The Life of the Mind

So there’s a story about a radio transcript that took place between a U.S. naval ship and Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland. It begins with the U.S. Ship: Please divert your course .5 degrees to the south to avoid a collision. Response from the Canadians: Recommend you divert your course 15 degrees to the south to avoid a collision. U.S. Ship: The is the Captain of a U.S. Navy Ship. I say again, divert your course. Canadian Authorities: No. I say again, you divert your course. U.S. Ship: This is the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Coral Sea, we are a large warship of the U.S. Navy. Divert your course now! Canadian Authorities:This is a lighthouse. Your call.

Just as an aside - especially since we’ve been talking about truth - that story apparently is not true, just something that’s been going around the internet for a long time. But it does speak to the reality of truth. That no matter how much we try to avoid it, get it to change (shift course), truth is a stubborn thing. We cannot avoid it - sooner or later we come smack up into it.

And because that’s true, as we finish up our sermon series on Tough Topics this morning, I want to consider what (and why) cultivating the life of the mind is so essential. Why we should actively seek truth, seek to know and understand the mind of Christ - who himself is The Truth.

Over the last weeks we’ve been looking at some serious issues - what I hope has been evident through all that is how deeply truth matters. Ideas have consequences, and bad ideas have victims. Perfect example of this is what’s happening in Canada.

Canada already has laws that allow for assisted suicide, and currently they are seeking to add amendments to broaden who is eligible for assisted suicide - so that those with mental illnesses can choose to take their own life, not just those who have severe physical illnesses or disabilities. Additional, since many Canadian provinces hold to a “mature minor” doctrine, this may mean that minors could choose to go the route of assisted suicide.

A disheartening side note to this has been the response of some of the Canadian churches. One denomination, the United Church of Canada, has actually written prayers designed to help with the euthanasia process. One prayer, for a person choosing to undergo assisted suicide, asks that others would understand. Another prayer is designed for children whose parent might be choosing suicide. It reads:

We know they are hurting. We have seen them cry. We have seen our parent cry and other people cry. It makes us afraid. We will miss our parent, we will miss their smile, we will miss their stories, and we will miss their fun. Did you know that mom loved camping, God? She really loved camping. We do not know where they are going, but we know they will stop hurting. We are glad they will stop hurting. We are not sure what happens when a person dies. Maybe part of them goes to a better place. Dear God, please take care of our parent when they die. Hug them very close and take care of them after, too.

That’s a prayer filled with a lot of heartfelt compassion for all those involved. It really seeks to address the suffering of all those involved. But it’s so misguided. I really think the prayer wants to reflect genuine love - but it’s so misdirected. Because it’s not rooted in truth, in what is good and right and true.

Did you notice what’s missing from this prayer, from a church, a Christian denomination?! It’s all about hurting and fear and death and what happens after we die - and it never once mentions Jesus. There’s no reference to hope we have for eternal life because of his resurrection (we are not sure what happens when a person dies!).

But it’s not just in these big, often divisive issues that truth matters so much. Truth - and our seeking after it, our cultivating the life of the mind - matters deeply because of how much it impacts our ordinary, everyday life, how we live. And most importantly, it impacts our eternal soul.

It’s sobering to think that on the Day of Judgment, all truth will be revealed. That’s day we’ll all come smack dab up against the lighthouse - the unavoidable truth of God. We’ll be confronted with whatever we may have been denying about God - of course, all the wonderful things that we’ve trusted about him will be revealed to be infinitely greater than we ever believed, that’s true as well.

But the truth of our own lives will be revealed. Everything will be uncovered, everything laid bare. Honestly, thank God for the grace we have in Jesus Christ.

One of the things that will become so clear is that sin - our sin - will be revealed to have been rooted in a lie. That somewhere along the way, we believed something false, it led us to sinful behavior.

And this, of course, has been true from the very beginning - sin came into the world through Adam and Eve because they believed a lie. Satan twisted truth, telling them that they would certainly not die if they ate of the forbidden truth. And so, because it looked good to eat and they believed they would gain wisdom that somehow God was denying them, they ate it. And death entered the world.

This is why Jesus declares about Satan , “He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native tongue, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” Whew, Jesus does not mince words.

In that same passage in John 8 where Jesus describes Satan as the father of lies, he asks those listening the question, “If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me?” This morning, I want to talk about being those who actively seek after truth - who look to Jesus…who believe him. What it means to cultivate the life of the mind so that we have the mind of Christ, we think and believe as he does - and why it’s so essential.

The Life of the Mind: Key to Transformation

Begin with Romans 12:2...Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is - his good, pleasing and perfect will.

I want you to notice something here - the default is that we are already conformed to the world and its way of thinking. We don’t have to learn to think like world - that’s where we start. The command is to be transformed by renewing your minds. Learning to think a new way - God’s way.

The challenge is that when you’re immersed in a particular culture, that way of thinking seems so natural - it’s difficult to recognize how much you may be influenced by that, because that’s all you’ve ever heard. It’s like being a fish trying to be aware of the water it swims in.

Let me give you a quick example: Reading a book that had to do with the importance of community - I learned that in most other cultures, children sleep in the same room as their parents much longer than we do here in U.S. My first reaction, that can’t be right. Because I was raised here, where put our children in separate bedrooms as infants or toddlers.

How much has our culture’s thinking on wealth (and how much stuff we have and what we should be doing with our money) and sexuality and the idea of “expressive individualism” and what’s going to give us personal happiness (and the fact that that is major value for us) - how much has all that had an impact on us?

Far more than we realize. We start as those conformed to the world. We’ve been swimming in these waters a long time.

That’s why the command is to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Transformation - change, becoming like Jesus - begins up here (point). When we begin to change how we think, the narratives we live by - which are the narratives Jesus lived by.

Then, and only then, are we able to recognize and see what is real and true and good - or as Paul puts it, will we be able to test and approve the will of God, his good, pleasing and perfect will. Ah, I get it now, this is why God wants me to live this way.

Jesus tells us the exact same thing in John 8:31-32…To the Jews who believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Notice that he’s addressing the Jews who believed him, who trusted him, who were with him. But that’s just the first step - he tells them, if you hold to my teaching, in other words, if you take in what I’m saying, listen to it and apply it to your life, that’s what makes you a genuine disciple, a follower of mine.

That’s another way of saying, be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And, as Jesus says, as you do that, as you let me teach you, then you’ll know the truth. You’ll know what’s real and true and good - and what isn’t.

By the way, I hope you’re seeing something along with this - that there’s a much greater purpose in just learning truth so that we can be right - such an easy sense of moral superiority to slip into, it feeds our ego, our sense of self-righteousness - as Paul says, knowledge - without love, puffs up.

The goal is transformation. To become like Jesus. To be a person of truth and grace. To cultivate humility, a servant’s heart. To love - God above everything else, our neighbors, just like we love ourselves. This is actually what Jesus means by freedom. You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

When I hold to the lie that I’m center of the universe, that my happiness is the most important (we don’t consciously think that, but it’s the underlying narrative we often live by) - it spurs a selfish mindset. Then I get frustrated when the world doesn’t behave the way I think it should. People get in my way, I get irritated (all these people at Walmart!).

But when I give that up and trust God as the center of the universe, there’s great freedom in that. I can let people be who they are.

Or when I believe the lie that in order for people to love me, I must be seen as smart or capable or attractive (or at least not unattractive) or good. That lie compels me to behave in way that I think will like me more. But when I live in the truth of God’s full forever love for me, I’m freed from that work - and free to love others as they are.

This is constantly happening within us - the other day, I was running late to meet with someone, I started feeling that anxiety, that need to rush, rising up within me. Why was that? What was the story that I was believing - somehow I was thinking that person would think less of me and God forbid if that was the case. It was amazing how quickly that sense of anxiety dissipated when I realized that - and I quit honking my horn to get everybody to drive faster.

And this is the case every time we sin - there’s some false belief underlying our malice, our lust, our willingness to deceive others, to judge them. Why it’s essential that we be transformed by the renewing of our minds, that we hold to the teachings of Jesus.

Why Paul made this constant prayer for his churches, listen to Colossians 1:9-10...For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, 10 so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God...

This was Paul’s continual prayer, that God would fill the Colossians with the knowledge of his, to give them wisdom and understanding into the truth, to know what is good and right and true

So that…here’s the reason - you may life a life worthy of the Lord, please him in every way, bear fruit in every good work, come to know and experience God in all this goodness.

So we’ve spent time talking about why cultivating the life of the mind is so essential (It’s the key to transformation), and I want to spend just a few moments talking about how to do this.

As usual, we talk about engaging in spiritual disciplines - which is how we seek to put into practice what Jesus is teaching us. This is what Jesus means when he says, “hold to my teachings”, put them into practice - to live out what he teaches. Share a little bit of what Richard Foster refers to as the Spiritual Discipline of Study.

In study, we’re seeking to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. We’re cultivating the life of the mind so that we think like Jesus, we have the mind of Christ. Paul puts it this way in 2 Corinthians 10:5 - We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

This requires mindset of a student, which is what we are - what it means to be a disciple, a follower of Jesus. We want to be lifelong learners of Jesus Christ. Let me commend to you three areas of study (courtesy of Richard Foster and his book, the Celebration of Discipline).

Study of books, first and foremost, the Bible.

Let’s be honest, the Bible is a big book (66, actually). It’s intimidating. But here’s the good news - you don’t have to study it all at once (lifelong learners!). Day by day, little by little. My daily Bible reading plan takes me through the entire New Testament (27 books) in a year. Devotional reading is different from study - it’s meditative, contemplative, while study is analytical - we want to know and understand.

But choose a book of the Bible (letter from the NT) and take a month to study it. Read it through several times. Take notes - what does it say? What does it mean? Through Faithlife account, you have amazing Biblical resources available to you through Logos Bible study software.

Take part in our Spiritual Formation group - we’re working our way through 1 Corinthians, studying it - and applying it to our lives.

Or, make a commitment to reading and studying a book - it’s hard to recommend one, there’s so many (happy to recommend) - but I know my thinking has been stretched and challenged - my mind renewed - by reading C.S. Lewis and Dallas Willard and Philip Yancey and so on.

A final note - consider the time of message as study time. Take notes. I approach this as a time of teaching.

Another area of study is to study relationships - observe people interacting. And this includes yourself, to grow in self awareness. Goal of life in Jesus is to become like him, to love like he does. That happens in relationship.

How people use speech - often, to justify our actions? What are the things that control people? Control us? Observe your inner feelings and mood swings, what controls your moods? Why do we like certain people and dislike others? What do these things teach us about ourselves - what are the beliefs driving those feelings, those moods, those likes or dislikes?

This has been so helpful for me in my own life in Christ, to simply be more attentive to relationships, and to myself, what’s driving my feelings and moods and likes - trying to understand what the thoughts are that drive those things within me.

Take time this week to be attentive to relationships that go on around you - and to yourself, to study yourself.

Finally, to study our world, our culture, events, institutions. It’s helpful as we seek not to be conformed to the world is to know and understand the world - how our culture’s values and thinking either aligns with the gospel of Jesus, and how it differs.

Really, everything we’ve been doing in our sermon series has been an exercise in study of our world, seeking to understand how we’ve gotten to the place we have with wokeism and sexuality and gender identity and so on.

Wonderful resources here - Breakpoint.org, their whole focus. Writings of C.S. Lewis still hold today. Sean McDowell has been a helpful resource for me, watch his videos regularly.

Let me finish with this, with taking us back to where we started, the great story of reality. Jesus is Lord.

Lord of all creation - everything made through him and in him and for him. In him all things hold together.

Jesus is Lord of salvation - through him, his blood shed on the cross, God is reconciling all things to himself. bringing it all together.

This isn’t just wishful thinking, some fairy tale. This is the story of reality. Jesus said, I am the Way and the Life and the Truth. Jesus is the truth. To know Jesus is to know the truth and to know the truth is to know Jesus.

Here’s the best part - the truth of who Jesus is, is good news. We have so much to be thankful for...

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