Why This Website?

Why This Website?

blog-post-imageJust over 50 years ago Harry Blamires, an English theologian, wrote a book titled, “The Christian Mind.” At first encountering that title many might think, “That’s certainly a strange title. What the heck is a ‘Christian mind?’ Isn’t a mind a mind?”

The book is a classic on the subject of our duty before God to align our minds and thinking with the wisdom and thought patterns that are presented to us in Scripture; to conform our minds to the mind of our Lord, Jesus Christ (Phil. 2:5ff)

Why should we worry about our minds? What difference does how we think make? If we don’t think like Scripture do our minds need to be changed? Why do we need to nurture them and look after our minds?

Paul gives us the answer to these questions in his letter to the Church in Rome. In chapter 8, verses 5-8 he writes, “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”

The dictionary definition of enmity is, “the state of being actively opposed or hostile to someone or something.” In using this term Paul is describing for us what our natural minds are like; the kind of a mind we have before we are reborn.

The problem, Paul reminds us, is that without active work on our part those carnal minds remain carnal. They remain opposed to God.

Because our natural minds are so opposed to God we must engage in deliberate action or work to change them. That work involves actively converting a mind that is, in its natural state, opposed to God and actively fighting against Him, and working at changing it into a mind that submits to God, serves Him, and thinks His thoughts after Him.

A big problem among Christians in our day is very few of them think about their minds at all, let alone their God given responsibility to renew that mind. Our minds are so taken up with the cares of our lives, the distractions of our culture, and the lies coming from our enemy that we don’t even realize we are in a battle for our minds.

“Most Christians would rather die than think – in fact they do.”
–Bertrand Russell

We have no understanding of the current state of our minds, of the state God would like them to be in, and what we must do to get them from the former to the latter.

Later in Romans Paul writes, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.” (12:1-2)

Here is Scripture’s call to us to be actively involved in changing our carnal minds; to be activly working to renew them.

Renewing our minds involves changing their orientation and thought patterns so that they conform to those that please our Lord. This is a process that requires:

  • a knowledge of the Word and its commands to us
  • the power of God’s Spirit to enlighten us, to help us, and to motivate us, and
  • an orientation towards the eternal.

At first blush this can all seem overwhelming. We can easily become discouraged and just not bother. “After all, I’m saved. I’m going to heaven. I have a job, a family, and a lot of other things that I have to think about. I just don’t have time to do anything else.”

Trust me when I tell you that you don’t have any time to not be renewing your mind. It is perhaps the single most important work any believer can do.

When asked what the most important commandment was our Lord answered with these words, ”And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment.” (Mark 12:30)

Most of us don’t have a problem loving God with our hearts. We struggle just a bit more to love Him with our souls, and we generally do a very poor job of loving Him with our minds.

Proverbs 23: 6-7 tells us, “Do not eat the bread of a miser, nor desire his delicacies; for as he thinks in his heart, so is he. “Eat and drink!” he says to you, but his heart is not with you.”

The admonition, “as he thinks in his heart, so is he,” is not applicable to the miser only. It is a universal principle for all men.

And this brings us to the reason and purpose for this blog.

It is our hope and prayer that this blog will help you love God with your mind.

We hope to present you with resources, with ideas, with challenges, with encouragement, and with practicle help as you strive to fulfill Christ’s command to you to renew your mind, and to love God with your mind.

We will be including articles, podcasts, media reviews, cultural and political commentary, Bible lessons, and historical examples of those who did, and those who didn’t faithfully obey Christ’s commands in the arena of the mind.

Why do so many Christians in our day fail to understand the necessity of sanctifying the mind? Is God really concerned with our minds and how we think? Why is anti-intellectualism so valued in modern Evangelicalism? Is this attitude really something taught in Scripture? Are we being elitist when we call for Christians to improve or even just use their minds? What does it mean to think Christianly, to have a Christian Mind? What does it mean to love God with our minds? What is the ‘mind of Christ’? How is it different from our minds? What does Scripture mean when it tells us to have the mind of Christ?

These are some of the questions we hope to explore in this blog.

We hope this will be a two-way conversation. Please leave us your thoughts and comments.

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Featured Books

Books on Christian Women in the Patristic World

Christian Women in the Early Church

For the last few months I have posted stories on significant women from the Patristic age. The lives of many thousands of people were touched as these women followed their call from God to a life of service in His Kingdom. 

Due to space, the blog posts barely cover short stories of their lives. I tried to include some background in the posts, but much more has been written about life for women during the first 5 centuries after Christ. Here are 4 of the books that I relied heavily on. They do a very thorough job of recounting the stories of early Church women, their culture, and their legacies. They are both informative and exciting to read and I highly recommend them as a truly enjoyable way to learn history!


 
  — Cohick, Lynn H. and Hughes, Amy Brown.  Christian Women in the Patristic World: Their Influence, Authority, and Legacy in the Second through Fifth Centuries(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2017).

         This scholarly work contains the stories of women in the early Church. The book also demonstrates how the Church was helped in its formation by women. Women did more than share the good news of salvation in Christ. They helped shape theology and culture. The authors, Lynn H. Cohick and Amy Brown Hughes bring the far distant past to life for us with their extremely engaging writing. I can’t put it any better than Scot McKnight in his credit for the book, “I constantly encourage students and pastors to tell more stories about women in the early church from the pulpit, in classes, and in casual conversations. … Christian Women in the Patristic World… is a book for every pastor’s and teachers’ bookshelf because it not only tells stories about women but also shows how the early church, which has often been maligned for its reputation when it comes to women, was more formed by women than many know.” 

   — Cooper, Kate. Band of Angels: The Forgotten World of Early Christian Women(New York, NY: The Overlook Press, 2013).     

            Kate Cooper’s book gives us a picture of women in the early Church. She focuses on the stories of the individual women by putting them in their cultural context. Her chapters are somewhat divided according to the purpose and path of each woman’s life rather than a chronological order. She begins with women named in the Bible in the first century. A pivotal character is Thecla who was a disciple of the apostle Paul. Though not named in the Bible, Thecla’s story is widely known and she became an example of the early Christian life of ascetism, piety, evangelism, and pilgrimage. Other topics include martyrs, mothers, pilgrims, desert mothers, scholars, and empresses. If you followed my series on women in the Patristic era (Posts February through May, 2019) these categories will look familiar. Kate Cooper’s book is a joy to read. She connects all of these women to the overall culture and to each other. If you want to know more about history this is a really enjoyable way to learn it.    

  – Deen, Edith, Great Women of the Christian Faith, (Uhrichsville, OH: Barbour and Company, Inc., 1959).

            In this book on great Christian women in history, you will encounter the stories of 45 spiritual leaders and 76 other women from around the world. The stories include women from many denominations. Theological controversies are put aside. The important thing about each woman is that she loves Jesus and that her life shows how she served God faithfully.

You will be inspired as you read the stories of martyrs, mothers, wives, and even political leaders. The stories span the last twenty centuries (at least up until the writing of the book in 1959).

Of special interest for this review is the fact that Edith Deen relates the stories many women from the Patristic Era (2nd through 5th centuries) including some who were not covered in the blog posts. Edith Deen had a great gift as a storyteller and I think you will find it to be a great book to share with your daughters and other Christian women who are interested in stories of past female saints.

 – Kavanagh, Julia, Women of Christianity, Exemplary for Acts of Piety and Charity, (My copy is a public domain reprint. Originally published by D. Appleton and Company, New York, 1869).

            Don’t let the nineteenth century English deter you. The book is so full of stories of women that you have never heard of and is so fascinating that you will be delighted to wade through it.

The author explains that it would have taken her many years to cover all of the great and pious women in history; the present book is only the beginning. (There are hundreds of women included.) Of course, it only goes through 1869, but we have many modern good books to fill in since then. (Such as the other 3 books reviewed above.)

Obviously Julia Kavanagh had to condense a lot of stories, but I hope that it will encourage the reader to get larger biographies of these women; many are easy to find on Amazon.com or at other booksellers.

Her criteria for the women she chose from history included those women who, “inherited this spirit (the spirit of Christ), who have filled their lives with acts of self-denial, who like their great Master, have gone about doing good.” All of the women in the “Women of the Patristic Era” blog series fit this description.

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Sisters of the Spirit

Sisters of the Spirit: Three Black Women’s Autobiographies of the Nineteenth Century

Edited with an Introduction by William L. Andrews (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1986).


February is Black History Month. In honor of the many black men and women who made significant contributions to society I am dedicating the next few blog posts to three incredible and amazing black women: Jarena Lee, Zilpha Elaw, and Julia Foote. I highly recommend the book, Sisters of the Spirit: Three Black Women’s Autobiographies of the Nineteenth Century. It is sad that so many stories of black women have been lost. In this book we are privileged to read about the women from their own accounts. 

These autobiographies will reveal that the women were products of their time. They understood bondage, but they did not become fanatical. They lived in traditional marriages in submission to their husbands. But they also saw themselves as preachers called by God to bring revival. Being black women, they were on the lowest rung of the social hierarchical ladder, but that did not stop them from following their call from God to preach the Gospel. They believed that the Holy Spirit gives spiritual gifts to whomever He wills irrespective of gender. 

Jarena Lee (1783 – 1864) was born to free but poor black parents. She was the first African American woman to give us an account of her religious experiences. It was first published as The Life and Religious Experience of Jarena Leein 1836. (It was later revised and expanded in 1849, but the account in this book is the 1836 account.)

Zilpha Elaw (1790 – ???) was born free, but her parents died when she was twelve. She went to live with a Quaker family where she learned to rely on the Holy Spirit’s power in her life. Her preaching was compelling and many lives were changed. The book, published in 1846 contains her Memoirs of the Life, Religious Experience, Ministerial Travels and Labours of Mrs. Zilpha Elaw, An American Female of Colour

Julia A. J. Foote (1823 – 1900) was born to former slaves in Schenectady, New York. her book, A Brand Plucked from the Fire: An Autobiographical Sketchwas published in 1879. Julia traveled throughout the United States and Canada for more than fifty years preaching in churches, camp meetings, and revivals. 

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