I've been reading through Gordon MacDonald's book "Ordering Your Private World" lately and just finished the chapter on keeping your mind healthy/strong as a Christian. He presented a lot of food for thought that really resonated with me.
He commented that we need to exercise our minds as Christians because God created us in His image. We have the mind of Christ and therefore should be the most creative people in the world. Instead, we often turn off our minds and follow some strong-willed leader semi/mostly blindly. (Jonestown anyone?)
We also need to use our minds so we can engage the culture. If we aren't constantly exercising and disciplining our minds towards Godliness, then we are more likely to get sucked into the culture around us and dragged down into that culture. God's word is filled with examples of how Israel continually let themselves be influenced by the people around them rather than witnessing for the God who'd called them His people. In Judges, it ends with the sad line that "Everyone did what was right in his own eyes." In Chronicles, Israel is led away into captivity for falling so far from God - first with the northern kingdom who never had a God-following king, then with the southern kingdom who had some good kings, but not enough.
Even the churches in the New Testament let themselves get carried away with the flow of the culture - probably why we have so many exhortations to exercise and discipline ourselves to be in the world, but not of the world. As one hymn tells us - this world is not my home, I'm just passin' through. We need to do our part while we are here, but this is not our final destination and too often we live like it is our last stop.
One comment that really touched a nerve was "amusement". Gordon brings our attention to the root for the word - muse, to think, a- without. Basically, this leads us to "without thinking". I've been convinced for a long time that our society will rise or fall based on how we use our leisure time. Do we amuse ourselves? TV? Games? Music? Sports? Books? All of them are good, in moderation. I tend towards books, games, and music - sometimes too much so. I have to ask myself regularly - Am I building myself up through these leisure activities, staying put, or actually moving backwards?
The last point Gordon brings up is based on another author and how we need to serve God with all of our mind, soul, heart, and strength. Gordon touches on how this can relate to people who are emotional, but don't have any intellect behind the emotion. Others who are intellectual, but don't have depth or emotion. Still others who have experience, but no emotion. We need to be perfectly balanced or we'll find ourselves out of control and easily manipulated (or the manipulators). Personally, I need to guard against over-intellectualizing my faith and translating that head-knowledge to heart-knowledge and life-application.
If you're reading this - how is your private world? Are you mentally flabby in your faith or are you growing? Are you the same Christian you were 1 year ago? 5 years? 10 years?
In Him,
-Peter
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