Thinking Christian

3union is a band of three teenaged brothers I ran sound for in concert last Wednesday and again last night.* (They had an 18-year-old bass player with them temporarily on this tour, too). Here is an open letter to the band.

It’s not just for them, though. If you are a believer in Christ who has a gift from God you dream of using for his glory, I invite you look over their shoulders, so to speak, and read this letter along with them. Most of what I say here applies to you, too. If you are not a believer with a gift you dream of using for his glory, then I offer you a different message of encouragement.

To Brandon, Shaun, and Ryan,

Thank you for the privilege of working with you this week. It’s been a long time since I’ve had that much fun in concert! As you know, my early career (before I got into all this strategy and writing stuff) was in music, and it was in those days that my wife and I became friends with your parents. What I have to say now is very similar to what I spoke as you were about to head home to Indiana this morning — things you already knew, but seemed important to say anyway. You were gracious to listen to me, considering that for a rock-and-roll sound tech, I must have looked pretty uncool wearing my granny-style, old-guy reading glasses at that middle-school concert!

I hope you don’t mind if I share this publicly. Your gifts are unusually strong: your musicianship, stage presence, communication skills, and even your “look” are all remarkable. I do not say this just because of my connection to your family and your music. You (and Alesha with you) put on an incredible concert. I’ve known a lot of musicians, but very few with your mix of talents, and none to whom I have said this before: I think you have What It Takes. (To those of you reading over their shoulders, keep your eyes open for 3union: check out their website; then find them in concert near you, or if you can’t find them, call the band and book them yourself!)

I am really most impressed with your hearts. You love the Lord, and you understand that Making It Big is not the point, but rather using your gifts in service to others for Christ. Not that you shouldn’t dream big: one of your messages is to resist low expectations and dare to “Do Hard Things” (based on a book written by two other remarkable teenaged brothers). You understand, though, that God will not give his glory to others (Isaiah 42:8; Isaiah 48:11); and that to seek great things is fine, but not for ourselves (Jeremiah 45:5), for God is opposed to the proud but gives grace to the humble (1 Peter 5:5-6).

Success has its snares. Some are obvious; I will speak here of a couple that might be less so. These are not things I observed in you, rather they are occupational hazards you face. Those who are publicly successful must resist feeling entitled to special service from others; for Christ himself came not to be served but to serve, and to give all he had to give, even his own life (Mark 10:45). Temptation can also approach in the guise of feeling you are better than others, forgetting that what you are is not from yourselves but from God. The most insidious form of attack is the one wherein any of you starts to feel more important than another member of the band, or envious of one of your brothers. I urge you to guard your name: your 3union-ness.

Come to think of it, those dangers aren’t limited just to public successes.

In spite of the hazards, I pray you will follow your calling to its fullest extent, seeking God’s glory as your signpost of success. John the Baptist is a great example: always humble (John 1:15, John 1:26-31, John 3:25-30), yet fulfilling all that God had called him to be and to do (John 1:19-23). The world desperately needs the message you bring, and it needs your example, which I fervently pray will remain as excellent as it is today.

Thank you again. Say hi to your folks for us. Our family and church are missing you already!

Yours,

Tom Gilson

*That concert link is valid as of the date of writing; it may be re-purposed in a few weeks.

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Third on my list of recommended resources for thinking Christianly is “Your church and/or a local network of like-minded people.” As I wrote at the start of this series,

Like all discipleship, this is not meant to be a solo undertaking. In some communities you may need to take leadership in this arena.

Discipleship In Community
Following Christ is a community matter. Learning to love God with all our minds is no different than learning to love him in any other way: we weren’t meant to go it alone. The famous passage on renewing of our minds, Romans 12:1-2, is followed immediately by extended teaching on life in Christian community. If I may be permitted to skip one verse for a moment, Romans 12:4-5 reads,

For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.

And that introduces five chapters’ worth of instruction on life in the body. The verse I skipped there might be of special interest, actually, to Christians who tend to be more interested in the life of the mind:

For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

Intellectual interests too often are paired with a sense of intellectual superiority. Of course we are all different and have different gifts, but this is according to God’s grace, and it means all believers are gifted by God, though not all in the same way (Romans 12:6-8):

Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.

Paul goes on to mark the real point (Romans 12:9-11):

Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord.

In terms of our relationship with the community of believers, all discipleship has one purpose: serving in love.

Building Up One Another
We grow in community by building one another up: encouraging, exhorting, teaching one another in love. An unexercised mind will grow flabby. We need to test and challenge each other with the genuine difficulties of the Bible and culture.

Now, I wish I had some really excellent examples from local churches to tell you about. I have heard of them: a church in Winchester, Virginia, and another one in McLean where mind-discipleship is taken seriously. I know they exist; but I have not had much direct experience with such churches. There are several in my current church with a zeal for this, but finding opportunities for real fellowship on this level has not always been easy. The typical adult Protestant Sunday School is misnamed, in my view: if it were really school, there would be more obvious interest in expanding members’ horizons of knowledge. Quizzes, anyone? But no.

Taking Leadership
This is why I have suggested you may have to take leadership. My wife and I have led one Truth Project group and are in the middle of a second one. The fellowship there is outstanding. If you have opportunity to join a group or to be trained in leading it, don’t miss it! You could also start a study group or a (real) Sunday School class on some more challenging material, like anything from C.S. Lewis, Keller’s The Reason for God, Grudem’s Systematic Theology, or any of Strobel’s books on apologetics. I’ve heard excellent things about Reasonable Faith chapters, too, though I have not seen any first-hand.

The Broader Community
Fellowship may be broader than one’s own church. You might try going to an apologetics conference, like the one coming up in just a few days in Chesapeake, Virginia. Finally, there is the online community: not the real thing, but a proxy version of it, and a place to connect with people with special interests in particular topics.

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Last week I included the Holy Spirit on a list of resources for thinking Christianly, with this qualification:  

God is certainly not a “resource” in the same sense as the rest of this list, yet the list would be incomplete without him. We can’t progress in any form of discipleship apart from the Holy Spirit’s work.

You’ll notice I am using “discipleship of the mind” and “thinking Christianly” almost interchangeably here. They’re not really the same, though. One of them—discipleship—is prerequisite for the other. Discipleship is following and learning from Jesus Christ. Growing in our ability to think Christianly is one fruit of that learning.

Our dependence on the Holy Spirit cannot be overemphasized (distorted, yes; overemphasized, no). When I was a very young Christian, a friend shared with me how to be filled with the Spirit. He used a booklet at the time; you can read the same life-changing material online. I strongly recommend it to you as a preface to what I say here. It has made all the difference for me!

If there is a locus classicus for Christian thinking, it must be 1 Corinthians 2:6-16:

Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written,

“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
  nor the heart of man imagined,
  what God has prepared for those who love him”—

these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.

I will only try to highlight the most relevant nuggets for our topic here. Paul speaks of a wisdom not of this age, decreed before the ages, which will not pass away. He calls it a “secret and hidden wisdom,” but it is not so in a gnostic sense (available only to the initiated few). When Paul writes of secrets and mysteries in his letters, almost always he is referring to something formerly hidden, now being made known. Thus he could say that he imparts this wisdom: it is something that can be passed along. And thus he can also say “these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit.”

Through the Spirit. The Spirit of God is he who guides Christ’s followers into all truth (John 14: 25, John 16:13). He “searches everything, even the depths of God,” which only God himself can plumb. To know God fully is God’s prerogative alone. Yet by his grace he has granted Christians the presence of the Holy Spirit within us. One of the Spirit’s purposes is to give us understanding. Paul even goes so far as to say “we have the mind of Christ”!

This contrasts with the experience of “the natural person,” the one without the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, the one (as it says shortly after in 1 Corinthians 3:3) who is “walking like mere men” (NASB translation). Christians, we do not need to live like mere humans! God lives within us, to guide us, teach us, empower us.

That is not to say that the Spirit pours knowledge into our brains unmediated. He can do that and does sometimes (rarely, in my experience), but normally, like everything else in the Christian life, there are disciplines associated with growth. In the case of Christian thinking, those disciplines include things like the list I posted last week. The Holy Spirit is not God’s shortcut to growth; he is our guide and helper along the path to growth.

(Some misunderstand 1 John 1:27 to mean we have literally no need of teaching, but that would be an odd stance for John to take in a letter that was clearly intended to teach. He was instead warning against certain claims of false teachers claiming to bring some proto-gnostic knowledge.)

So what does this mean in practical experience? (I refer you again to the message on how to be filled with the Spirit.) There must be a true desire in us to be filled by God and to follow where he leads. We must recognize our dependence on God, and confess our need for him, especially in light of our sin. Along with that we can gladly acknowledge that God is there for us: he loves us and is pleased to fulfill his promise to fill us with his Spirit. It’s a matter of knowing that it is his will (Ephesians 5:18) and that he will always answer when we pray according to his will (1 John 5:14-15).

From there it’s a matter of walking, not like mere humans, but still walking, a step at a time. As we study, God will reveal himself to us. Those of us who are walking that path know the truth of Jesus’ words (John 17:3) in his prayer to the Father: “And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

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A reference in J.P. Moreland’s modern classic, Love Your God with All Your Mind: The Role of Reason in the Life of the Soul, steered me toward another classic, this one by William Wilberforce: Real Christianity. The link there is to a modern language update published in 2007. I’ve been reading it in ebook form, so I won’t be able to supply you page numbers, and the passages I bring you will be as Wilberforce wrote them. In view of what I am going to quote, I have some qualms about even referring to a modern language update. You’ll understand what I mean as you read what he wrote. But one has to start somewhere, and I can’t object to some editor giving Christians an easy launching point. (I’ve been doing something similar myself lately.)

Wilberforce (1759-1833) is well known as one of the most influential Christian leaders of the past several hundred years. A British politician converted to Christ in his mid-20s, he devoted the rest of his life to two grand passions, one of which was abolishing slavery. His decades of persistence against slavery were met with partial success in 1807 when Britain’s slave trade was abolished by Parliament; and with final success (as far as Britain and her colonies were concerned) in 1833 when Parliament voted £20 million to be given to slaveowners in compensation for freeing all slaves. The outcome of that vote was assured just three days before Wilberforce’s death. (This story is told in Michael Apted’s 2007 film Amazing Grace.)

A man with such credentials has my attention: he understands what it means really to believe God’s word. Wilberforce’s second grand passion was to lead his country men to the same understanding. Speaking of himself in the third person, he explains in the Introduction why he wrote Real Christianity:

The main object which he [the author] has in view is, not to convince the Sceptic, or to answer the arguments of persons who avowedly oppose the fundamental doctrines of our Religion; but to point out the scanty and erroneous system of the bulk of those who belong to the class of orthodox Christians, and to contrast their defective scheme with a representation of what the author apprehends to be real Christianity.

Now, where do you suppose someone like Wilberforce, a man of social action and of worship, would begin his discourse on real Christianity? Moreland noted how striking this was. Wilberforce did not begin with prayer or piety, though he made both central in his life; nor did he begin with service, though he was such a great example of using one’s gifts to improve the world in Christ’s name. He began with the life of the mind, with apologetics, even.

View their [English Christians'] plan of life and their ordinary conduct; and not to speak at present of their general inattention to things of a religious nature, let us ask, wherein can we discern the points of discrimination between them and professed unbelievers? In an age wherein it is confessed and lamented that infidelity abounds, do we observe in them any remarkable care to instruct their children in the principles of the faith which they profess, and to furnish them with arguments for the defence of it? They would blush, on their child’s coming out into the world, to think him defective in any branch of that knowledge, or of those accomplishments which belong to his station in life, and accordingly these are cultivated with becoming assiduity. But he is left to collect his religion as he may; the study of Christianity has formed no part of his education, and his attachment to it (where any attachment to it exists at all) is, too often, not the preference of sober reason, but merely the result of early prejudice and groundless prepossession. He was born in a Christian country, of course he is a Christian; his father was a member of the church of England, so is he. When such is the hereditary religion handed down from generation to generation, it cannot surprise us to observe young men of sense and spirit beginning to doubt altogether of the truth of the system in which they have been brought up, and ready to abandon a station which they are unable to defend. Knowing Christianity chiefly in the difficulties which it contains, and in the impossibilities which are falsely imputed to it, they fall perhaps into the company of infidels; and, as might be expected, they are shaken by frivolous objections and profane cavils, which, had they been grounded and bottomed in reason and argument, would have passed by them, “as the idle wind,” and scarcely have seemed worthy of serious notice.

Wilberforce instructed me in a further reason for discipling our minds, one I should have included in my list last Monday: accountability and stewardship before God.

It were almost a waste of time to multiply arguments in order to prove how criminal the voluntary ignorance, of which we have been speaking, must appear in the sight of God. It must be confessed by all who believe that we are accountable creatures, and to such only the writer is addressing himself, that we shall have to answer hereafter to the Almighty for all the means and occasions we have here enjoyed of improving ourselves, or of promoting the happiness of others. And if, when summoned to give an account of our stewardship, we shall be called upon to answer for the use which we have made of our bodily organs, and of the means of relieving the wants and necessities of our fellow creatures; how much more for the exercise of the nobler and more exalted faculties of our nature, of invention, and judgment, and memory; and for our employment of all the instruments and opportunities of diligent application, and serious reflection, and honest decision. And to what subject might we in all reason be expected to apply more earnestly, than to that wherein our eternal interests are at issue? When God has of his goodness vouchsafed to grant us such abundant means of instruction in that which we are most concerned to know, how great must be the guilt, and how aweful the punishment of voluntary ignorance!

But let us not suppose this will come without some effort; and why should it, anyway?

And why, it may be asked, are we in this pursuit alone to expect knowledge without inquiry, and success without endeavour? The whole analogy of nature inculcates on us a different lesson, and our own judgments in matters of temporal interests and worldly policy confirm the truth of her suggestions. Bountiful as is the hand of Providence, its gifts are not so bestowed as to seduce us into indolence, but to rouse us to exertion; and no one expects to attain to the height of learning, or arts, or power, or wealth, or military glory, without vigorous resolution, and strenuous diligence, and steady perseverance. Yet we expect to be Christians without labour, study, or inquiry.

This all sounds eerily like 21st century America. Friends, we have some work to do

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From 4:05 4:30 to 5:00 EST on Monday afternoon, February 8, I will have the privilege of being interviewed by Dr. Alex McFarland on his Sound Rezn radio show on American Family Radio. Dr. McFarland is a leading Christian thinker and the president of Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, NC. We’ll be talking primarily about strategies for more effective Christian influence in today’s world, especially to help Christians stand on the truth of our faith with knowledge and with grace.

You may be within reach of an AFR station (listed here, PDF file), but if not, you can listen live (click “AFR Talk”). Either way you can phone in and join the conversation. Otherwise you can listen later: scroll to February 8, and hear the whole program beginning with an interview with Mark Cowart, or else jump ahead to the middle (27:00) where my segment begins. That move is easier to do if you go to full screen with it.

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To believe in God is to worship him. To do otherwise is impossible.

That’s not because it’s some rule he set up, like “If you’re going to move with the basketball you have to dribble it.” It’s more like, “If you add 2 and 2 you have to get 4.” If you really see who God is, there is no avoiding the response of worship. Consider these passages from the 89th Psalm:

Psalm 89:1-4

I will sing of the steadfast love of the Lord, forever;
with my mouth I will make known your faithfulness to all generations.
For I said, “Steadfast love will be built up forever;
in the heavens you will establish your faithfulness.”
You have said, “I have made a covenant with my chosen one;
I have sworn to David my servant:
‘I will establish your offspring forever,
and build your throne for all generations.’”

Psalm 89:8-11

O Lord God of hosts,
who is mighty as you are, O Lord,
with your faithfulness all around you?
9 You rule the raging of the sea;
when its waves rise, you still them.
You crushed Rahab [Egypt] like a carcass;
you scattered your enemies with your mighty arm.The heavens are yours; the earth also is yours;
the world and all that is in it, you have founded them.

God rules the earth. He sets up thrones. He founded the heavens and the earth, and they are his. He is mighty over the seas and the nations. He rules over the “hosts,” the angels of heaven. He is full of steadfast love and faithfulness. He has enemies — those who stand against his sovereign purposes — and he will rise up against them.

We, on the other hand, are his subjects. He rules over us. His kingship is one of goodness, love, and faithfulness, but it is decidedly his kingship and not ours. To see him in that position is to recognize that, though we have freedom to choose our steps, we are not in charge of our destinies. We are his creatures, created by him, in many ways the smallest of the small, in an unimaginably huge cosmos. And next to his holiness, we in our imperfection and sin are smaller yet.

To believe this is to see that he is a God of immense goodness, power, and worth. It is to see oneself as very small next to him. Psalm 8 recognizes this, yet adds a twist:

O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens.
Out of the mouth of babies and infants,
you have established strength because of your foes,
to still the enemy and the avenger.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?

Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under his feet,
all sheep and oxen,
and also the beasts of the field,
The birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!

We are small, yet not contemptible in his sight. We are flawed, yet he loves us. We rebel against him, yet he died for us.

Who can see this and not worship? The rebellious: those who rise up against a ruler they cannot manage, who hate that there is another who determines their destinies; whose view of the good is dark and twisted. Every one of us, in other words; for we have all risen up against God, we have all hated him, we have all had darkened hearts. But in that condition we do not see all of the truth of God; we do not see that it is both true and good that God is who he is, and that we are who we are.

God offers light and sight to those who will embrace what it reveals. It is a gift of his grace, not of their worthiness. Yet for those who see, to see is to worship.

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My friend Duane Zook, who heads up the humanitarian aid agency Global Aid Network (GAiN), phones in a report from Haiti:

GAiN has already distributed several hundred thousand meals in Haiti this week. Please help them continue their work.

You could even help with the work in GAiN’s U.S. distribution center, as our church has done many times. This is a church-friendly, family-friendly project that makes a huge difference for needy people not just in Haiti, but around the world.

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