Monday, February 3, 2020

Following Christ with Our Minds


"For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?" But we have the mind of Christ."  (1 Corinthians 2:16)                                                                                                                    

A failure of Christian thinking is a failure of discipleship, for we are called to love God with our minds.

The biblical account serves as a structure for the principles that allow the formation of a genuine Christian worldview.  Many Christians rush to develop what they will call a “Christian worldview” by arranging isolated Christian truths, doctrines, and convictions in order to create formulas for Christian thinking.  No doubt, this is a better approach than is found among so many believers who have very little concern for Christian thinking at all, but it’s not enough.

Christian thinking that concludes in a God-centered worldview requires that we see all truth as interconnected.  Ultimately, the systematic wholeness of truth can be traced to the fact that God is Himself the author of all truth.  Christianity is not a set of doctrines in the sense that a mechanic operates with a set of tools.  Instead,
Christianity is a comprehensive worldview and way of life that grows out of Christian reflection on the Bible, and the unfolding plan of God revealed in the unity of the Scriptures.

A God-centered worldview brings every issue, question, and cultural concern into submission to all that the Bible reveals, and frames all understanding within the ultimate purpose of bringing greater glory to God.  This task of bringing every thought captive to Christ requires more than periodic Christian thinking, and is to be understood as the task of the Church, and not merely the concern of individual believers.  The recovery of the Christian mind and the development of a comprehensive Christian worldview will require the deepest theological reflection, the most consecrated application of scholarship, the most sensitive commitment to compassion, and the courage to face all questions without fear.

Christianity brings the world a unique understanding of time, history, and the meaning of life. The Christian worldview contributes an understanding of the universe and all it contains that points us far beyond mere materialism and frees us from the intellectual imprisonment of naturalism.  Christians understand that the world—including the material world—is dignified by the very fact that God has created it.  At the same time, we understand that we are to be stewards of this creation and are not to worship what God has made.

We understand that every single human being is made in the image of God, and that God is the Lord of life at every stage of human development.  We honor the sanctity of human life because we worship the Creator. From the Bible, we draw the crucial insight that God takes delight in the ethnic and racial diversity of His human creatures, and so must we.  The Christian worldview contributes a distinctive understanding of beauty, truth, and goodness, understanding these to be boundless, and that in the final analysis, are one and the same. Therefore, the Christian worldview disallows the fragmentation that would sever the beautiful from the true or the good.

In the context of cultural conflict, the development of an authentic Christian worldview should enable the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ to maintain a responsible and courageous footing in any culture at any period of time.  The stewardship of this responsibility is not only an intellectual challenge, but it determines, to a considerable degree, whether or not Christians live and act before the world in a way that brings glory to God and credibility to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Failure at this task represents an abdication of Christian responsibility that dishonors Christ, weakens the church, and compromises Christian witness.

A failure of Christian thinking is a failure of discipleship, for we are called to love God with our minds.  We cannot follow Christ faithfully without first thinking as Christians.  Furthermore, believers are not to be isolated thinkers who bear this responsibility alone.  We are called to be faithful together, as we learn intellectual discipleship within the church.   By God’s grace, we are allowed to love God with our minds in order that we may serve Him with our lives. Christian faithfulness requires the conscious development of a worldview that begins and ends with God at its center.

We are only able to think as Christians because we belong to Christ, and the Christian worldview is, in the end, nothing more than seeking to think as Christ would have us think, in order to be who Christ would call us to be.






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