Love Your God with All Your Mind: The Role of Reason in the Life of the Soul

Anti-intellectualism has spawned an irrelevant gospel. Today, we share the gospel primarily as a means of addressing felt needs.

But their overall effect was to overemphasize immediate personal conversion to Christ instead of a studied period of reflection and conviction; emotional, simple, popular preaching instead of intellectually careful and doctrinally precise sermons; and personal feelings and relationship to Christ instead of a deep grasp of the nature of Christian teaching and ideas.

I am responsible for what I believe and, I might add, for what I refuse to believe, because the content of what I do or do not believe makes a tremendous difference to what I become and how I act.

While the Christian faith clearly teaches that believers are to be involved as good citizens in the state, nevertheless, it is obvious why so many secularists are addicted to politics because political power is a surrogate for a Higher Power.

Propositional knowledge is justified true belief; it is believing something that is true on the basis of adequate grounds.

God is not honored when his people use bad arguments for what may actually be correct conclusions.

As Puritan Cotton Mather proclaimed, “Ignorance is the Mother not of Devotion but of HERESY.”4

I fear that our inaccurate emphasis on the Holy Spirit’s role in understanding Scripture has become an easy shortcut to the hard work of building a personal library of study tools and using them.

Today, people are inclined to think that the sincerity and fervency of one's beliefs are more important than the content. As long as we believe something honestly and strongly, we are told, then that is all that really matters. Reality is basically indifferent to how sincerely we believe something.

3. Secular ideas have replaced the traditional view.

As G. K. Chesterton bemoaned, once people stop believing in God, the problem is not that they will believe nothing; rather, the problem is that they will believe anything. This

When your view is criticized or even ridiculed on television, on radio talk show, or in a newspaper editorial, don't just react angrily. Take a moment to jot down on paper the person's main thesis and how that thesis was supported. Then do two things. First, assume the person is expressing at least some good points and try to identify them. This assumption may be false, but the search for common ground with intellectual opponents is a good habit. In the process of identifying these good points, try to argue against your own view. Second, try to state on paper exactly how you would argue against the view being expressed in an intellectually precise yet emotionally calm way.

The way we reach decisions today, the manner in which we dialogue about issues, and the political correctness we see all around us are dehumanizing expressions of the anti-intellectualism in modern society when it comes to broad worldview issues. Rhetoric without reason, persuasion without argument are manipulation

Christians must rely on the Holy Spirit in their intellectual pursuits, but this does not mean they should expend no mental sweat of their own in defending the faith.

The important thing to note is that we humans have the power to “see,” to be directly aware of, to directly experience a wide range of things, many of which are not subject to sensory awareness with the five senses.

Experience is more basic than ultimate worldview presuppositions and, in fact, the evidence of experience provides data for evaluating rival worldviews or interpretations of some event.

Religion is now viewed by many as a placebo or emotional crutch precisely because that is how we often pitch the gospel to unbelievers.

Knowledge by acquaintance is sometimes called “simple seeing,” being directly aware of something.

The role of intellectual development is primary in evangelical Christianity, but you might not know that from a cursory look at the church today.

If this is correct, then sermons should target people’s thinking as much as their wills and feelings.

We sing, “In my heart, Lord, be glorified,” but when was the last time you heard someone sing, “In my intellectual life, Lord, be glorified”?

The God of the Bible requires teachers who diligently study His Word and handle it accurately (compare 2 Timothy 2:15 and 1 Timothy 4:15-16).

while few would actually put it in these terms, faith is now understood as a blind act of will, a decision to believe something that is either independent of reason or that is a simple choice to believe while ignoring the paltry lack of evidence for what is believed. By contrast with this modern misunderstanding, biblically, faith is a power or skill to act in accordance with the nature of the kingdom of God, a trust in what we have reason to believe is true.

Here’s a simple definition of knowledge: It is to represent reality in thought or experience the way it really is on the basis of adequate grounds.

As theologian Carl Henry put it, “Training the mind is an essential responsibility of the home, the church, and the school. Unless evangelicals prod young people to disciplined thinking, they waste — even undermine — one of Christianity’s most precious resources.

What is important for our children is that they stay pure in college and, perhaps, witness, have a quiet time, and pray regularly. Obviously, these are important. But for a disciple, the purpose of college is not just to get a job. Rather, it is to discover a vocation, to identify a field of study in and through which I can serve Christ as my Lord.

1. Knowledge by acquaintance.

As G. K. Chesterton bemoaned, once people stop believing in God, the problem is not that they will believe nothing; rather, the problem is that they will believe anything.

when people learn what they believe and why, they become bold in their witness and attractive in the way they engage others in debate or dialogue.

Sunday school classes, discipleship materials, and sermons too often address the heart and not the head, or focus on personal growth and piety and not on cultivating an intellectual love for God in my vocation.