Following Christ with Our Minds

The biblical account serves as a structure for the
principles that allow the formation of a genuine Christian worldview.  Many Christians rush to develop what they will
call a “Christian worldview” by arranging isolated Christian truths, doctrines,
and convictions in order to create formulas for Christian thinking.  No doubt, this is a better approach than is
found among so many believers who have very little concern for Christian
thinking at all, but it’s not enough.

Christian thinking that concludes in a God-centered worldview
requires that we see all truth as interconnected.  Ultimately, the systematic wholeness of truth
can be traced to the fact that God is Himself the author of all truth.  Christianity is not a set of doctrines in the
sense that a mechanic operates with a set of tools.  Instead,

Christianity is a comprehensive
worldview and way of life that grows out of Christian reflection on the Bible,
and the unfolding plan of God revealed in the unity of the Scriptures.

A God-centered worldview brings every issue, question,
and cultural concern into submission to all that the Bible reveals, and frames
all understanding within the ultimate purpose of bringing greater glory to God.
 This task of bringing every thought
captive to Christ requires more than periodic Christian thinking, and is to be
understood as the task of the Church, and not merely the concern of individual
believers.  The recovery of the Christian
mind and the development of a comprehensive Christian worldview will require
the deepest theological reflection, the most consecrated application of
scholarship, the most sensitive commitment to compassion, and the courage to
face all questions without fear.

Christianity brings the world a unique understanding of
time, history, and the meaning of life. The Christian worldview
contributes an understanding of the universe and all it contains that points us
far beyond mere materialism and frees us from the intellectual imprisonment of
naturalism.  Christians understand that
the world—including the material world—is dignified by the very fact that God
has created it.  At the same time, we
understand that we are to be stewards of this creation and are not to worship
what God has made.

We understand that every single human being is made in
the image of God, and that God is the Lord of life at every stage of human
development.  We honor the sanctity of
human life because we worship the Creator. From the Bible, we draw the crucial
insight that God takes delight in the ethnic and racial diversity of His human
creatures, and so must we.  The Christian
worldview contributes a distinctive understanding of beauty, truth, and
goodness, understanding these to be boundless, and that in the final
analysis, are one and the same. Therefore,
the Christian worldview disallows the fragmentation that would sever the
beautiful from the true or the good.

In the context of cultural conflict, the development of
an authentic Christian worldview should enable the Church of the Lord Jesus
Christ to maintain a responsible and courageous footing in any culture at any
period of time.  The stewardship of this
responsibility is not only an intellectual challenge, but it determines, to a
considerable degree, whether or not Christians live and act before the world in
a way that brings glory to God and credibility to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Failure at this task represents an abdication
of Christian responsibility that dishonors Christ, weakens the church, and
compromises Christian witness.

A failure of Christian thinking is a failure of
discipleship, for we are called to love God with our minds.  We cannot follow Christ faithfully without
first thinking as Christians.  Furthermore,
believers are not to be isolated thinkers who bear this responsibility alone.  We are called to be faithful together, as we
learn intellectual discipleship within the church.   By
God’s grace, we are allowed to love God with our minds in order that we may
serve Him with our lives. Christian faithfulness requires the conscious
development of a worldview that begins and ends with God at its center.

We are only able to think as Christians because we belong
to Christ, and the Christian worldview is, in the end, nothing more than
seeking to think as Christ would have us think, in order to be who Christ would
call us to be.