Tim Saunders of Cheam Baptist Church looks at what the apostle Paul says
‘You certainly gave us a lot to think about.’
This comment to the preacher is normally made in a tone suggesting that is the last thing anyone comes to church to do.
In the 18th century, Immanuel Kant presented religion as a private matter which could not be proved. Here’s the deal that goes with it; keep your faith to yourself and we won’t question its rationality (or your sanity). Some Christians are perfectly happy to go along with this and ‘just know’ their faith is real. But, as the New Atheists have made us all too aware, there is no ceasefire.
The mind in Romans
One of the threads running through Paul’s letter to the Romans is that of the mind. His argument is that when you turn to God through faith in Jesus Christ, rather than having to shut down your brain, your mental faculties are restored to you.1
Romans 1 gives the diagnosis that whilst we are well aware of the reality and claim of God we determinedly resist this. We really know we owe our existence to God; know that behind it all lies not some random bang but a supernatural agent with a brilliant mind (1.18). But if God is God then he can tell us how to live and what to do, and that is the last thing we want. We don’t want to thank him as that would mean we owed him.
So, instead of, for example, Stephen Fry expressing his gratitude to his beneficent creator for forests and oceans, mountains and beaches, flora and fauna, music and science, an amazing array of food and drink, love and friendship... we hear him ranting against a God who is, according to Fry, vicious and stupid.2 And we find this attempted character-assassination of God is so popular it goes viral. Romans 1 is not easy reading but it certainly chimes with the world as we know it.
Rejecting God = intellectual decay
There are consequences to this rejection of our creator. The first is moral decay (1.26,27). When people give God up, then God gives them up to their appetites, to sexual incontinence and perversion. What is sometimes less observed though is the mental or intellectual decay that Paul highlights. ‘Their thinking became futile. Their foolish hearts are darkened. They think they are so clever, though in reality they are utter fools.’ (1.21,22).
The Bible teaches that we are under God and over creation. Ironically, when we wilfully ignore our place under God, instead of rising to godhood we sink to the ground (Genesis 3.19) and end up worshipping and serving created things. Following our rebellion, we become addicts to gifts that are meant to serve us and cause us to return thanks to God. Such minds descend into depravity as well as darkness (1.28).
Paul alerts us that people think it is very clever to dispatch God intellectually. This explains a lot. The darlings of the BBC education arm, Richard Dawkins, the ubiquitous Stephen Fry, Andrew Marr and the more recent acolyte Brian Cox, along with Stephen Hawking, are viewed as the cleverest people in Britain. They are atheists to a man. What is rather surprising is that they are not exactly cool young guys (with the possible exception of Brian Cox, born 1968) but (I should add, like the author) white, middle class, male, baby boomers.3 Young people, rise up and rebel against this mono-cultural, predictable, political correctness!
Told what to think
The playwright Tom Stoppard has recently complained that audiences now need everything explained and subtlety is totally lost on them.4 People have been told what to think rather than how to think. So, the education system becomes more system and less education. Paul is a believer in Christians thinking for themselves. As he counsels in the context of ‘disputable matters’ (14.1) even though he has his own view, ‘let each one make up their own mind’ (14.5). You have the Word of God. You have the Holy Spirit. Think for yourself.
This was a keystone of the Reformation. The people were not to contract out their thinking to the church. Or, today, to the education system, or to the BBC, or to the viral intellectuals.
Beginning to think straight...
Paul explains in his letter how returning to God helps you to think straight. In chapter 8 he sets out two mindsets; the mind under the flesh, which drifts into what the flesh wants, and the mind under the Spirit. ‘The flesh’ in the Bible is not restricted to physical appetites, but if you knock off the last letter and turn it round you get the gist – self. It is impossible for this type of mind to think objectively because; a) it will always be thinking ‘What’s in it for me?’ and trying to rationalise this; and, b) it is hostile to God (8.7). By contrast, those who live by the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. Such a mind is free to explore what is best for God and the common good and, being released from the defensiveness and nervousness of self-interest, leads to a state of mind of life and peace (8.8).
Neither does the renewed mind stop there. In 12.2,3 Paul urges us to enter a process in which we offer ourselves to God as living sacrifices. We are thereby transformed by the renewing of the mind so it increasingly aligns with the will of God. Being secure, we will even be able to think of ourselves with sober judgment, not having to pretend we are something we are not, or more gifted than we are.
... and face down evil
Of course the Bible recognises that something has gone very badly wrong, with the associated shrapnel flying everywhere. One of the inconsistencies of the atheist mindset is to complain about ‘evil’. If the world is a freak accident and human beings a blip on the geological time charts, not only can no-one define evil, it doesn’t exist in any objective way. Conversely, someone who trusts God now has the moral authority to refer to evil and, by following Jesus, can join him in doing something about it. The mind under the Spirit is no longer set on what the flesh desires; it is not looking after number one any longer (cf 8.5,6).
This was exemplified in the recent film on the life of Martin Luther King, Selma, which gives full value to the Christian faith of the civil rights’ activists, both black and white. From the gospels King learned the way of nonviolence, as opposed to the call to arms of his contemporary Malcolm X. He steeled himself for the long and lonely struggle through prayer and fellowship. Most of all, although he feared death, he knew that the public good and the cause of justice was worth his life (if required) and that this life is not all there is.
For who shall separate us from the love of Christ? (8.35). Paul lists a number of possible contenders, mostly man-made evils; trouble, hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness, threat, sword. Facing death every day, he could have run away, but it was actually in all these things that he became a more-than-conqueror.
In the end, only God
We recently learned of the death of Kayla Mueller, who, compelled by the plight of the Syrian refugees, left her home in the USA for Aleppo. There she was kidnapped by IS. In her last letter home she too wrote of the mindset which controlled and empowered her. ‘I remember mom always telling me that all in all in the end the only one you really have is God. I have come to a place in experience where, in every sense of the word, I have surrendered myself to our creator [because] literally there was no else ... & by God & by your prayers I have felt tenderly cradled in freefall.’ 5
When it comes to confronting evil and suffering you can model yourself on Stephen Fry. Or you can model yourself on Kayla Mueller, Martin Luther King and St Paul as they modelled themselves on Christ.
