Pastor Phil McCutchen

The Neglected Christian Brain

Prov 1:5 Let the wise listen and add to their learning, and let the discerning get guidance– for understanding proverbs and parables, the sayings and riddles of the wise.

I believe we Christians, in particular, have undervalued intellectual understanding. Insights that will give us courage to face life’s challenges and the ability to see God in our everyday lives often depend on a mental grasp of “…the sayings and riddles of the wise.” Most of us divide our brain from our spirits, even though technically all feelings live between our ears. I’m not disagreeing that we have a spirit or that truth comes from God mystically; however, King Solomon said, “It’s good to hold on to one thing without letting go of another.” Can we agree to hold on to being “spiritual” while becoming more intellectual?
Os Guinness wrote an appropriately titled book about us called, “Fat Minds, Fit Bodies. Why Evangelicals hate to think.” Why do we sometimes strive against learning new words, information about language, what our emotional reactions actually mean, and important doctrines? I believe there’s a number of reasons the Christian community, in particular, has valued simplicity over complexity.
It’s very easy to resist thinking when you are a Christian because we have faith in the unknown and sometimes unknowable. We tend to exalt hearing directly from God over all other ways of discovering truth; we associate big vocabularies and intellectualism with pride. We find comfort in saying, “Jesus is Lord, that’s all I need to know.” Thankfully, the gospel can be understood in the simplest terms. Another reason is that we’re all really busy, taking time to think can be a huge disruption. But I appeal to you to be a person who embraces all healthy forms of understanding, as a part of your spiritual development. If you have a solid faith, getting smarter need not turn you into an agnostic or a radical leftist liberal socialist. Here are my suggestions for taking better care of the neglected Christian brain.
1. Grow your vocabulary.
2. Be willing to wrestle with philosophical concepts.
3. Balance opinion giving with question asking.
4. Rumble with your emotions and try to understand your feelings.
5. Respect information as much as you respect emotion.
6. Find balance in the teachers and preachers you listen to. (Joel Osteen & Joyce Meyer’s are going to keep it simple; Tim Keller and N. T. Wright are going go deep. I am blessed by all of them.)
7. GET CURIOUS! Go meet new and varied kinds of people. Go to interesting places. Try different kinds of food. Listen to a different kind of music once in awhile. Occasionally watch a different kind of movie than the kind you naturally gravitate to.
WE’RE LIVING IN GOD’S WORLD; PUSH YOURSELF TO BE INTERESTED IN IT!