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Loving God with Our Minds Spencer C. Lawrence, Church of the Cross, Hoffman Estates, IL, October 8, 2006 Toward the end of Jesus’ ministry a rabbi came to him with what was probably a typical rabbinical debate question: “Which is the greatest commandment of them all?” Without hesitation, Jesus responded with “Hear, O Israel: The Lord your God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” It is drawn from the book of Deuteronomy (Chapter 6) with one small addition: the phrase “and with all your mind.” I suspect that Jesus wasn’t making up anything new, but rather the saying was the usual rabbinical formula for his day. At least, the rabbi who asked the question wasn’t surprised by his answer. With the influence of Greek culture, it is likely that rabbis added “mind” to make sure it was understood that we should love God with our whole selves. In our day we think of the mind in terms of intellect. It has to do with thinking great thoughts, explaining the world, finding solutions and creating new things. In Scripture the mind is more than that. The mind is the “place”, so to speak, where we meet God. John Ortberg writes: “The mind is an instrument of staggering potential. But its potential is not measured by IQ or academic degrees. For is it in our minds that we live in conscious awareness of and interaction with God.” In fact, throughout history, people have spoken of meeting God in their thoughts. Ortberg notes that twentieth century Catholic social reformer Dorothy Day spoke of her “notions” which bore the stamp of God’s authorship. Quaker writers have spoken of them as “concerns” and “promptings” and “leadings” and, more recently, “divine breathings.” The mind is “where” we meet God. It is principally with our minds that we love God. Before we can love God with our minds we need our minds renewed. Paul wrote to the Romans that they should offer their bodies as living sacrifices to God. That involves not being conformed to this world and its values. And it entails the renewal of our minds so that we can discern what the will of God is. The reason we need our minds renewed, of course, is because of human sin. Because of sin we don’t think as clearly as we could. Because of sin we aren’t able to hear the voice of God very well. We need a renewal of our minds. Renewing our minds isn’t something we do. It is something God does. The foundation for this renewal was laid when Jesus died for the sin of the world and when he rose in victory over death. It is this pivotal event, Peter writes, that gives us a new birth of hope. Because Jesus died and rose we can come to God with the confidence that God loves us in spite of who we are or what we’ve done. We can come expecting God to give us a new start in life. Renewal of our minds is one of the central benefits of Christ’s dying and rising. How then to we appropriate this benefit? How do we make it our own? The most basic thing we can do is to entrust ourselves to God because of Jesus dying and rising. Some people came to Jesus, John tells us, because they wanted a free meal. (He had just fed them with the loaves and the fish.) He encouraged them to focus instead of doing the work of God. They asked, “Well, what is the work of God?” Jesus said, “This is the work of God – that you believe in the one God has sent.” The most important thing we can do is to trust in Jesus Christ whom God sent to save us. It doesn’t mean that we have perfect faith. It doesn’t mean that we stop asking questions. It doesn’t mean that we will never doubt again. It simply means that we recognize that by ourselves we can’t please God. In other words, we can’t remake ourselves. But God can when we entrust ourselves to Jesus Christ, God’s only Son. Once we do that, God places the Holy Spirit within us and begins to change us from the inside out. I’ve have told you before that before I entrusted myself to God through Christ as a high school student, I found high school a fairly unfriendly place. I can vividly remember walking into the study hall before classes began – students always gathered there – and feeling that no one smiled. If they did they didn’t smile at me. Once I entrusted myself to Jesus Christ things began to change – not a lot, but little by little. Again, a vivid memory was walking into the study hall one day and noticing that almost everyone was smiling – smiling at me. It was not so much that they had changed. Rather it was that I had changed. Now I wish I could say that the working of God’s Spirit has produced a steady upward path for me. It hasn’t. I’ve not always cooperated, and there have been a lot of ups and downs, high points and low points. The real point here is that renewal of our minds begins with the working of God’s Spirit in response to faith in Jesus Christ. This is the first step in loving God with our minds. We, however, are not just passive participants. John Ortberg suggests that one way we can learn to love God with our minds is by making our minds dwelling places for God. He notes that some cognitive psychologists contend that every thought comes charged with either positive or negative charge, either charged with hope or charged with despair. That would explain why two people respond to serious illness in different ways. For one it the worst news ever leading them to despair. For another it becomes an opportunity to trust God more and do whatever is necessary to get well again. Making our minds dwelling places for God will help us face life’s challenges. Paul wrote to the Philippians of the importance of choosing what they thought about. He said: “Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” Paul is saying that we can choose what we think about. As Christians we ought to choose to think about good and wholesome things. And if we choose to think about these things, the peace of God is more likely to dwell within us. How can we do that? We can make our minds dwelling places for God by reading God’s word. For some people it may mean that they will have to dust off the family Bible and begin reading it again. If you do that, don’t start with Genesis and don’t start with Revelation. Start with one of the Gospels – Mark is a short, easy one to read. For others it may mean becoming involved in a Bible study or participating more regularly in adult education or Sunday School or youth activities. It may also mean that there are some movies we don’t need to see or some TV shows we should stop viewing. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I find I have to turn off the news because it either makes me angry or anxious. The evening news thrives on tragedy. Anxiety sells. It may be true. It may be real. But it doesn’t fit into the larger reality created and redeemed by God. It’s important that we Christians keep informed, but sometimes there’s just too much information, and often it’s information that’s formed not by God but by fear and hatred. One way we can learn to love God with our minds is by making them dwelling places for God. Second, we can rely on the Christian community. I have been a part of covenant groups for the vast majority of my ministry. I joined a covenant group in this presbytery within the first month of my arrival. A covenant group is made up of people, in my case, pastors, who agree to meet regularly – we meet once month – to worship together, share our concerns and pray for one another. I can’t count the number of times that one or more of us have come to the meeting distracted by problems in a marriage, with health, or in our churches. Our thinking has gone awry because we have focused on the problem. We have needed one another to get us back on track. Ortberg recounts the story of mathematician John Nash. The movie A Beautiful Mind with Russell Crowe as Nash tells how he was affected and almost destroyed by schizophrenia, and how, over time, he came back to his senses. A key piece of his recovery was the support of his wife. More important he relied on other people to help him keep in touch with reality. You may recall that he heard voices and saw imaginary people. One time after he ended a class he was standing by the door saying good-bye to his students and a man approached him asking to speak to him. He was a representative from the Nobel Committee come to tell that he had been nominated for the Nobel Prize in economics. Nash didn’t trust his own senses and asked a student standing nearby, “Excuse me – do you see a man standing there? Is he in your line of vision? Is he for real?” The students said that she did, and then Nash turned to the man saying, "O.K." I’ll talk to you now.” The point here is that we need one another to keep our thinking on track. Left to ourselves we can come up with all sorts of strange ideas about God or about ourselves. “Is my illness a punishment from God?” “Did I lose my job because of some sin I committed long ago?” “Is my run of bad luck a sign that God is out to get me?” The answer is to all of them is “No.” But sometimes we need to hear someone else say it before we can believe it. We need to stay connected to one another so we can come to love God with our minds. Third, we also need to learn to listen to God. We need to learn to meditate. Now some people will ask, “Isn’t meditation for Buddhists?” Or “Isn’t it something monks do?” Well, yes it is. They both spend time meditating. But, as Ortberg notes, they also eat breakfast. Does that mean we should avoid those things, too? Of course not. Meditation is not foreign to Biblical faith. Scripture is filled with references about meditating or contemplating God. Psalm 1 puts it this way when talking about wise people: “. . . their delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law they meditate day and night.” Mediation has long been a practice of Biblical faith. You may ask, “What is meditation, anyway?” Ortberg suggests that it may be helpful to think of it as “positive worry.” You know how we get when we worry about something. We think about it night and day. It occupies our minds. When we’re distracted by work or something else we sometimes choose to come back to it and continue to ruminate over all the bad things that could happen. Worry, then, is a kind of meditation. Except that it involves meditating on the wrong things. Meditating that helps listens to what God says. Of course, it begins with Scripture, but it moves to prayer as we ask God to speak to us, as we ask God to guide us, as we ask God to lead us. And after we have asked, we take time to listen to what God is saying to us. You see, when we meditate we assume that God can and will speak to our minds directly. And if we wonder whether the thoughts that come to our minds are really from God or not, we can compare them to what God has said in Holy Scripture and with what the Christian community affirms. We may make mistakes from time to time, but the key is to keep on listening to God speak. It’s a way God we can learn to love God with our minds. Years ago, the American Negro College Fund had a campaign slogan: “A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste.” And indeed it is. But our minds are not just for acquiring and processing information. We’re not computers of flesh. We’re men and women, boys and girls made in the image of God and redeemed by Jesus Christ. Because of that Scripture invites us to love God with our minds. | |||||
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