fanciful stories to replace God and satisfy our need for deeper meaning in this world.
Faithfull intelligence requires us as believers to raise the bar, and prayerful consider the plight of our brothers and sisters, believers or not. This is indeed a higher calling, as we often like to stay in our comfort zones of race, denomination, ethnicity, class, social standing etc. But it is essential to our success as fishers of men that we thoughtfully consider what’s going on around us, and then use our minds, faith and Holy Spirit power to be like the Apostle Paul.
(1Co 9:22b KJV) I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.
The process of deep thought makes us more effective witnesses for God. Who do you think is more effective, the believer who has considered the problems of the day and relates to the sinner on a practical as well as a spiritual level, or the believer that ignores the sinners circumstances and simply offers a "God will make a way! Hallelujah!" The lost of today's world need more.
In Part 2, we will compare and contrast what the world considers intelligent thought (conclusions of theory based on empirical evidence) and what God considers intelligent thought (conclusions of fact based on the word and testimony of a divine source, indirectly supported by empirical evidence).
Copyright © 2009 Jason Lamb All Rights Reserved
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