Happy to see these exuberant youths so on fire for the Lord. Pastor Malcolm gave an inspiring reminder that our generation yearns to experience God and there is nothing wrong with that (in fact much to be encouraged) yet we need to know that we know what and why and who we believe. The Bible does not call us to be tranformed by the 'removing' of our minds! Instead it calls for the renewal of our minds. Thank you so much for prayer partners and Gary/Alexa for giving an untested speaker much needed practice and trust :)
As a curious teenager, I was disturbed by what I read in Genesis and asked a Christian science teacher,“Is the universe really 6 thousand years old or millions of years old?”
He looked at me and asked back: "Does God answer your prayers?" If it 'works', then why ask questions about whether it's true? The life of the mind is often neglected.
One reason is misunderstanding of Jesus' call to have ‘child-like faith’. It meant having the humility and guile-less dependence of a child, not a toddler's IQ as condition to enter the Kingdom. “In respect to evil be like infants, but in your thinking be mature.” (1 Cor 14)
Another reason is sometimes we confuse thinking/questioning with unbelief. It gives some people the impression that to be a Christian, we must only believe but never ask questions or think through our faith. Thinking is not the enemy of faith. In fact, getting people to think about the big questions of life is a friend of faith. Nowadays the challenge is to creatively point people to realities deeper than our investments, waistlines, holidays, retirement packages. See how Jesus answers questions with questions.
Someone once said: "Faith is not a substitute for knowledge but a response to it". It is not believing what you know ain't true. Sitting on a chair involves faith - knowing that the chair will hold my weight and active trust in committing myself to sit on it. Knowing (scientia), trusting (assensus) and committing (fide). Why do we need to develop a Christian mind Or a biblical perspective on life, the world, on our work? Simply put, it is part of loving and following God.
William Temple: "To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to open the heart to the love of God, and to devote the will to the purpose of God."
In the age of Google and youtube, we cannot isolate people from ideas (even dangerous ones) but we can innoculate them (giving people the tools to think for themselves or introduce these viruses so their bodies can develop an immune system)
Comments