Thoughts on Loving God with All Your Mind

And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the great and first commandment.  The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself."  ~Matthew 22:37-38


Of all the ways that we are commanded to love God, loving God with "all your mind" is probably the most neglected in the American church today.  A healthy distrust of academic "wisdom" has morphed into an abandonment of the life of the mind altogether.   We have emptied our relationship with God degenerating from "knowing God" to an "experience" devoid of content.

But this post isn't intended to be a polemic against problems in the American church.  Rather, I want to make a couple observations about loving God with all your mind, as a tool for you to evaluate your own obedience to the "great and first commandment."

1) Loving God with all your mind is not dependent on a sophisticated intellect; it is dependent on a sanctified intellect.  Don't make the mistake of assuming that loving God with all your mind is only for super-smart people like theologians and philosophers.  This command was first given in Deuteronomy to a group of largely illiterate nomads.  God's intent is not that we can analyze the minutiae of theological arguments, but that we take every thought captive to Christ, that we strive to bring more and more of our thought life into obedience to God's Word, that we seek to develop biblical discernment, and that our pursuit of knowing God involves greater and greater knowledge of Him.

2) Loving God with all your mind is a command.  To label yourself as unintellectual and therefore uninterested in the life of the mind does not absolve you from this command; it just makes you disobedient.  The redemption provided for us in Christ is a total redemption; God intends to transform our entire being with the truth of the gospel.  It is not enough for your relationship with God to start and end with your heart; God wants your heart, mind, body, will, emotions, and actions.

3) Loving God with all your mind is the ground of all transformative holiness.  Romans 12:2- Do not be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.  Ephesians 4:22-23- Put off your old self... and be renewed in the spirit of your minds.  Colossians 3:10- Put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.  In all these passages and more, the prescription for transformation is clear.  Knowing things equals believing things equals doing things.  Anything less is unbiblical and ultimately unfruitful.

4) Loving God with all your mind is central to eternal life.  John 17:3- Now this is eternal life: to know You, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.  At the end of the day, this is why we pursue the life of the mind.  This is why we want to bring every thought into obedience to Christ.  This is why we want to love God with all our minds.  Because we want to know Jesus.  We want to have the full, abundant, eternal life of knowing God and being swallowed up into the experience of His glory that only comes through beholding Him with unveiled minds and hearts fixed on Him.

Why Social Networking?

Beginning today, the Daily Verse Online is undergoing a major overhaul, a big part of which is the incorporation of social networking-- specifically, commenting and conversation on the Daily Verses, and unified integration with Facebook and Twitter.  This is is a big change in direction, and it didn't come without a lot of thought and prayer.  As Christians, everything we do should be "abounding in love, with all knowledge and discernment" (Philippians 1:9).  That means that every action we take should be rooted in deep thought and deep love.  Deep thought about the things of God, and deep love for God and others.  So here are my thoughts about social networking, and why the Daily Verse Online is moving this direction.

First, a bad reason for social networking:
1) Everyone's doing it.  This is never a good reason to do anything.  The wide road is the one that leads to destruction (Matthew 7:13), and just because everyone's on the Web 2.0 social networking bandwagon does necessarily mean that Christians should jump onboard too.  There may be a place for Christian social networking, but NOT simply because the world is doing it.  If anything, the fact that social networking is so popular should make Christians pause before jumping in.  Friendship with the world is enmity with God (James 4:4).

Some cautions about social networking:
1) The tendency towards pride.  The habit of "tweeting" the details of your life and thoughts to an audience of followers as if those thoughts and details were somehow important is arrogance.  "The wise of heart will receive commandments, but a babbling fool will come to ruin" (Proverbs 10:8).  Christians should be striving to develop the humility of James 1:19-- quick to hear and slow to speak.  This is certainly possible with Twitter, but the very concept of Twitter works against this.  With Facebook, the temptation towards pride is different.  Reveling in your friend count, basing your worth on your accumulated contacts or number of people posting on your wall is dangerous.  "The LORD takes delight in His people" (Psalm 149:4); do not look beyond this for identity.
2) The tendency towards time-wasting.  Those who live in the world of Facebook know how true this is.  It is possible to waste hours on Facebook.  This is a tragedy.  The cross of Christ frees us from trivial pursuits to become a people for His own possession, zealous for good works (Titus 2:14).  We should take the command of Colossians 4:5 very seriously: "Make the best use of the time."  Life is a vapor, a mere breath before eternity, and with the souls of men dying around us, why would we consign ourselves to time wasted in front of TVs and computers?  God is calling us to something much greater.
3) The tendency towards triviality.  No one, not even your Twitter followers, really care what you had for breakfast this morning.  But sadly, this sort of conversation is common on Twitter.  Even those tweeting about relatively important things-- politics, social issues, etc-- are limited to 140 characters.  Neil Postman was right: the medium really is the message.  140 characters inherently limits and shapes discourse away from thoughtful reasoning and towards the sound-byte, the showy, and the shallow.

In light of all these tendencies and pitfalls, why is the Daily Verse Online embracing social networking?
1) Redeeming social networking.  All three of those potential pitfalls are not unique to social networking; they are inherent in the human condition.  And yet God, at great cost to Himself, has planned from all eternity to redeem not only a people for Himself, but all that is good and true and beautiful in human culture (Revelation 21:23-24).  As Christians, therefore, we should not shrink back from the public arena, but rather should seek to influence it for Christ.
2) Social networking belongs to Jesus.  "All things were created through Him and FOR Him" (Colossians 1:16).  Jesus Christ is supreme and sovereign over every area of creation, from supernovae to subatomic particles, from nations and history, to Twitter and Facebook.  Abraham Kuyper famously said, "In the total expanse of human life there is not a single square inch of which Christ, who alone is sovereign, does not declare,'That is mine!'"  To that end, let's use Facebook and Twitter and everything else, not as a means for our own pleasure and glory, but to make much of Jesus Christ who claims ownership over them, and us.
3) Serving you.  The Daily Verse Online's mission is to "ignite a passion for worship in all of life."  I recognize that today, many people live out a good part of their time on their smartphones, websites, and networks.  This is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as we are aware of the pitfalls above and are striving to submit our surfing to our Savior.  The DVO wants to help with that.  By expanding our ministry into these areas that touch so many parts of life, my hope and prayer is that Twitter and Facebook can become tools in your arsenal for your fight to see and savor and show Jesus Christ more fully.

For more thoughts on how Christians can tweet to the glory of God, you can read this older blog post.  John Piper at Desiring God also has very wise things to say.

We Wish to See Jesus

Next week, I am starting my last Bible study at Center Presbyterian Church.  It has been a joy and incredible privilege for me to lead the adult Bible study there for the past year and a half.  We have done studies on Philippians, Hebrews, and Colossians, and this spring we will be looking at the "I am" statements of Jesus in the book of John.  I am really, really excited about this semester, because I see this study as the culmination of everything I have been teaching the last year and a half.  Below is my introduction to our study in John:

"Life in a fallen world is a tightrope dichotomy between searing pain and seductive pleasure.  In a world full of sudden tragedy, seemingly random violence, natural disasters, cancer, illness, heartache, and tearful goodbyes, where is a rock of refuge to which we can go?  And conversely, in a materialistic culture littered with the spiritual landmines of blinding prosperity, numbing comfort, earthly treasures, and broken cisterns, where is a transcendent and satisfying reality to which we can commit ourselves?

What we are looking for is Ultimate Reality, a person and a truth and a life that transcends the problem of pain and pleasure, eclipsing both in all-consuming glory.  The Ultimate Reality that we are looking for is the person of Jesus Christ.  Colossians tells us that He is "the image of the invisible God," that "all things were created through Him and for Him," and that "in all things He has the supremacy."  Hebrews speaks of this supreme Christ when we hear that "He is the radiance of the glory of God and exact imprint of His nature, upholding the universe by the word of His power."  Philippians tells us the implications of Christ's all-satisfying supremacy: "I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.  For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ."  Here, then, is the end of all things: suffering and satisfaction, gain and loss, united in the glorious Son.  To know Him will cost everything, yet knowing Him is infinite gain.

How then can we know this Glorious One?  How can we "know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge?" (Ephesians 3:19)  Hosea invites us into this eternal pursuit, saying, "Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord."  We want to say with the Greeks in John 12, "We wish to see Jesus!"  But how?"

The first lesson is all about my answer to that last question: God has given us His Word so that we can see Jesus in it and be supremely satisfied in seeing Him forever.

Rotten Bananas and the Glory of God

This semester I am working in the GeeDunk, the on-campus student cafe here at Grove City College.  Usually I am upstairs cooking food and serving people, but today I was down in the basement cutting cookies and doing other menial tasks.  It was a little disappointing, because I like the upstairs atmosphere a lot better.

Towards the end of my shift, the task given to me was to cut up over-ripe bananas for use in smoothies.  It was gross work, and I was just trying to get done with it, until the Holy Spirit brought Colossians 3:23-24 to my mind:

"Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward.  You are serving the Lord Christ."

This truth transformed the rest of my shift.  No longer was I just doing menial labor, cutting up cookies and bananas by myself in the basement.  Menial labor became servanthood, and rotten bananas became worship.  I love how the knowledge of God can permeate even the most mundane, infusing it with glory.  I love the fact that, in Christ, I can cut rotten bananas to the glory of God.