Part 4 in the series. Stewardship of the mind: renewing our minds, thinking & reading. Responsibility & practical guidance.
According to Jesus, the greatest commandment in the Old Testament is: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind." (Matthew 22:37-38). How are we to fulfill this commandment, especially the part about loving God with all our mind? Jesus implied that what we think and what we believe is extremely important to God, and being a thinking Christian is a major part of our loving God. Using Dr. J.P. Moreland's book, Love Your God With All Your Mind, this class will explore how we can use our minds to love and glorify God.
Stewardship of the Mind
A Christian Argument for Fostering Intellectual Virtue
What the Bible teaches regarding the use of the intellect.
How do we start the process of thinking Christianly. As if Christianity is true and applied to questions of morality etc…
There is a process where we go from being opposed to God and to move to alignment with God and His way. (Sanctification)
Sanctification is a process and not an instantaneous conversion.
However, many in the Church have stagnated and don’t focus on intellectual growth.
Sanctification
Fancy words: Substantive Theological Psychology
Intellect, Will, Emotions
Why do you still sin? Sanctification not just salvation
Renewal of our minds or sanctification of our minds
Greg Koukl says the mind is the first line of defense, not the Bible as the mind is necessary for the proper interpretation.
“What we need is an understanding of what the mind is and how it fits into the process of human transformation and spiritual growth.” P. 64-5
How do we start the process of thinking Christianly. As if Christianity is true and applied to questions of morality etc…
There is a process where we go from being opposed to God and to move to alignment with God and His way. (Sanctification)
Sanctification is a process and not an instantaneous conversion.
However, many in the Church have stagnated and don’t focus on intellectual growth.
“First, we need to realize that there’s a tug of war going on inside each of us. On one side there’s our conscience, which is primarily how God makes His presence within us known. But there’s also a malevolent intelligence within each of us that exists to confuse us, to cause us to doubt truth, to tempt us to become angry and upset, with the aim that we ultimately will rebel against our God-given conscience.”
- Kupelian, David (2010-01-26). How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming the Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America (pp. 217-218). Threshold Editions. Kindle Edition.
“Romans 12:1-2. How we grow to become like Jesus: “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world . . . .but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” We will . . . . “describing what happens to the mind when it incorporates new thoughts and beliefs.” Paul “could have said, “Be transformed by developing close feelings toward God,” or “by exercising your will in obeying biblical commands,” or “by intensifying your desire for the right things,” or “by fellowship and worship”. Obviously, all are important parts of the Christian life. Yet Paul chose to mention none of them in his most important précis of the spiritual life. . . . .What is it about the mind that justifies Paul’s elevation of it to such a position of prominence in religious life?” P. 65
How do we start the process of thinking Christianly. As if Christianity is true and applied to questions of morality etc…
There is a process where we go from being opposed to God and to move to alignment with God and His way. (Sanctification)
Sanctification is a process and not an instantaneous conversion.
However, many in the Church have stagnated and don’t focus on intellectual growth.
The process of give Jesus lordship over your mind (heart, will, soul, mind.)
“Paul reminds us that we should offer our bodies to God because this is the most reasonable way to express service to Him in light of His mercies toward us. . . .The body is the vehicle through which we interact with the world.” P. 65
“Second, my habits dwell in my body. . . . To change our habits and to interact differently with the world, we need to retrain our bodies to form new habits that replace the old ones.” P. 66
But how do we gain the motivation, the insights, the perspective necessary to change? P. 66 How does intellectual growth change the soul, and what is it about a well-formed mind that makes it so valuable for gaining a new way of seeing life? P. 67 Preaching that centers too much on exhortation without instruction is ineffective. According to Paul, the key to change is the formation of a new perspective, the development of fresh insights about our lives and the world around us, the gathering of the knowledge and skill required to know what to do and how to do it. And this is where the mind comes in. Truth, knowledge and study are powerful factors in the transformation of the self and the control of the body and its habits for a healthy life in the kingdom of God.” P. 66
“God made our minds to be apt for gaining knowledge and understanding so as to avoid foolish living and ignorant beliefs.” P. 66
Important to know and desire God. Starts with a proper understanding of sin (Intellect). Only if you know that you hate (Emotions) your sin and want to get rid of it (Will). As opposed to escape the penalty of sin and being comfortable with your sin. Retrain the mind. Truth telling is a prime ministry of the Church for this reason.
Important to know and desire God. Starts with a proper understanding of sin (Intellect). Only if you know that you hate (Emotions) your sin and want to get rid of it (Will). As opposed to escape the penalty of sin and being comfortable with your sin. Retrain the mind. Truth telling is a prime ministry of the Church for this reason.
How to upgrade one’s own intellect.
What capacities God has given us, including intellect.
Is stewardship only related to money?
Ecclesiastical. The responsible use of resources, esp. money, time, and talents, in the service of God (OED)
http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/190092?redirectedFrom=stewardship#eid
The Parable of the Talents Matthew 25:14-30
Your intellect is one of the greatest gifts from God
How should we use our intellects?
Should we increase it for His kingdom?
Steward = Responsibility
“The possession of knowledge carries an ethical responsibility.”
Everything we have is a gift of God. We are stewards of all that we have been given. We are to take what we have been given and use it to further the Kingdom of Christ and bring glory to God. Furthering the kingdom and bring Glory to God are not separate.
We have been given a gift the no other creator on Earth has been given. Intellect.
"I knew I had to out-think those who were challenging my faith; and to out-think them, I knew I had to out-read them." pg 36 A Mind for God by James Emery White
Choosing to read
Available to everyone, it is a matter of choice
May not be easy, difficult to change old habits
What to read
Widely read v. well read
What is better, reading a lot of garbage or few excellent works
Not unlimited time need to be selective
It is like a diet, junk food verses nutritious food
The Bible is foundational for your diet (For the renewing of your mind)
What have you read over the last year?
How has what you read help further Christ’s kingdom?
Intellectual diet
You are what you consume
The state, condition, or fact of being a pupil, follower, or adherent of any teacher, leader, doctrine, etc.; the position of a pupil, or follower. OED
http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/53732?redirectedFrom=Discipleship#eid
“My personal feeling is that citizens of the democratic societies should undertake a course of intellectual self-defense to protect themselves from manipulation and control, and to lay the basis for more meaningful democracy.” Noam Chomsky, Necessary Illusions, Thought Control in Democratic Societies pg viii
“We need the mind disciplined in Christ, enlightened by faith, passionate for God and His creation, to be let loose in the world.” - David Hazard
“It should be abundantly clear that the passion for holiness is so inextricably bound up with the passion for truth that while we can distinguish between them in theory, we cannot do so in practice. The passion for truth requires a passion for holiness, for the truth is that God is holy and wishes us to desire to be so and, with his presence, to be so. The passion for holiness incudes being truthful, knowing and doing the truth.” (Sire, Habits of the Mind, Intellectual Life as a Christian Calling 2000, 117)
Ambivalence
Apathetic
Don’t care
Perils of Indifference
It follows the full text transcript of Elie Wiesel's Perils of Indifference speech, delivered at the Seventh Millennium Evening at the White House, Washington D.C. — April 12, 1999.
Elie Wiesel - Speech Mr. President, Mrs. Clinton, members of Congress,
Ambassador Holbrooke, Excellencies, friends:
Fifty-four years ago to the day, a young Jewish boy from a small town in the Carpathian Mountains woke up, not far from Goethe's beloved Weimar, in a place of eternal infamy called Buchenwald. He was finally free, but there was no joy in his heart. He thought there never would be again.
Liberated a day earlier by American soldiers, he remembers their rage at what they saw. And even if he lives to be a very old man, he will always be grateful to them for that rage, and also for their compassion. Though he did not understand their language, their eyes told him what he needed to know—that they, too, would remember, and bear witness.
And now, I stand before you, Mr. President—
Commander-in-Chief of the army that freed me, and tens of thousands of others—and I am filled with a profound and abiding gratitude to the American people.
Gratitude is a word that I cherish. Gratitude is what defines the humanity of the human being. And I am grateful to you, Hillary—or Mrs. Clinton—for what you said, and for what you are doing for children in the world, for the homeless, for the victims of injustice, the victims of destiny and society. And I thank all of you for being here.
We are on the threshold of a new century, a new millennium. What will the legacy of this vanishing century be? How will it be remembered in the new millennium? Surely it will be judged, and judged severely, in both moral and metaphysical terms. These failures have cast a dark shadow over humanity: two World Wars, countless civil wars, the senseless chain of assassinations—Gandhi, the Kennedys, Martin Luther King, Sadat, Rabin—bloodbaths in Cambodia and Nigeria, India and Pakistan, Ireland and Rwanda, Eritrea and Ethiopia, Sarajevo and Kosovo; the inhumanity in the gulag and the tragedy of Hiroshima. And, on a different level, of course, Auschwitz and Treblinka.
So much violence, so much indifference.
What is indifference? Etymologically, the word means "no difference." A strange and unnatural state in which the lines blur between light and darkness, dusk and dawn, crime and punishment, cruelty and compassion, good and evil.
What are its courses and inescapable consequences? Is it a philosophy? Is there a philosophy of indifference conceivable? Can one possibly view indifference as a virtue? Is it necessary at times to practice it simply to keep one's sanity, live normally, enjoy a fine meal and a glass of wine, as the world around us experiences harrowing upheavals?
Of course, indifference can be tempting—more than that, seductive. It is so much easier to look away from victims. It is so much easier to avoid such rude interruptions to our work, our dreams, our hopes. It is, after all, awkward, troublesome, to be involved in another person's pain and despair. Yet, for the person who is indifferent, his or her neighbors are of no consequence. And, therefore, their lives are meaningless. Their hidden or even visible anguish is of no interest.
Indifference reduces the other to an abstraction.
Over there, behind the black gates of Auschwitz, the most tragic of all prisoners were the "Muselmanner," as they were called. Wrapped in their torn blankets, they would sit or lie on the ground, staring vacantly into space, unaware of who or where they were, strangers to their surroundings. They no longer felt pain, hunger, thirst. They feared nothing. They felt nothing. They were dead and did not know it.
Rooted in our tradition, some of us felt that to be abandoned by humanity then was not the ultimate. We felt that to be abandoned by God was worse than to be punished by Him. Better an unjust God than an indifferent one. For us to be ignored by God was a harsher punishment than to be a victim of His anger. Man can live far from God—not outside God. God is wherever we are. Even in suffering? Even in suffering.
In a way, to be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman. Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred. Anger can at times be creative. One writes a great poem, a great symphony, have done something special for the sake of humanity because one is angry at the injustice that one witnesses. But indifference is never creative. Even hatred at times may elicit a response. You fight it. You denounce it. You disarm it. Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a response.
Indifference is not a beginning, it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor—never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees—not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity we betray our own.
Indifference, then, is not only a sin, it is a punishment. And this is one of the most important lessons of this outgoing century's wide-ranging experiments in good and evil.
In the place that I come from, society was composed of three simple categories: the killers, the victims, and the bystanders. During the darkest of times, inside the ghettoes and death camps—and I'm glad that Mrs. Clinton mentioned that we are now commemorating that event, that period, that we are now in the Days of Remembrance—but then, we felt abandoned, forgotten. All of us did.
And our only miserable consolation was that we believed that Auschwitz and Treblinka were closely guarded secrets; that the leaders of the free world did not know what was going on behind those black gates and barbed wire; that they had no knowledge of the war against the Jews that Hitler's armies and their accomplices waged as part of the war against the Allies.
If they knew, we thought, surely those leaders would have moved heaven and earth to intervene. They would have spoken out with great outrage and conviction. They would have bombed the railways leading to Birkenau, just the railways, just once.
And now we knew, we learned, we discovered that the Pentagon knew, the State Department knew. And the illustrious occupant of the White House then, who was a great leader—and I say it with some anguish and pain, because, today is exactly 54 years marking his death—Franklin Delano Roosevelt died on April the 12th, 1945, so he is very much present to me and to us.
No doubt, he was a great leader. He mobilized the American people and the world, going into battle, bringing hundreds and thousands of valiant and brave soldiers in America to fight fascism, to fight dictatorship, to fight Hitler. And so many of the young people fell in battle. And, nevertheless, his image in Jewish history—I must say it—his image in Jewish history is flawed.
The depressing tale of the St. Louis is a case in point. Sixty years ago, its human cargo—maybe 1,000 Jews—was turned back to Nazi Germany. And that happened after the Kristallnacht, after the first state sponsored pogrom, with hundreds of Jewish shops destroyed, synagogues burned, thousands of people put in concentration camps. And that ship, which was already on the shores of the United States, was sent back.
I don't understand. Roosevelt was a good man, with a heart. He understood those who needed help. Why didn't he allow these refugees to disembark? A thousand people—in America, a great country, the greatest democracy, the most generous of all new nations in modern history. What happened? I don't understand. Why the indifference, on the highest level, to the suffering of the victims?
But then, there were human beings who were sensitive to our tragedy. Those non-Jews, those Christians, that we called the "Righteous Gentiles," whose selfless acts of heroism saved the honor of their faith. Why were they so few? Why was there a greater effort to save SS murderers after the war than to save their victims during the war?
Why did some of America's largest corporations continue to do business with Hitler's Germany until 1942? It has been suggested, and it was documented, that the Wehrmacht could not have conducted its invasion of France without oil obtained from American sources. How is one to explain their indifference?
And yet, my friends, good things have also happened in this traumatic century: the defeat of Nazism, the collapse of communism, the rebirth of Israel on its ancestral soil, the demise of apartheid, Israel's peace treaty with Egypt, the peace accord in Ireland. And let us remember the meeting, filled with drama and emotion, between Rabin and Arafat that you, Mr. President, convened in this very place. I was here and I will never forget it.
And then, of course, the joint decision of the United States and NATO to intervene in Kosovo and save those victims, those refugees, those who were uprooted by a man whom I believe that because of his crimes, should be charged with crimes against humanity. But this time, the world was not silent. This time, we do respond. This time, we intervene.
Does it mean that we have learned from the past? Does it mean that society has changed? Has the human being become less indifferent and more human? Have we really learned from our experiences? Are we less insensitive to the plight of victims of ethnic cleansing and other forms of injustices in places near and far? Is today's justified intervention in Kosovo, led by you, Mr. President, a lasting warning that never again will the deportation, the terrorization of children and their parents be allowed anywhere in the world? Will it discourage other dictators in other lands to do the same?
What about the children? Oh, we see them on television, we read about them in the papers, and we do so with a broken heart. Their fate is always the most tragic, inevitably. When adults wage war, children perish. We see their faces, their eyes. Do we hear their pleas? Do we feel their pain, their agony? Every minute one of them dies of disease, violence, famine. Some of them—so many of them—could be saved.
And so, once again, I think of the young Jewish boy from the Carpathian Mountains. He has accompanied the old man I have become throughout these years of quest and struggle. And together we walk towards the new millennium, carried by profound fear and extraordinary hope.
(Applause.)
I conclude on that.
Empty Selves are a Danger to Society and the Church
“Many people approach the abortion debate not on the basis of a thoughtful analysis of the relevant arguments, but from an infantile craving to seek promiscuous sexual soothing of the empty self free from any responsibility or consequences. . . . . It is clear that the empty self is contrary to the nature of the mature follower of Jesus Christ.” P. 92-3
“The battle here will be won or lost in the area of habits:
1. Admit the problem. . .. .Before a problem can be solved, it must be carefully defined and clearly acknowledged. P. 94
2. Choose to be different. . . . . Expose yourself to ideas with which you disagree and let yourself be motivated to excel intellectually by the exposure. Listen to talk shows, read the editorial page, and walk around a local university and look at bulletin boards or read the student newspaper. Get into discussions with people at work with whom you differ. . . . .. We can learn from our critics. . . .such exposure can move us to realize just how serious the war of ideas really is and how inadequately prepared we are to engage in that contest. P. 94-5
3. Change your routine. . . . .about exercise. Your mind becomes more alert and you have more energy to be proactive and to read if you are in good shape. . . . .learn to use low-energy times, or moments like after work or dinner, as occasions to engage in physical exercise. . . . .After dinner, go for a walk instead of turning on the TV. When you get back, sit down for thirty minutes to an hour and read an intellectually challenging book. P. 95
4. Develop patience and endurance. . . . .I often read books that are a little over my head so I can develop my intellectual strength. . . it often takes time to work through an important topic with sufficient care and attention. . . . .One needs to take a long-term perspective toward reading and study. But such a perspective will require endurance in staying put in a chair, with pen in hand, long enough to read deeply and widely. This requires a spirit of quietness and an absence of distraction. If you are fidgety and have to get up every fifteen minutes, you must get control of yourself. And gaining such control will require self denial, suffering, and endurance. The intellectual life is both a means to and a result of a life of discipline, self-control, and endurance. . . . .Through solitude, I am learning to be quiet, alone, and focused. Through fasting, I am learning to say no to immediate gratification and bodily distraction and control myself.
5. Develop a good vocabulary.
6. Set some intellectual goals.
“Ideas matter. In fact, what we believe and the way we see things largely determine the type of people we will become and the behavior we will exhibit. Because ideas matter, Christians and non-Christians alike should desire to know truth wherever it can be found. Moreover, Christians have a special intellectual and moral obligation to follow Augustine's advice: we have a duty, he said, to show that our Scriptures do not contradict what we have reason to believe from reliable sources outside them. In short Christians have the obligation and privilege of developing and propagating an integrated Christian worldview.” J. P. Moreland, editor, The Creation Hypothesis. InterVarsity Press, 1994, Introduction
“You who today "commence" the life beyond your days of special training face the challenge to love God with your minds, as well as your hearts, souls and bodies. How are you to fulfill this commandment? How else than by accepting the work of thought as the place where you will actually involve yourselves, as thinkers, as intellectuals: Yes, as intellectuals, Christian intellectuals, you engage yourselves, by faith, with the Holy Spirit, to throw back the framework of Satan’s lies and show forth the life which is the light of men in all of its cosmic, historical, and eternally redemptive dimensions.”
Willard, Dallas, Call to Think for God, Commencement Address at Los Angeles Baptist College, 1989 http://www.dwillard.org/articles/artview.asp?artID=172
“Ideas matter. In fact, what we believe and the way we see things largely determine the type of people we will become and the behavior we will exhibit. Because ideas matter, Christians and non-Christians alike should desire to know truth wherever it can be found. Moreover, Christians have a special intellectual and moral obligation to follow Augustine's advice: we have a duty, he said, to show that our Scriptures do not contradict what we have reason to believe from reliable sources outside them. In short Christians have the obligation and privilege of developing and propagating an integrated Christian worldview.” J. P. Moreland, editor, The Creation Hypothesis. InterVarsity Press, 1994, Introduction
“You who today "commence" the life beyond your days of special training face the challenge to love God with your minds, as well as your hearts, souls and bodies. How are you to fulfill this commandment? How else than by accepting the work of thought as the place where you will actually involve yourselves, as thinkers, as intellectuals: Yes, as intellectuals, Christian intellectuals, you engage yourselves, by faith, with the Holy Spirit, to throw back the framework of Satan’s lies and show forth the life which is the light of men in all of its cosmic, historical, and eternally redemptive dimensions.”
Willard, Dallas, Call to Think for God, Commencement Address at Los Angeles Baptist College, 1989 http://www.dwillard.org/articles/artview.asp?artID=172
Two Thieves of the Christian Mind: Inferiority and Pride. Page. 96
#1 “Many times adult learners have a deep sense of insecurity about their own mental abilities. Defensiveness and a false sense of pride can arise to protect one from feeling embarrassed about not knowing something. Intellectual embarrassment is one of the worst forms of humiliation.” P. 97
“If we don’t work on this in the safety of the company of our own brothers and sisters, we will come off as small, reactionary, and inarticulate in the public square. We need to give one another permission to express inadequately thought-out points to each other and create the expectation that we can learn to argue with one another, critique and defend ideas, or leave class with more work to do on a subject.” . . . .over the long haul it will produce a church filled with people who are more secure about what they believe and why.” P. 97
“The very forms that define our periods of study together often institutionalize false pride and a lack of intellectual growth. There is absolutely nothing wrong with admitting you don’t know something or that you’re currently inadequately equipped to think a topic through. What is unacceptable, however, is running from this fact and thereby giving up on intellectual and spiritual growth in the interest of avoiding embarrassment or possible rejection. We all need help in this area, and we should care enough about truth and reason to give that help.” P. 97
“Even if we agree with one another’s conclusions, we need to dedicate ourselves for Christ’s sake to refusing to allow each other to reach those conclusions with poor argumentation and sloppy treatment of data.” P. 97
“Another form of inferiority comes from the simple fact that we are evangelicals. . . . .our culture has told us that conservative Christians are intellectually inferior, that the Christian faith is irrational, and so forth. And we constantly watch our views caricatured as the news media, hostile university professors, and others regularly build straw men out of Christian positions and proceed to destroy those straw men. When a community is repeatedly told that it is ignorant, it will come to believe that message whether or not it is true.” P. 98
Asking inferiority to leave. “Work harder at holding forth and celebrating our past and contemporary Christian thinkers. . . . . the early church knew who its intellectuals and apologists were, and this gave them confidence and a feeling of strength. . . . .The intellectual life is our heritage as Christians and it is time to remind ourselves of this.” P. 98
“#2 Thief 2. Keeping a sense of control. . . . . We cannot let our fears dictate to us our approach to Christian growth and ministry. . . . .we must reaffirm our commitment to truth and right reason and be confident that our Christian beliefs both warrant that commitment and will flourish in light of it.. . . . Roger Trigg has noted, “Any commitment . . . .depends on two distinct elements. It presupposes certain beliefs {to be true] and it also involves a personal dedication to the actions implied by them.” P. 99
“Consequences of abandoning a commitment to truth and reason. We need to remember the consequences of abandoning a fundamental commitment to truth and reason. A people that does not care about these will be easily led to behave in certain way by rhetoric, image, narcissistic self-infatuation, and so on.” P. 99
“If our allegiance to Christianity is not based on the conviction that it is true and reasonable, then we are treating the faith as a mere means to some self-serving pragmatic end, and that demeans the faith. . . .if we are more concerned with practical application from the Bible than with having good reasons for thinking we have correctly interpreted it, then our bottom line will be that the Bible exists as a tool to make us a success, and we do not exist to place ourselves under what it really says.” P. 99
Five Groups of Virtues:
“The first group contains truth seeking, honesty and wisdom. . . . .even if that truth is not what one wanted to hear. . . . . to know and to do the truth. . . . . in a certain sense the believer’s commitment to the truth is even more basic than his or her dedication to the Christian faith in general or some doctrinal position in particular. If one came to believe that Christianity or some doctrinal belief were false, then one ought to give up the belief in question. “ P. 106
“Honesty. . . . proportion our degree of belief to the degree for which we have grounds for accepting it. . . . . If you believe something, you must be at least slightly more certain that it is true than you are that it is false. . . . your certainty about the belief can grow. . . . we should be honest with ourselves about the strength of our various beliefs and work on strengthening them by considering the issues relevant to their acceptance.” P. 107
“God is not honored when His people use bad arguments for what may actually be correct conclusions. . . . rejecting certain arguments is not the same as rejecting a conclusion.” P. 107
“Wisdom . . . . involves knowing how to use good means to accomplish worthy ends in a skillful manner. “ P. 108
2nd group: Faith (trust) and hope.
“One must have peace and serenity of mind in order to develop a life of understanding, reflection and meditation. . . . . We Christians trust and hope that truth is good and worth having because we are confident in the God of truth. . . . . truth is a valuable thing to have because it is ultimately good. A confident mind is a mind free to follow the truth wherever it leads.” P. 108
“A lack of faith and hope creates a distracted mind incapable of intellectual growth and devotion to God. Noise and busyness can rob one of serenity of mind as well. If you truly desire to develop a Christian mind, then you must squarely face this fact: The mind cannot grow without reflection and meditation on what has been studied, and reflection and meditation require periods of quiet and solitude on the one hand and simplicity of life on the other. You must order your life so as to remove as far as possible, given your other commitments, unnecessary modern gadgets and distractions to maintain focus and quiet in your life. . . . . if you can afford it, pay to have your taxes done or your yard mowed.” P. 108-109
“As an application, you may want to draw up a list of ways you can simplify your life and create more time for quiet reflection.” P. 109 (DonH, This is a possible idea for a class activity,)
3rd group: Humility, open-mindedness, self-criticality, and nondefensiveness. “We must be willing to seek the truth in a spirit of humility with an admission of our own finitude; we must be willing to learn from our critics; and we need to learn to argue against our own positions in order to strengthen our understanding of them. . . . . The purpose of intellectual humility . . . . is for you to do anything you can to remove your unhelpful biases and get at the truth in a reasoned way.” P. 109
“When your view is criticized . . . .jot down on paper the person’s main thesis and how that thesis was supported. . . .assume the person is expressing at least some good points and try to identify them. . . . . the search for common ground with intellectual opponents is a good habit. . . . .try to argue against your own view . . . . try to state on paper exactly how you would argue against the view being expressed in an intellectually precise yet emotionally calm way.” P. 109
4th group: Ardor, vigilance and fortitude. “The Christian thinker should be a passionate person filled with ardor, or zeal. . . . . Often a topic of study requires the patient development of a long, complicated chain of arguments before the issue can be understood, and vigilance is needed to see it to completion. An impatient generation looking for instant solutions and quick answers will be a generation of shallow slogans.” P. 109-10
“Fortitude or courage is also needed, and this comes from confidence in God’s providential care for His children, including the availability to comfort them even in the face of martyrdom. The Christian mind requires the courage to face the truth and to stand up for it even when doing so is not popular. Bravery does not imply the absence of fear, but the ability to rise above and not be controlled by it.” P. 110
“A person must have motivation to develop zeal, vigilance, and courage. One of the best ways to gain this motivation is to put yourself in a slightly threatening yet not overwhelming situation in which you must defend your views.” “they realize how ill-prepared they are to articulate and defend their own beliefs.” p. 110
“Final virtue . . .is fidelity to God and dedication to His cause in the world as one’s chief end.” P. 111
See also Chapter 6, Habits of the Mind by James W. Sire
Study as a Spiritual Discipline:
“Dallas Willard defines a spiritual discipline as “an activity undertaken to bring us into more effective cooperation with Christ and His Kingdom. “ p. 111
“Study is a discipline that strengthens the mind and enriches the soul.” P. 111
“Seen as a discipline, study becomes a means of building my character, ingraining habits of thought and reflection, and reinforcing in my own soul the value of the life of the mind.” P. 112
“If all you do is read simple books or those that overemphasize stories or practical application, you’ll never learn to think for yourself as a mature Christian, nor will you develop a trained mind.” P. 112
See also Chapter 7, Habits of the Mind by James W. Sire
Serious Times by James E. White talks about going off to cabin in the woods (I think it was in this book might be in another one of his like The Church in an Age of Crisis.)
I do much of my thinking while I swim