The Loss of Thinking.

If you take the time to talk to some of the homeless, particularly the drug users, you will see a blankness in their eyes and countenance. It's as if they are not really there, and this occurs not only when they are high. This is also true for the culture we live in, and in some cases, it has been adopted by evangelical Christians.

People today often prefer not to think about things that truly matter, such as eternity, the meaning of life, our likeness to the image of God, and many other profound matters of life. To them, it doesn’t matter. People are occupied by the small things and put little effort into the big ideas. They don’t want to think about things that might cause them some distress, so they choose not to think about deep matters. There is today a strong leaning towards anti-intellectualism, and one author has called our society a culture of idiots. “In short, Bernstein concludes, we are creating the idiot culture. ‘For the first time in our history, the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming our cultural norm, even our cultural ideal.’[i] As Neil Postman has said, “we are amusing ourselves to death.”[ii]
In elementary school, when we were in a play and forgot the words, the teacher would whisper the lines to us from the sidelines behind the curtain. This is how most people live. People whisper to them what they should think and believe from the sidelines, and they adopt them as the way things should be without thinking them through and seeing the contradictions, distortions and inconsistencies. They accept these beliefs even though they go against reason.

People don’t want to put the effort into learning; they just want to be spoon-fed primarily by social media. Anti-intellectualism has always been a problem, but it has been greatly enhanced today. Along with this has been the death of the art of conversation. Today, the only thing most people can talk about is themselves or their uninformed opinions, often not based on reason, but only on their own personal feelings. There is no authority for their beliefs; it is just their preference.

Thinking can be difficult, that is why a lot of people avoid it. Learning can also require great effort, especially in deep matters. Often it seems like an Olympic wrestling match. However, God has gifted mankind with reason, revelation and the Holy Spirit to lead us into truth. Truth is much more difficult to receive than lies or opinions because it gets to the core of our brokenness. Only truth will set us free and bring healing. Lies only subdue the angst.

Many Evangelical Christians are anti-intellectual as well. It is difficult to get Christians to attend and participate in a truly Biblical Bible studies or take courses offered by the church, or read books, to enhance their learning of Theology, apologetics, evangelism, ethics and Biblical spirituality. Also, whatever happened to Sunday School? Meanwhile, the secular culture is brainwashing our children and adults with all kinds of weird ideas. “Religion is the road to knowledge? Ignorance as the weapon of Satan?”[iii] Just attending Sunday Morning Worship is not enough to equip you for the work of ministry and for living and proclaiming the gospel.

“At the root, evangelical anti-intellectualism is both a scandal and a sin. It is a scandal in the sense of being an offence and a stumbling block that needlessly hinders serious people from considering the Christian faith and coming to Christ. It is a sin because it is a refusal, contrary to the first of Jesus’ two great commandments, to love the Lord our God with all our minds.”[iv] “There is no longer a Christian Mind…The Christian Mind has succumbed to the secular drift with a degree of weakness unmatched in Christian History.”[v] “ There is a grand Irony in the fact that we evangelicals are citizens in a republic whose revolution was led by intellectuals and are disciples in a community of faith whose reformation was led by intellectuals—yet we are the epitome of anti-intellectuals and proud of it.”[vi]

Ideas make the world go round and influence every part of our society and culture. Lose the mind and lose the world. There has to be the discipline of apologetics and evangelism, etc., because there are many lies, half-truths, copies of the truth and illusions that must be countered in grace with truth. Unless truth is counter, we will be susceptible to the lies and distortions. Worldliness among Christians is rampant, and the world bombards us with its worldview and attitude towards the truth, as do our schools. These must be loving persuasions to counter the lies. “Evangelicals have chosen to rely on a rhetoric of protest, pronouncement, Pickering rather than persuasion.”[vii]

There is a danger of only seeing one view and rejecting others because of their interpretations, especially among evangelicals in the matter of Biblical understanding and application. One person believes that creation occurred in six literal days, and others believe the days were indefinite time periods. It isn’t a matter of essentials to salvation or of the credibility of the Bible as a whole. We have focused on rejection of Biblical interpretation rather than a dialogue of respectful leaning from each other and accepting of other views that are not heresy or false teaching.

Because there is a rejection of reason and thinking through difficult matters of truth, there is also a bias toward an anti-Christian worldview. If Jesus is the essence of truth, as he stated, then it is not surprising that those who don’t want to walk in the truth are against it. (Romans 1:18) “Thirty-four percent of academics rated evangelicals as a menace to democracy, compared with only 14 percent who see the danger from racists, the Ku Klux Klan, or Nazis.”[viii]

People will talk about many small matters, but especially in Canada, talk about God, truth, the meaning of life and the gospel with many people is off the table. They are very dismissive and seek to change the topic or distract with small matters. It is part of the culture and not a good part. This is due to the mockery of the secular elite and their distorted pseudo-intellectualism, with seeming sophistication, to avoid the truth.

Universities used to be engaged in teaching students critical thinking. That is thinking that is based on reason and logic. John Wesley said, “It is a fundamental principle with us that to renounce reason is to renounce religion, that religion and reason go hand in hand, that all irrational religion is false religion.”[ix]

Thinking is essential to live life to the fullest and to enter the peace that truth brings. Sure, it requires concentrated effort, but it is of surpassing worth. To think is to connect with God and to restore our souls in him. “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul” (Psalm 23:1-3).

[i] Os Guinness, Fit Bodies, Fat Minds: Why Evangelicals Don’t Think And What To Do About it, (Grand Rapids. MI: Baker Book House,1994) p. 70.

[ii] Ibid, p. 76.

[iii] Ibid, p.23.

[iv] Ibid, p. 11.

[v] Harry Blamires’s, The Christian Mind, cited in Fit Bodies and Fat Minds. P. 11

[vi] Ibid, Os Guinness, p. 24.

[vii] Ibid, p. 18.

[viii] Ibid, p. 17.

[ix] Ibid, p. 32.