Reflections on Loving God with Our Minds: Part 5

In the last post of this series I want to say a few things about academics and the command to love God and others with our minds. Too often in Christian circles (predominantly, but not exclusively, evangelical ones), there is great suspicion, if not downright fear and contempt, for serious academics. For many Christians, serious academic study and intellectual development are seen as dangerous and somehow opposed to vibrant faith in Jesus. In my experience, nothing could be further from the truth. I think many people’s faith is stagnant because they do not engage their minds with their faith. The problem with Christianity today is not that there is too much thinking and intellectual work going on, but that there is nowhere near enough. And when this happens, we fail to obey God’s desire that we love him and our neighbor with our minds. Don’t let some Christians’ sour attitudes about academics and intellectual development keep you from heeding the “Great Commandment.”

In times past, Christians were frequently the ones who were recognized as the leading thinkers in various disciplines across the academic spectrum. Today this is rare (one positive example is in the area of philosophy where Christians such as Alvin Plantinga, Dallas Willard, Keith Yandell, William Lane Craig, and J. P. Moreland are well respected in the philosophical community). The Church is looking for a generation of women and men who will take up the challenge to love God and neighbor with their minds by engaging in serious academic study. Can you imagine a society in which Christian thinkers were shaping economics, astrophysics, history, medicine, cinematography, law, ecology, literature, politics, etc.? God would certainly be honored and his image-bearers would be greatly benefited. Or, to be more specific, take our current issue of health care reform. What would it be like if Christian thinkers worked out a health care system that provided quality health care which was financially sustainable, affordable for as many people as possible, and included at least minimum care for those who could not afford any care at all?

Though all Christians are under the command to love God and neighbor with their minds, some have a special calling in this area. Perhaps you are one of them. If you are a student (at any level), I encourage you to apply yourself to your academic work. Your diligence in your class work is not only an expression of your love for God and neighbor, but might be something that God uses to propel you to a life using you intellectual capacities in service to him. Don’t look at your education as merely a means to a job, or meeting the expectations of parents, etc. Consider it intellectual development that will prepare you to make a significant impact for God’s kingdom. If God has called you to the life of the mind, being a top notch mechanical engineer, philosopher, journalist, CEO, teacher, or poet is every bit as important as being a pastor or a missionary.

I would like to end with a prayer penned by Church of England Bishop, H. G. C. Moule. This prayer sustained me through times of intense intellectual work while in graduate school. For high school, college, and graduate school students, may it be your prayer as well as you seek to love the only wise God with your minds.

Lord and Savior, true and kind,
be the master of my mind;
Bless and guide and strengthen still,
all my powers of thought and will.
While I ply the scholar’s task,
Jesus Christ be near, I ask;
Help the memory, clear the brain,
knowledge still to seek and gain.

Reflections on Loving God with Our Minds: Part 4

In Part 3, I claimed that one of God’s interests was a restoration of the broken relationship between himself and human beings. In fact, one of God’s prime interests is human beings in and of themselves for they are his image-bearers. Of all creation, humans, and only humans, are given the privilege and responsibility to bear God’s image. God’s love for them is intense. I believe this is the reason that the command Jesus singled out as the greatest is two-fold. We are to love God and humans. But that is not all. To love humans, God’s image-bearers, is equated with loving God. The two directives to love God and humans are not to be taken as separate. I also think that the expectation Jesus has in pointing out our requirement to love our “neighbors” is that, like our love for God, it is also to be done with all one’s heart, soul, and mind. Therefore, loving my neighbor means, among other things, to seek out his or her best interests with the rigorous employment of all my mental powers.

To love God with my mind requires me to love my neighbor (by the way, my “neighbor” includes my enemies as well; Luke 10: 25-37) with my mind. What are some specific ways I can love my “neighbor” with my mind?

Reflections on Loving God with Our Minds: Part 3

As we discovered in Part 2, the biblical idea of loving is not principally a feeling. Rather it is a decision to look out for another’s best interest. Think about what this means in terms of loving God. Loving God is not to have warm, fuzzy feelings toward God. Loving God means looking out for his best interest. Does God have interests? Yes, of course (though this does not imply God has needs).

What are God’s interests? Here are a few. God desires that his fallen world be set right. He desires a restoration of the broken relationship between himself and rebellious human beings. He desires that he be glorified in and by his creation (including humans).

To love God, then, means to align our thoughts, desires, affections, plans, words, and actions toward those things God desires. And this can only come about successfully when we fully apply our intellectual faculties to figuring out what God’s interests are and how we are going to orient our lives around those interests.

What are some other interests God has? What are some specific ways we can use our minds in seeing those interests, or the ones I mentioned above, get accomplished?

Reflections on Loving God with Our Minds: Part 2

In Part 1 we asked how seriously we take the requirement to love God with our minds. In Part 2, we now want to ask whether loving with the mind is even possible. On one hand we typically associate ‘love’ with feelings. We know we love someone when we have good, warm, tingly, affectionate feelings toward that person. On the other hand we associate the mind with thinking, reasoning, gaining facts and knowledge. ‘Love’ and ‘mind’ appear to be about very different things. Some people even contend that love is not something that can be commanded because feelings happen to us; we do not choose them (try to get angry or sad or happy on cue and you’ll see the point!).

However, a proper understanding of the biblical view of love will help us see that ‘love’ and ‘mind’ do go hand in hand and it makes perfect sense for God to command love. The biblical view of (non-erotic) love is not feeling-based. The proper way to understand the kind of love that Jesus call’s his followers to is to look out for the best interest of another. Loving another person, then, means that I seek what is best for that other person. And this is to be the case whether I feel anything for that other person or not. Ideally, though, compassionate or affectionate feelings will accompany a mature love, but the feelings are not the primary feature of biblical love.

Now, if love is the looking out for the best interest of another, then it makes perfect sense that the mind is deployed in this activity. A person who seriously looks out for another’s best interest will have to be very good with the use of the mind to figure out what will produce that which is in the best interest of the other. And, of course, looking out for another’s best interest can be commanded as well because that activity is not a feeling.

God is right in issuing a command to love with the mind. Not only is it possible to obey this command, but how else could one actually look after the interest of another apart from using one’s intellect? Would you want someone looking after your best interest who could not use his or her mind well? I wouldn’t. God apparently doesn’t either.

Reflections on Loving God with Our Minds: Part 1

Upon being interrogated by a Torah expert as to the greatest commandment in the Jewish Law, Jesus replied:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments. (Matthew 22:37-40)

Dubbed “the Jesus Creed” by Scot McKnight, Jesus’ pronouncement requires a person to engage every aspect of his or her being in loving God. No part of the human person is exempt. Yet, how seriously do we take loving God with our minds? Do we work as hard at this as we do loving God with other aspects of our person whether emotions, feelings, will, religious activities, and so on? As loving God is not an option (note, Jesus is issuing his understanding of the greatest command, not greatest recommendation or suggestion!), so also loving God with the mind is not an option. It is disobedience and, hence, sin to fail to do so. Loving God with the mind does not apply only to Christian philosophers, apologists, and scholars. It applies to all of us!

“The Jesus Creed” is in fact so fundamental that every other command from God flows out of the requirement to love God with our whole being (“All the Law and Prophets hang on these two commandments.”), including the mind. Our minds are to be engaged constantly in living out God’s instructions for living.

How are we as the Church (the community of Jesus-followers) and as individuals succeeding at obeying this great commandment’s requirement to love God with our minds? Where and in what ways specifically do you see loving God with the mind happening?

Also, how are we as the Church and as individuals failing at obeying this great commandment’s requirement to love God with our minds? Where and in what ways specifically do you see loving God with the mind absent?

Must Books for the College Student

The last weeks of summer find many students and parents scurrying to get ready for college. Oddly enough, for most Christians, advanced spiritual and intellectual preparation is not always on the radar. It somehow gets lost in the busyness of all the other preparations. For those of you who are attending, or considering attending college next fall, I want to recommend five books for you to read. For those already in college or about to enter, I recommend reading these as early in your college experience as possible. For those who will be attending college next fall, I recommend reading and reflecting on these prior to enrollment (Parents: I would encourage you to read these as well so you can dialogue with your students about their college experience). I consider these required reading and will insist that my children read them (or books like them) when they are ready for college.

For the last twenty plus years, I have been either a student or an instructor in both secular and religious institutions of higher learning. While in both capacities and in both environments, I have thought seriously about how a student can best be prepared and be successful. More specifically, I have spent time trying to figure out how the Christian student can best prepare himself or herself for college success in our present culture. It is on this basis that I recommend the following resources.

1. J. P. Moreland and Mark Matlock, Smart Faith: Loving Your God With All Your Mind (Colorado Springs: Th1nk Books, 2005). Smart Faith presents what it means to love God with one’s mind and to apply one’s intellect to discipleship to Jesus. Too often, Christians think gaining knowledge, becoming educated, or being involved in academic pursuits is dangerous and unchristian. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the lack of knowledge, education, and academic pursuit is dangerous and leaves one susceptible to lies and falsehoods. Moreland and Matlock provide practical ways students can improve their minds and thus be better disciples, more grounded in their faith, better worshippers, and more productive for God’s kingdom. This is an indispensible book for understanding the importance of loving God with one’s mind and how to do it in secular and religious settings. [For those who want a bit more depth, you might choose to read the book Smart Faith was modeled on, J. P. Moreland’s Love Your God With All Your Mind (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1997)].

2. Marcus Honeysett, Meltdown: Making Sense of a Culture in Crisis (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2002). You happen to be going to college in an age where something called “Postmodernism” is influential, including on college campuses. What is Postmodernism? Is it something I should be concerned about? Why? How does a Christian respond to it? Meltdown addresses all these questions using as illustrations incidents that take place on college campuses. Though this is the most difficult of the five books I am recommending, it might be the most important. If you want to be prepared to face postmodernist thinking which espouses relativism about truth, knowledge, ethics, and religion, this is a book you must read. Make sure you take the time to read the Foreward and Afterward of this book too.

3. Douglas Soccio, How to Get the Most Out of Philosophy, 5th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2004). I know what you are thinking. “I’m going to take as little philosophy as I have to (maybe none at all), so I don’t need this book, thank you very much.” But please don’t make both those mistakes. First, taking philosophy courses can be a vital part of loving God with your mind. Second, this book is so much more than about philosophy. In fact, this book is more about your overall college education than about taking philosophy courses. If there was one book I wish I had read as an undergraduate, it is this one. This may be the most practical book about college you will ever read. When I taught undergraduates at three different universities, I required my students to read this book in the first week of classes. This book gives important advice on reading, studying and study habits, taking notes, taking exams, writing papers, relating to your professors, self-respect and getting the most out of yourself, academic ethics, and, yes, even how to do well in a philosophy class. I can’t urge the college-bound person enough to read this book. Not one college student I required to read this book regretted reading it or found it unhelpful (even those who were already seniors).

4. Scot McKnight, The Jesus Creed: Loving God, Loving Others (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2004). How does a student maintain, develop, and put into practice his or her relationship with God when away at college? The Jesus Creed explains what it means to love God and others with one’s whole being. Following the “Jesus Creed” (See Matthew 22:36-40) is a life changing practice that will result in significant spiritual transformation and vibrancy. It will also make one an effective worshipper of and ambassador for God. If you are concerned about the health of your relationship with God while away at college, read this book.

5. Allen Wakabayashi, Kingdom Come: How Jesus Wants to Change the World (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003). The aspiration of many people headed to college is to become someone who can impact society. For the Christian, this is not “pie in the sky” thinking, but a significant part of the Christian vocation. How can a Christian be an agent of change in the world? Wakabayashi’s book is an excellent study of what it means for a Christian to be involved in Jesus’ mission of changing the world. Kingdom Come presents a much needed explanation of the Kingdom of God and what that means for Christian engagement in our culture. Wakabayashi makes the case that the mission of Jesus, and thus the Christian, is so much more than “getting people saved.” It means being an agent of transformation in every area of life helping to restore the fallen creation, fallen societies, fallen systems of education and business, and, yes, fallen people. College-bound Christians need to understand and live out the perspectives found in Kingdom Come if they want to change the world.