Loving God with all of your Mind

As one of my jobs at the church, I attempt to maintain the church library. I randomly came across a book the other day on a shelf at church that was not catalogued and not part of the library. Assuming it had been donated, I picked it up to review to see if it would be a good addition to our collection. The book is entitled Total Truth, by Nancy Pearcey. A quick scan was enough to really get me thinking.

For many, our faith is a matter of the "heart", rather than the head. We divide our life into separate compartments, "religious truth" versus other "truths", such as "scientific" truth. Do we bring a consistent Christian worldview to our everyday activities in the realms of science, politics, economics and the arts? Pearcey quotes the historian of religion Martin Marty who said that every religion serves two functions: first, it is a message of personal salvation, and second, it is a lens for interpreting the world. However, many of us fall into the trap of only viewing our faith in terms of our personal salvation and forget that the Truth we confess is the truth about all of reality, with implications for every sphere of life, both public and private.

As we minister to our children at home and at the church, we need to be aware that we should help to form in them a distinctly Christian worldview that will help them to counter all of the so-called "truths" of our secular society. It is too dangerous for us to imply that faith is only relevant on Sundays, and the rest of the week our children can live their lives guided by "neutral knowledge" that is uncontaminated by any particular belief or philosophy. The idea that there is any way to know things with any true objectivity is a myth of the Enlightenment period. Every system of thought relies on some "ultimate" principle, either God or some other "god". Everything that exists falls somewhere into the God's meta narrative of creation, fall, and redemption, and this narrative can explain all of human as well as physical nature. It has implications that are very different from those arising out of secular worldviews such as evolutionary biology. Our culture allows Christianity to exist as a private matter, but resists any attempt by Christians to claim that our faith has a place in the public sphere, or can mount any significant challenge to reigning secular ideologies.

I challenge all of us to model for our children a life where faith is fully integrated into all aspects of existence, public and private, and where we show our kids what it means to love the Lord our God not only with our hearts and souls, but with our minds as well.