I am beginning this new blog in order to express in an ordered fashion, what I have learned about the "Mind of Christ". I would not ever claim 'expertise', anyone would be foolish to do this, but I have learned a few things over 20 years, which may perhaps build up new believers and those farther along.
I obtained my doctorate in Psychology in 1981 from the University of Florida in Psychology, specializing in "Personality Psychology" [it is hardly called that any more], and while I was occasionally teased in graduate school about having too many interests, my specializations were in Thanatological issues including Mourning and Bereavement, Death Anxiety, and other aspects of death and dying. Later my interests developed into Holocaust, or Shoah Studies, especially studies of the Church and Faith in the Shoah. Also, though, before entering mostly into thanatological issues, I studied Self-Concept and Definition, Depersonalization phenomena in normals, and related concepts on what people mean when they say 'Self'. If I was to be asked now, I would reply, there are as many definitions as there are people asked.
The above description is not written at all to impress, but to show that the first part of my adult life and much of my professional career was spent studying the world's way of thinking. I was either trained or had interests in psychology and deviant behavior, Existential and 'humanistic' psychology and other branches of philsophy, psychology and ethical considerations. In short, I was fairly well introduced into the way the world thinks, or what I will call in this blog 'natural thinking'. The Mind of Man. Some 30 years after entering college for the first time, our understanding of the person remains a little chaotic, a little divisive and misunderstood. It also changes constantly.
The Revelation of a Different Way of thinking
After having taught at several Universities for the first few years of my career, I became a Christian: a miracle only God could produce, a Psychologist becoming a Believer! I was once told by a faculty coordinator at a large Northern U that of all the faculty who attended Campus Crusade's bible studies, the faculty least represented was that of Psychology Departments. I suspect this is because they are not predisposed to 'faith' having been trained for years to assess every thought and possibility, and I have never seen research psychologists entertain a concept such as love, fear, hate etc without first 'operationalizing' it or giving it a discreet number of defining terms and criteria. The Well-Known Psychologist Rollo May tells the story of a psychologist who gets to heaven, and attempts to read his CV [resume] and show copies of published articles as to why he should get into heaven. St. Peter listens carefully, and then informs him, that none of that had anything to do with getting into heaven. The Psychologist asks the reason for his refusal, his great sin, and he is told 'nimis simplicandum'---he is guilty of taking a valuable creation and reducing it to its simplist level: love becomes 'attachment behaviors', nobility becomes a self-satisfying altruism, and so on. But that, is the Mind of Man.
The Mind of Christ
There are a few scriptures we hear often if we stay in the Word, though, which call us to a different 'mind'---the mind of Christ. Says one passage in Corinthians
" For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. 1Corinthians 2:16"
It is clear that when we come to Christ, and are privileged to the adoption in the Holy Spirit, that our walk with our Redeemer and Messiah is not to stop there. Even before Heaven, even before the Rapture, there is to be a transformation in the way we live and think. We leave behind the old ways, and come to the New Life which we are gifted with. This entails a change of heart and thinking
The strength to do that does not come through our own intuition or adaption of old ideas, it comes through the revelation God gives us through the Word and the Holy Spirit. There is also a process in shaping and changing our minds to agree with the Mind of God, the Mind of Christ. It is not as too many people suppose just mean you change political parties or positions, or start liking Christian music instead of pop, etc, it is a whole way of life. He alone is the instrument of that change, although we often choose to get in the way.
Says another passage:
Only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ: that whether I come and see you, or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs, that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel- Phl 1:27
The Apostle Paul is one of the most notable examples of this change to the Mind of Christ which took place beginning on the Damascus road. He is on his way to persecute and arrest, perhaps even kill the new Christians [little christs], when the Lord appears to him, knocking him from his horse, crying 'Saul, saul, why persecutest thou me?" Even in this small beginning, we see a difference between the mind of Christ and the mind of man: if someone was on the way to hurt our loved ones, we would immediately react with violent opposition: but God sees the Paul who will be: the great champion of the faith, who will teach his people from his epistles for the next 2000 years.
More than that, the Rabbi Paul was in training for a position of leadership in Israel, having been brought up at the "feet of Gamaliel".
I am verily a man [which am] a Jew, born in Tarsus, [a city] in Cilicia, yet brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, [and] taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers, and was zealous toward God, as ye all are this day. Acts 22:3
He has obtained, or at least been very schooled in the 'mind of man', or 'the Natural Mind': he has studied even the scriptures from early in the way prescribed, with the theories and commentaries of men, and their methods and theologies. His first encounter with Christ leaves him somewhat bewildered, and he is shown that he is blind to the ways of God: but rather than condemning Paul, he begins with the first lesson: coming as a Child to a loving Father. This arrogant young 'theologian' who would probably have sat on or even led the Sanhedrin, confronts the God of Heaven, instead of the God of men's thinking and dogma. Do not consider this a 'Jewish' issue: there are just as many Churchgoers, who know the Word, the hymns, and who even have degrees in Divinity, who have met God only in the Natural Mind. By the time God has finished his re-education which appears to last even 14 years,
Then fourteen years after I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, and took Titus with [me] also. Galatians 2:1
In my own experience, I learned this early in my walk, as God called me out of everything I had known and trained for: it did not seem 'logical': it did not seem like God would have done that, so for 2 or 3 years after I became a Christian, I danced first this way, then that, and did not understand why He did not just 'stamp with approval' what I was already doing. After years, though circumstances and trials have been sometimes overwhelming, partly through persecution and partly through a lack of total obedience, I have come to understand that His purposes and ours do not match in rank order: He was more interested in preparing me to have His mind, His Life, and to be fit to live in His presence in Eternity than momentary comfort. At the time I was doing 'a good work': working with families experiencing Perinatal Death, but even then, my mind had so formed in Psychological thinking and natural logic, that had I continued, I would have done it the world's way, and probably soon fell out of a relationship with Him. As one of the scriptures above notes, a conversation in the Gospel of Christ: the hymn 'Away in the Manger' by Martin Luther has a last line which in the original reads,
"fit us for Heaven to live with you there".
There is no doubt that Salvation is not EARNED, it is a gift from God: this is the core of the Gospel replete in the Old and New Testament, but after we are given this gift, He begins the arduous task in our life of making us ready to be in His Presence: a two year old, if he remains with the manners of a two year old, would find an uncomfortable situation at a State Dinner!!!
We are taught often about the change of life and heart, and these are critical: Paul acknowledges that above every gift of 'power' and discernment is Love: we are nothing without that. However even the Love of God must be transformed in our thinking: our paltry concepts of love in the flesh or carnal mind are of no value: our vision, our feelings, our willingness to surrender, our way of looking at the LORD and His Word and other issues necessitate His transforming power in our lives. Sometimes that takes years.
With each entry in this blog, a different and fundamental issue of the 'Mind of Christ' will be examined: all will be found tied entirely to His Word. In the Next Blog, we will look at 'Coming to the LORD as a Child'.
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