As someone who has always had a stronger bent toward the intellectual things of God rather than a seeker of the less concrete and visible aspects of faith, I am naturally attracted to a book that "is a book to help Christians to think about thinking" (back cover). Something that has come to me in a powerful way (especially over this past year) is as my mind comes to understand God and His Word more, my experiences of those less concrete and visible aspects of my faith have become more tangible and more powerful in shaping my relationship with God. The connection between knowing and feeling is so intricate and I am positive that I have only scratched the surface of this in my journey. So, I welcome any insight on how to grow this marriage of two seemingly opposite aspects of faith. That the book on this subject was written by John Piper (who I'm sure, 200 years from now, will be considered one of the greatest theologians of this generation) is just an added bonus.
Piper starts out the book explaining "the ultimate goal of life is that God be displayed as glorious because of all he is and all that he has made and done - especially the grace he has shown in the work of Christ. The way we glorify him is by knowing him truly, by treasuring him above all things, and by living in a way that shows he is our supreme treasure...The more we see of his surpassing greatness and knowledge and wisdom and power and justice and wrath and mercy and patience and goodness and grace and love, the more we will treasure him" (p. 15). This is John Piper in a nutshell - it's like he wrote three sentences to sum up all the books I've ever read by him. Brilliant. But in this case, it's just the start of something new. It's very important to him from the start that his readers know where he is coming from and in this book it is finding the balance between anti-intellectualism and over-intellectualism which can both be a problem. "It's not about going to school or getting degrees or having prestige. It's not about the superiority of intellectuals. It's about using the means God has given us to know him, love him, and serve people. Thinking is one of those means. I would like to encourage you to think, but not to be too impressed with yourself when you do" (p. 17).
The beginning of the book is so fun to read as Piper shares his journey from being an academic to accepting the call on his life to be a pastor. He is, by gifting, a thinker and believes "[t]hinking is indispensable on the path to passion for God. Thinking is not an end in itself. Nothing but God himself is finally an end in itself. Thinking is not the goal of life...thinking under the mighty hand of God, thinking soaked in prayer, thinking carried by the Holy Spirit, thinking tethered to the Bible, thinking in pursuit of more reasons to praise and proclaim the glories of God, thinking in the service of love - such thinking is indispensable in a life of fullest praise to God" (p. 27). The two Scriptures that he intends to make the main point of the book and support his thoughts are 2 Timothy 2:7 and Proverbs 2:1-6. "Thinking is essential on the path to understanding. But understanding is a gift of God. That's the point of this book" (p. 30). He then goes on to tell of the impact that Jonathan Edwards has had on his own thought about the connection between thinking and feeling. "The apex of glorifying God is enjoying him with the heart. But this is an empty emotionalism where that joy is not awakened and sustained by true views of God for who he really is. That is mainly what the mind is for" (p. 37).
The next section deals with what Piper means by thinking and how he wants the reader to apply it to studying what we read, especially the Bible. "The Bible is the main place that we come to know God, and the Bible is a book, and a book requires thinking" (p. 41). When he says 'thinking' and 'understanding' he means "working hard with our minds to figure out meaning from texts" (p. 45). He knows that this requires being intentional and that taking on this intention can be difficult but "[t]he person who will not embrace the pain and frustration will remain at lower levels of achievement and joy...If you cannot embrace the pain of learning and must have instant gratification, you forfeit the greatest rewards of life" (p. 47). I appreciated how he said this because it will be an encouragement to me when I would rather sit and read a magazine or watch TV with my spare time. Any bit of time I spend trying to think about the Word and understand Scriptures is an investment in my own joy, whether immediate or future. "There comes a point when we choose to be intentional about our thinking, so that we grow in what we see and understand. If we don't choose to think harder, we will settle for an adolescent level of understanding the rest of our lives" (p. 48). My thought after I read this was 'Umm, no thank you very much!' We also have to have the right attitude in our hearts when we are asking questions. "There is a humble and submissive kind of question that is eager to understand and believe and obey the truth. And there is academic gamesmenship and unbelieving cynicism and indifferent dismissal...[when he talks about questioning he means] humble questioning that expresses eagerness to grow and to uncover truth" (p. 50). Piper then goes into a very interesting lesson on the word 'therefore' and that alone proves a big point about the never-ending depth of the Bible and how much there is to learn and think about. What he wants to get across is "[w]e observe carefully. We ask questions. And we work hard with our minds to try to answer questions" (p. 55).
The following portion of the book discusses how thinking can bring about faith and someone becoming a believer. So much of how we choose to see and and process information around us about God and Jesus is about our thinking. "[E]vil hearts disorder...rational powers and make [people] morally incapable of reasoning rightly about Jesus...our self-centered hearts distort our reason to the point where we cannot use it to draw true inferences from what is really there. If our disapproval of God's existence is strong enough, our sensory faculties and our rational faculties will not be able to infer that he is there...The corruption of our hearts is the deepest root of our irrationality (italics mine)" (p. 63). Piper uses Ephesians 3:4 as support for the concept that "engaging the mind in the mental task of reading is a pathway into the mysteries of God" (p. 64) and 2 Timothy 2:7 to plead that we will "embrace both human thinking and divine illumination" (p. 64). He then goes on to an examination of faith and how "[t]he only kind of faith that matters in the end is saving faith" (p. 69). But what is saving faith? Piper explains that a faith is a saving one when a person receives Jesus "for who he really is and what he really is, namely, more glorious, more wonderful, more satisfying, and therefore, more valuable than anything in the universe" (p. 72). In order to get to this, human reason and the use of one's mind must play a role when the gospel is presented. Using 2 Corinthians 4:4-6, Piper forms some excellent conclusions. "The revelation of the glory of Christ is not a mystical experience cut loose from our thinking about Christ in the gospel...Saving faith is 'reasonable' in the sense that there are real reasons to support it. It is not based on a figment of imagination. Its basis is the glory of Christ in the gospel. It is a real gospel and a real glory...the sight of the self-authenticating glory of Christ is not separate from the rational presentation and demonstration and reception of the truth of the gospel...Because our hearts not see Christ as infinitely valuable, our resistance to the truth is overcome. Our thinking is no longer the slave of deceitful desires, because our desires have changed. Christ is now the supreme treasure. So our thinking is made docile to the truth of the gospel" (p. 75-77). This section concludes with a beautiful sentence - "Treasuring God is the essence of loving him, and the mind serves this love by comprehending (imperfectly and partially, but truly) the truth and beauty and worth of the Treasure" (p. 80).
This past year I've had some truly wonderful lessons about love and the difference between what the world calls love and how God calls us to love. So when I saw that Piper was aligning loving God and treasuring God with my mind I was very excited to learn about this. The basis of his thought process is in Matthew 22:36-39 where we are told to love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul and all our mind above all other things. In other words, to be loving God to the best of our ability, all three components must be fully engaged (p. 85). I cannot do Piper's discourse here justice without typing out the entire chapter so I will just share some of the points he made that really resonated with me. "What happens in the heart is essential. The external behaviors will be pleasing to God when they flow from a heart that freely treasures God above all things" (p. 88). "The fires of love for God need fuel. And the fires of love for God drive the engines of thought and deed. There is a circle. Thinking feeds the fire, and the fire fuels more thinking and doing. I love God because I know him. And I want to know him more because I love him." (p. 89). I found this so wonderful and brilliant that I must have read it about twenty times the first time I came across it. "If we do not know anything about God, there is nothing in our mind to awaken love. If love does not come from knowing God, there is no point calling it love for God. There may be some vague attraction in our heart or some unfocused gratitude in our soul, but if they do not arise from knowing God, they are not love for God...If we did not use our minds to know and think about the fullest revelation of god in the person and work of Jesus, we would not know about God. And if we did not know him, we would not love him. And if we did not love him, we would not express his worth in all the other uses of our mind" (p. 90-91).
The next section of the book deals with relativism, how even Jesus had to deal with it before it had a name and how it is so dangerous in our current culture. This relates to the topic of the book in that "God is the ultimate Truth...[and the author's] goal is to encourage you to embrace the work of thinking as a means of knowing this truth" (p. 96). I really enjoyed reading how Piper saw Jesus' conversations with the chief priests and elders in the temple as exposure of the first seeds of relativism. "People don't embrace relativism because it is philosophically satisfying. They embrace it because it is physically and emotionally gratifying. It provides the cover they need at key moments in their lives to do what they want without intrusion from absolutes" (p. 102). In a wonderfully full portion of this discussion, Piper provides strong arguments against relativism and shows how it is harmful and immoral. I would love to commit some of this section to memory so I have his brilliant logic available when I do get in to those discussions with people who believe there is no concrete truth in our world. The reality of relativism is this: "in claiming to be too lowly to know the truth, they exalt themselves as supreme arbiter of what they can think and do. This is not humility. This is rooted in deep desire not to be subordinate to the claims of truth. The name for this is pride" (p. 112). I must share a quote that Piper has in here from Michael Novak: "The most perilous threat to the free society today is, therefore, neither political nor economic. It is the poisonous, corrupting culture of relativism...During the next hundred years, the question for those who love liberty is whether we can survive the most insidious and duplicitous attacks from within, from those who undermine the virtues of our people, doing in advance the work of the Father of Lies. 'There is no such thing as truth,' they teach even the little ones. 'Truth is bondage. Believe what seems right to you. There are as many truths as there are individuals. Follow your feelings. Do as you please. Get in touch with yourself. Do what feels comfortable.' Those who speak this way prepare the jails of the twenty-first century. They do the work of tyrants" (p. 114).
Next Piper provides us with reading that, if applied, will aide us in facing anti-intellectualism. He starts out with a brief discussion of subjectivism and pragmatism and explains how this line of thinking lead to an undervaluing of thinking itself. "If we abandon thinking, we abandon the Bible, and if we abandon the Bible we abandon God...It is therefore futile counsel to tell the church that thinking is worthless. There is no reading without thinking. And there is no reading carefully and faithfully and coherently without thinking carefully and faithfully and coherently. The remedy for barren intellectualism is not anti-intellectualism, but humble, faithful, prayerful, Spirit-dependent, rigorous thinking" (p. 123). He brings up many times in Scripture when we are told that 'knowing' God and Truth will lead to holy behaviour - "Knowing the truth with our minds and holding fast to it as a treasure in our hearts is the key to holiness" (p. 127). Luke 10:21 and 1 Corinthians 1:20 are verses used often in support of anti-intellectualism and Piper very wisely takes two chapters to refute their position. This is a great read from both a philosophical and Biblical point of view. One of the key explanations he gives is that in Luke 10:21 when Jesus speak of 'children' he is speaking of "the kind of person who is deeply dependent and humble enough to receive the help he really needs from God" (p. 141). Reading the discussion on 'wisdom' was so helpful and informative to me. "...a fundamental difference between divine wisdom and human wisdom is that God's wisdom exalts what the cross stands for and human wisdom is offended by what the cross stands for" (p. 146). "God's wisdom makes the glory of God's grace our supreme treasure. But man's wisdom delights in seeing himself as resourceful, self-sufficient, self-determining, and not utterly dependent on God's free grace" (p. 149). Please read this section of the book with an open heart and mind, both of mine were full and rejoicing by the time I got to the end.
One thing that is emphasized over and over again in this book is the importance of humility being present when we are thinking and learning. The author takes the last major potion of this book to flesh out this idea and explain how to apply it well in our lives. He explains that during the time when Corinthians was being written by Paul "knowledge was producing pride, and pride was destroying love" (p. 158) and this can still happen today. In order to know as we ought to know we must understand that "any knowledge that does not stand in the service of love is not real knowing...Knowing and thinking exist for the sake of love - for the sake of building people up in faith. Thinking that produces pride instead of love is not true thinking" (p. 159-160, italics mine). This, to me, seemed like the crux of the entire discussion. I feel like I can study and learn all day long but if it doesn't deepen my love for God, my siblings in Christ and those who are lost then all that time is for naught. For the Corinthians, "[t]he solution to their problem was not to stop thinking. The solution was the heartfelt discovery of God's grace in Jesus Christ. The Corinthians needed to see that everything they knew was a free gift of electing grace and was designed by God to feed the fires of humble love for God and man" (p. 164). In a final discussion about scholarship, Piper makes some illuminating statements:
- the least we can say is that this means all thinking - all scholarship - of every kind exists ultimately to discover and display the glory of God, that is, the glory of Jesus Christ, in his Word and in his world...If all the universe and everything in it exist by the design of an infinite, personal God, to make his manifold glory known and loved, then to treat any subject without reference to God's glory is not scholarship but insurrection (p. 168).
- the magnifying of God's glory is in and through the seeing and savoring of the scholar's mind and heart (p. 170).
- since loving man means ultimately helping him see and savor God in Christ forever, it is profoundly right to say all thinking, all learning, all eduction and all research is for the sake of knowing God, loving God and showing God (p. 175).
In the conclusion of the book, Piper speaks to both thinkers and non-thinkers directly. No matter where you fall on this spectrum, please read both statements. They are enlightened and enlightening. And don't stop there. Appendix 1 has some extremely valuable information and Appendix 2 has a story that I guarantee you will love and never forget.
I don't generally make resolutions and I'm not going to make one here but I will say that in the new year and with this perspective on thinking fresh in my mind, I will be striving to think through the lens of love and, conversely, love through the lens of thinking.
...yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God - Proverbs 2:3-5
For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow - Ecclesiastes 1:18
Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything - 2 Timothy 2:7
When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit - Ephesians 3:4-5
Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord - Philippians 3:8
In their case, the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who said "Let light shine out of darkness," has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ - 2 Corinthians 4:4-6
"I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to the little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will" - Luke 10:21
Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world - 1 Corinthians 1:20
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