Why is Thinking so important?

I’ve come across many Christians who have a very negative view of Christian thought. They quickly cite passages from 1 Corinthians or Colossians that declare philosophy and academia as not only vane and empty, but purely human and contrary to God. After all, God calls us to a Gospel that is nonsense to the pagan, desires childlike faith, and is constantly reversing human expectations.

But even more dangerously, thoughts can change people’s minds about core issues like the divinity of Christ or the inspiration of scripture. And certainly we have seen a host of examples through history of this very phenomena taking place. Certain ideas pollute, corrupt, confuse, and sidetrack people from the life of faith that God calls us to.

So instead, many propose that we be more concerned about things like love, faith, and evangelism, and much less concerned about becoming better thinkers and studying the world of thought and ideas.

But if you’ve read any of my blogs, or heard any of my rants, you know that thinking Christians is very important to me. I’ve covered some of this in other blogs (most recent blog especially), but I thought I’d compose a list of reasons why Christians should pursue maturity in their thought life as well as spiritual:



1) How we think affects how we act
The reality is that our actions are not just spontaneous creations. Our worldview, our beliefs, and how we think affect the choices and actions we make. Even the most impulsive person still operates within a set of beliefs and perceptions.

This is more deep than “think right and act right”. We study scripture, it says to do something, and we try and fail. Certainly our own sinful impulses play a roll, but I think a lot of times there are deeper beliefs at play that we refuse to acknowledge. This isn’t just about “self help”, but about deeply analyzing what we believe and why. Becoming better thinkers helps in this process, and it also helps in diagnosing errors and inconsistencies, and hopefully changing them.

2) How we think affects our presentation of the Gospel
Some may believe that God just wants us to sit on street corners and boldly proclaim the Gospel as it was given to us in scripture. But the reality is we don’t see Paul or even Jesus doing this. They are engaging those around them, attempting to refute wrong presuppositions, and attempting to undo and barriers to the truth of the Gospel. I’m certain the Holy Spirit can help here, but I think we are also responsible for becoming better thinkers to actively engage such barriers with our minds.

3) Brings strength to our faith
Faith isn’t just about blindly believing a proposition. Otherwise scripture wouldn’t be full of examples of why God is trustworthy. God is revealed in creation, there is order and rationality to how the world works. There is also merit in secular philosophy when it attempts to understand this order and rationality. The Gospel confronts this in certain assumptions, but this does not mean the two are entirely opposite. Otherwise, the God revealed in creation would be a lie.

This is pretty important for Christians because as we assimilate the God revealed in creation with God’s self revelation in scripture, our faith is strengthened. We begin to approach a holistic truth about God and his world. This does not necessarily mean compromising and arriving at things like theistic evolution, (as an example), but does mean that in some rational way, the God of scripture should fit the God of creation, as long as we begin with the presuppositions and foundation of scripture.

On a practical level, I think this simply means that the better thinkers we become, the more rooted we’ll become in our grasp of truth. We won’t be swayed by arguments from nature which supposedly contradict scripture, because we’ll be able to begin to assimilate the revelation from nature into the revelation of scripture. Christians should not have to live in a world of contradiction. The law of gravity is not contradictory to the Gospel of Christ.

4) Combats error and heresy in the church
Going hand and hand with the last point, becoming better thinkers means we can better avoid mistakes and error in the church. Despite some people’s oversimplifications, the reality is that good, solid, and true Christians have had a number of disagreements on key doctrinal points. I think the all time biggest one for the church (inside the church) is the relationship of God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. This issue arose relatively early in the church, and has endured without resolution to this very day (in fact, this relationship of the divine and human resonates even outside of the church in the problem of evil). Becoming better thinkers won’t solve all of the questions of scripture (after all we are finite being attempting to grasp the Infinite), but it will certainly help us stay more centered on the truth revealed in scripture. Error almost always comes from misunderstanding a passage, or over-emphasizing an aspect of a theological truth.

5) Pursues a better knowledge of God
Our concept of “relationship” is primarily defined by “experience” (viz. romantic relationships = sexual experience). There certainly is truth to this, no relationship can be void of experience, but relationship is about something much more than this. A real relationship includes a significant portion of knowledge.

It goes without saying then that the better we can think, the more we can know about God. This means not only the better we can accurately conceive him, but also we can avoid and remove wrong expectations of him. (It is interesting that many of those opposed to Jesus were opposed because their wrong expectations, and certainly this is still true today). This will radically affect how we relate with God, how we pray to him, how we trust him, and how we submit to him.

One common response about becoming better thinkers is that it expects too much of God’s people. It assumes that everyone must “become a scholar” to know God, or to be pleasing to him. But this is not what I am arguing. I’m instead trying to make the case that Christian maturity is not just about spiritual growth, but growth in all our facets of being. Spiritual, emotional, and mental. This means that the farmer who has known nothing but planting and harvesting still can grow in how he thinks. He may never think the thoughts of a scholar like C. S. Lewis, but the point is that he is pursuing a better mind along with a better soul and heart. The Christian walk is not so much about the end as the process towards the end. We know the end will only be achieved when God’s Kingdom comes in its fullness.

6) Glorifies God with all that he has given us
Finally, becoming better thinkers allows us to glorify God with our mind. Glorifying God need not be argued for. It is all over scripture, and an assumed reality of being a Christian. But glorifying God is not just something we do with our actions, with our choices, with our hearts, and with our souls. We can and should glorify God with our minds. Becoming better thinkers can accomplish this. The more we pursue truth about God and his world, the more we can glorify God by understanding this world.
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Out with the Old

As a culture, we are not too found of old things. Old books, old ideas, and old things have a distinct impression of decay, being out of touch with reality, and disconnected from our lives. First I must say that any criticisms I am making here are directed at myself as much as anyone else. I see these trends in my own thoughts and values, as well as those around me.

In any case, this can be seen in many ways. One prime example of this is technology. Technology is a defining aspect of our lives, it can point to one’s social or economic status, or be a center badge of trends. For example, college students are the ones walking around with ear buds, a small iPod (or knockoff for those with financial constraints), and probably a sleek new cell phone (iPhone anyone?). But technology is only as cool as its age. Devices that are have been out for 6 months are “standard”, not quite as cool as cutting edge toys. After a piece of tech’s 1st birthday, its only okay. After its 2nd it’s all but retired, left only for the poor and un-cool to endure.

I’m speaking with a bit of hyperbole of course, but I notice this “notion” we have about tech all the time. After a couple of years, its history, no longer able to compete with the cutting edge.


This same trend can be seen in our appreciation of movies. Movies that were cutting edge 10 years ago, even 5 years ago, no longer are appealing for no other reason than their “out of date” visual effects. How many have felt that tinge of hesitation when somebody wants to put on a video from so long ago? (Unless it’s a comedy). It is certainly odd that even the ability to act has improved drastically, (or at least our sense of it), despite the fact that the art of acting has been around for much longer than we conceive.

But even more seriously, this can be seen in the world of thought. In an age of “change”, we pay more attention to “progressive” ideas and cutting edge thought. Nobody is terribly concerned with the fact that there truly are very few new ideas because nobody is willing to study the thoughts of our predecessors and their’s. Again, there is this notion I detect of “foreign”, “disconnected”, “decay”, “out of date”, and so on. We seem to be more concerned with making history than studying history, to the end that we’ll more than likely repeat history.

The end of this is that notions such as "passing the test of time" now mean passing consumer review with flying colors over the last few months, as opposed to standing up against rebuttal and being refined in thinking circles over the course of many years. This certainly is wrong, and dangerous to our minds and the worldviews we come up with. We must be humble to the mistakes and corrections that our predecessors can offer insight into. We don't have access to as much new and life altering data as we may think.

Where this is especially damaging to Christians is our love and appreciation for scripture. A book with a beginning many millennia ago, and an end nearly two millennia ago, is the epitamy of “old”. When we open the text, do we fall in love with the beauty, both its literary beauty, its spiritual truth, and the sheer fact that it reveals God to us? Or do we struggle with how ancient and foreign it is? How often when we open the text do we have that same hesitation (or possibly revolt?) as with an old movie?

I know when I was in High school, the Bible was very hard for me to read. I had a good NIV translation, but the language was still very unlike the language I speak. In a way, even the values were very unlike the values I had and saw around me. This is not a criticism of my family, or the church I was raised in. What I mean is that whatever church tradition we stand in, we tend to have our own set of emphases, and we use our own language to describe scriptural truths. Modenr “hot topics” apply here, but even some of our language of worship and gathering is foreign to scripture. The ideas are certainly based out of scripture, but the language is different, (one big example is our language surrounding our “relationship” with God. The concept is clearly in scripture, but our language is different).

So there are lots of barriers that prevent scripture from penetrating our lives in a transformational way. Barriers that hold us back from falling deeply in love with God’s word, and barriers which make it difficult for us to feed off of it the way Christ talked about in John 6.

I myself have an advantage over many because I had the privilege of over 6 years of biblical training, both at the undergrad and graduate level. This has given me many tools to approach the text exegetically, theologically, philosophically, etc. These are all certainly good, and do help break down some of those barriers. But even with my “advantage”, (even though some would call these a disadvantage), I still struggle in allowing the text speak to my life, allowing God to transform my mind through his Word.

Certainly this is a good example of where our knowledge of a problem can make us aware of prejudices and presuppositions, and hopefully this awareness can begin to help us overcome these barriers. Certainly we must try, because if we really believe the truth of scripture, then allowing God to shape and mold us through his Word is one of our highest priorities. And even more, learning to fall in love with God’s word more can and should be an important part of our relationship with Him.

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Thinking Christians

I rarely do this anymore, but I decided to read some of the long stream of posts on Biola’s BBS about recent political happenings. This often is both frustrating and enlightening, though usually more frustrating, (which is why I do it so rarely).

In any case, much of the discussion was concerning prop 8. Now I personally voted yes on it, and it was after some thought and reflection. I feel I came to an informed decision and voted with confidence and pride. After all, this is what a democracy is about, yes?

But I’ve come across several discussions within the church where people see this as entirely black and white. Some say that you can’t be a Bible believing Christian in submission to Christ and vote no. Others seem to imply that you can’t be an intelligent, enlightened person if you vote yes, and if in fact you do, you are in favor of “legislating morality” or worse yet, are in favor of discrimination and promoting inequality.


I’m not as interested in breaking down my points pro-8, but more in reflecting on how Christians handle discussions such as these. It rightly should strike us as alarming when we see Christians pandering so far to the secular that they have diluted (at best) their core faith, but it is equally disturbing (to me) to see Christians who refuse to actually engage an issue. I’m thinking specifically of those who would rather cite a passage from Leviticus or Romans 1 and think that essentially closes the case on an issue like prop 8. This is essentially a refusal to engage an issue intellectually, but also a painful oversimplification of God’s truth.

Certainly the morality of an issue such as homosexuality is clear enough from scripture. But issues such as how Christians should engage society and government, how Christians specifically should reach out and bring the Gospel to the homosexual community, and how the church and state relate are certainly not. These types of questions cannot be solved by simply quoting a passage from scripture, or citing truism.

Instead what is needed are things such as actively engaging such questions, spending arduous time thinking through these, and honestly engaging the discussion. It’s not that we really don’t think, or are incapable of thinking. Instead, we’re more interested in thinking about straw men and not actually engaging issues. What this should look like is instead of mischaracterizing, we need to first accurately portray. For example, when we can accurately reflect why a certain Christian voted no on 8, or voted yes for Obma, only then we can begin to engage and formulate a reasoned disagreement. The need is for Christians to actually use the mind God has given us. Certainly the Holy Spirit is involved here, and certainly Scripture is too. But the reality is that if God is the rational being we believe he must be, and if truth is truly based on his character and person, then we not only can but must engage such questions with our minds.

Instead, I have recently come across several who not only discourage such engagement, but nearly condemn those who try. Instead of promoting healthy discussion, the realm of ideas is portrayed as something dangerous, something that regularly is leading Christians away from Christ. Is our foundation of the Gospel as true this unstable? Are we this susceptible to corrupting influences?

The reality is that if ideas are this dangerous to the body, then Christian leaders should try and strengthen the body instead of protect it. If the church remains in this pattern, things will only get worse. And if we are afraid of having godly Christian thinkers, then this will only further damage the mind of the church. The reality is that Christian thinkers will rightly challenge the world, but they also raise challenges for the church. They fight against falling into easy patterns of oversimplified thinking, they can reveal holes in our popular ways of thinking about issues. This is frustrating, and it is very easy to respond in anger or hyperbole (or worse, condemn them as supporting the opposition), but the reality is that if we all listen to such men and women, and seek to become greater thinkers ourselves, then we will grow as Christians and as people. I certainly have fallen into this trap. After all, it is very annoying to think you have a simple and water tight argument for an issue, and find out it’s a ship full of holes sinking fast.

This isn’t just about becoming stronger Christians, but about having a more balanced perspective on truth. God is truth, and the more our thinking is oriented around truth, certainly the better we can know him, right? If Christians truly reclaim our grasp of truth, certainly this will spill over into how we engage culture and evangelize, right?

But more importantly, the more tightly we grasp truth, the stronger we will stand against attacks. The church should be an impenetrable fortress when it comes to truth. Because we know the one true God who is the source of truth, we should be beacons of light, intelligent thought, and truth. This certainly is proven true when it appears one of the more successful attacks by the enemy has been the stereotype of the church in the western world as an unthinking mass. This is bad, not as much because of how others see us, but because we’ve bought the lie.

We’ve degraded truth and thought as something entirely man made, and produced a false dichotomy between our minds and the Spirit. We hear Paul’s condemnation of the wisdom of man in 1 Cor 1, or his condemnation of the philosophies in Col 2 and we apply it far more broadly than the philosopher / theologian himself intended. What we see in scripture is not a mass of uneducated, unthinking men and women, but both the educated and uneducated, acting, thinking, and speaking with a greater grasp of truth and wisdom that humbled even the most educated in their society. This is what Christianity is about: its not the dichotomy between mind and spirit, but the reality that with a grasp of the Truth, both our mind and spirits can excel. Spiritually this means we have access to the one true life, and mentally because we have the foundation of Truth himself. This does not negate general revelation, but puts it in its right context.

So, Christians we should think more. :)

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