THE CHRISTIAN MIND IS A TERRIBLE THING TO WASTE

Christianity is a thinking person's "religion." (I use the word religion advisedly, but you know what I mean.) For example, when we read Stephen's defense before the high court, he doesn't start with "For God so loved the world . . ." [John 3:16 has a two and a half chapter context that precedes it.] Nor does he begin with "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved." [I know that Paul began that way with the jailer in Acts 16:31, but read the next verse.] What does he do? He goes back to 2,000 BC and begins his gospel presentation with the call of Abraham and from there traces the history of Israel down to his own day. (!)

PETER

Listen with fresh ears to Peter's sermon in Acts 2 to a huge audience of all kinds of people--religionists, state officials, and ordinary Joes assembled for an annual convocation of Jews from all over the world. What do we hear? We hear about the foreordained plan of God, going back to eternity past.

PAUL

When Paul had an opportunity to speak on Mars Hill to the Athenian court which put him under the microscope, he starts revealing the "Unknown God" to them and culminates with the resurrection of Jesus.

As we read through Acts, we see the Apostles "explaining," "reasoning," and "dialoguing" with people and groups. On the other side of the coin, we hear the listeners questioning and in the case of the noble Bereans "examining" what Paul said to see if "these things were true."

THE MASTER TEACHER

When Christ spoke to the crowds of average people He went back into history to correlate Moses and manna in the wilderness to Himself as "the Bread of Life." In the Upper Room Discourse most, if not all, of what He said, as He told them was way over their intellectual pay grade at the time, but later, "You will understand," He said. The Upper Room discourse aside, His parables challenged the listeners to think, to examine them with mental rigor.

Each of the above examples challenged the intellects of the listeners and were far and away from sermonettes to tickle the ears of unengaged, lazy listeners.

THEIR WRITING

When the apostles wrote to the churches, their writings engaged and challenged the mind. Romans isn't "Dick and Jane Go to the Farm." To understand Revelation, the first hearers had to have a rich background in the Old Testament and if they didn't, they were to get one. Peter remarked on how some of Paul's writings were "hard to understand." The writings of the Apostles are of such intellectual fodder that, 2,000 years later, we still gather to pore over them word by word by word, using all the tools at our disposal--the original language of the text, the cultural background of the text, the context of the text, and other Scriptures pertinent to the subject.

THE CHRISTIAN MIND IS A TERRIBLE THING TO WASTE

If you've traversed the shelves of Christian bookstores, it's like looking the Gerber's shelves at the grocery store. Pablum for the petulant. There are many tomes for the wading pool, but little for the deep end.

SOLUTION

Apologist Ravi Zacharias decries such a state of affairs and suggests a solution to this dearth of deep intellectual waters. He begins by suggesting "a balanced study" which takes discipline and hard work to understand as much as we can. He's despondent over the fact that if we were to ask the average young person in our churches to state the basic idea of the book of Romans, he can't do it.

He suggests, but with a warning, that believers take time to gather in small groups to study and discuss the Word. But he issues a caveat: the danger of a small study group is that the lowest common denominator in the group will hinder its progress.

So, what to do? Zacharias cites the absolute importance of private study, not abandoning the group study (the believers in the early church met in homes going from house to house every day). In one's private study he recommends getting into "pieces of fine writing--literature, devotionals, books that challenge and bless the believer's mind." In the process, of course, there's to be direct contact with the Bible.

He warns that the goal of all this group and private study is not to use it as a sledgehammer to clobber people, not to take pride in how much we know, but to study to allow the pursuit of God and His Word to change our lives, to grow in grace.

Of course, this is not to say that the believer is to lock himself into a book-lined study and not to say that he's to isolate himself to small group discussions. There must be along with the study and the Christian discussions, the getting off the bench and into the game of life, confronting unbelief. 

The alternative to the above reading and study suggestions is that over time, we we'll grow stale, stunted, and stuck with a wasted mind. And let's face it, apart from rigorous study, broad reading, and getting "out there," and its accompanying spiritual growth in grace, you'll become boring.

And that's a terrible thing.