Redeeming Every Thought
Old
Testament Reading: 1 Samuel 18:6-7
New
Testament Reading: 2 Corinthians 2:14-17
Text: 2 Corinthians 10:5
Today I would
like to delve a little more deeply into the implications of a passage I
preached on a couple of weeks ago. Then I spoke to you concerning Paul's
determination to assault and conquer every fortress mentality using the
cross of Christ as his weapon. Then I said that for Paul the message of
Christ is far from the barricade to new knowledge and opportunity that
some would make it. Christ is not the builder of fortress mentalities, but
rather their scourge and foe. But I have to admit there was one sentence
in that passage, which I did not much like the sound of, which threatened
to over throw the case I sought to make. It is this: Paul proposes to
"take every thought captive to obey Christ." And that does at first glance
have about it the unpleasant ring of brainwashing. But I make bold to hope
that there is another way to understand his words. Let's see what this
imagery implies against the broader background of the Bible.
First we need to remember those
distinctly unedifying tales in the Old Testament in which the deity
commands Joshua or Saul to exterminate an enemy, to leave no Amalekite or
Canaanite breathing. The texts are uncompromisingly clear: they are to
slay and smite every man, woman, child and animal. "Nothing that lives
shall survive!" The policy was "No prisoners!" The foe was merely wheat to
be cut down with a bloody scythe.
Now it looks like
Israel
never actually waged such a genocidal war, if knowing that helps you. It
is hindsight theology, armchair strategy marked out by later writers who
rued the fact that the pagans were not so dealt with, since if they
had been, Israel would have been less likely to learn their wicked ways.
(Though if there are any ways more wicked than genocidal warfare, you tell
me!) But at any rate, it is against this background that we might see the
taking of every thought prisoner to Christ as an image of Christ's
mercy. I mean, we are lucky we are hearing about captives being taken,
when we could be hearing the words Jesus makes a parable character speak:
"Bring in my enemies and slay them before me!"
Of course there are Christians
who believe that it is the Christian policy, when it comes to intellectual
matters, to "take no prisoners!" They will hear no evidence on any
scientific theory the Bible does not teach. They will not countenance the
possible truth of an alien religion. Once you are safely in their fold you
will be told you cannot entertain any non-Christian ideas, read any
non-Christian books. You will hear that Satan would use such devices to
sow poisonous seeds of doubt. Let me tell you something: if you can
convince me that Christians must take such a position, you can finish the
sermon. You can have my job. I will be out seeking another religion.
Because I think it is not the Christian stance to obliterate all else but
Christianity. It is not like Jesus Christ to "take no prisoners."
I believe that in all matters of the
mind, one must admit the truth from wherever it comes, no matter how
strange and exotic its point of origin, no matter how threatening it may
seem to your inherited ideas, no matter how unable you may be to make
sense of it now. You must let it have its voice and give it a place in
your ongoing synthesis of your developing beliefs. You may be forging a
Christian creed with an admixture of ideas from Eastern religions. You may
be trying to synthesize a Christian ethic that accommodates some of the
advances of genetic research. You may be a Gay man who cannot believe God
created you as you are as a mistake and must somehow build that belief
into a Christian ethic, despite the fact that the organized church tells
you that you can't.
In all such intellectual work what is
happening is that you are abandoning the collapsing ruins of a fortress
mentality, for which God bless you, and you are trying to enable all these
new thoughts and ideas to serve Christ. To take them captive
to Christ, rather than to sacrifice them to Christ, as if
destroying them somehow served Christ. To take every thought captive
to Christ is to refrain from closing your mind to all truths that come
from elsewhere, which would be to exterminate them as the Israelites were
pictured destroying the Canaanites. That would be, and is, the procedure
of Christian fanaticism. But to see how new thought might enrich and
ennoble the Christian synthesis is to welcome new ideas and facts as
servants of Christ.
This is certainly what Paul did! His
writings are swimming in terminology and conceptuality drawn from the
Hellenistic Mystery Religions, from the Cynic philosophers, from
Gnosticism. You would never recognize Christianity if it were stripped of
all the wonderful images and ideas from other quarters which made it what
we know today!
Paul speaks elsewhere in 2 Corinthians
of Christ making us his captives. In Chapter 2, verse 14 he thanks
God that Christ always leads us in triumph. What he seems to mean is that
Christ, having triumphed over the forces of evil on the cross, now rides,
so to speak, through the capitol in his chariot, receiving the cheers of
the crowds, much as in 1 Samuel, when Saul and David are met with the
cheers of the multitude for their victory over the Philistines. What role
have we in the triumphal procession of Christ? We bring up the rear,
captives on display, living spoils of war. We who once served sin are now
brought over to the service of Christ. We are his captives, as Paul says
in Romans, "slaves of righteousness." We are duty-bound to do
righteousness, which we will find a great freedom, now that the conquering
Lion of Judah has freed us from the slave master Sin.
In other words, on the Pauline
metaphor, the one taken prisoner by Christ is redeemed by Christ!
Now, really, hasn't Paul stretched a metaphor beyond all normal,
recognizable meaning? Has there ever been a prisoner of war who was
happy to be taken prisoner? As it happens, our own recent history
supplies us with the best of examples! Remember how Iraqi soldiers kissed
the hands of the Desert Storm troops who accepted their surrender? They
were as happy to see the Allied Forces as the Kuwaitis were! And why?
Because to serve their ruler was to serve a slave master! Saddam had them
out in the field with guns pointed at their backs! For them to be taken
captive by Desert Storm troops was to be liberated! And so with Christ! To
be taken captive by him is to win the war, not to lose it!
And it is in this way that Christ and his field marshal Paul mean to take
every thought captive. Christ means to redeem every thought, not to
destroy it!
Paul says in Romans 12, "I appeal to
you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as
a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable
service. Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the
renewal of your mind, that you may determine what is the will of God, what
is good, and acceptable and perfect." We are to renew our minds as a
service to Christ, not to shut them down! Does Christianity require a
sacrifice of the intellect? Well, yes, provided you mean the kind
Paul specifies: the service of a mind renewed by means of baptism in the
truth, freed of the biases and the propaganda and the distortions of a
crooked age!
But let me get specific for a moment:
precisely how is Christ going to renew your mind, to redeem your
thoughts? Personally, I do not think he is going to pour new revelations
into your head to replace old false ideas. Sorry, it's not that easy. I
don't believe there is any Christian shortcut to finding the truth. The
clerics and theologians that tell you there is a magic book full of
inerrant truths are just using that illusion as a cover to get you to
believe whatever they tell you.
You must find the truth for yourself,
like it or not. Christ will not do it for you. But here is
what he will do for you. Here is how he will renew your mind,
redeem your thoughts. He will enable you, by his Spirit, to speak what
truth you find in love. Christians, I hope, are people who are excited
about truth, interested in truth, on fire to find the truth. And once you
think you've found a piece of it, and you're bursting with it, you want to
spread it, and your headlong pace may sweep all else aside!
Perhaps God has blessed you through a
12-step program. Amen! But is your first reaction to insist that everyone
else needs the same thing whether they know it or not? Have
demythologizing and historical criticism made the Bible come alive for
you, as they have for me? It is very easy to thrust these controversial
methods on people who aren't ready for them or do not need them! Have you
found meaning in a particular ministry of the church, whether the Film
Series or Human Needs or the Bible Studies? You will be tempted to look
askance on others who just do not see the same value in them. Have you had
a charismatic experience with Christ that has renewed your spiritual life?
Praise God! Now are you going to insist that everyone else have the same
experience, or else you are going to brand them "nominal Christians"?
You may, in your enthusiasm over the
truth that has renewed your mind, become a living example of the maxim of
Paul, "Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up." You may have become
Exhibit A illustrating what the great agape-hymn says, "If I have the gift
of prophecy and know all mysteries and I have all knowledge, ...but I have
not love, I am nothing" (1 Corinthians 13:2). But Christ will give you the
love you lack. He will enable you to use your knowledge to build up others
rather than running rough shod over them. He will enable you to speak your
prophecies and mysteries and knowledge with love so that you will be more
than a crashing gong and a tinkling cymbal.
And if, perchance, you elect not
to speak the truth in love, let me venture to tell you that you are not
speaking the truth of Christ, no matter how the facts may back you up! You
see, it works both ways! On the one hand, there is no truth, no fact, no
discovery which cannot be the truth of Christ! He is Truth's other name!
No truth can offend or injure him! If it is true, a Christian should be
first in line to believe it! What makes it Christ's truth, though,
is whether it is spoken in love!
Darwinism, atheism, revolutionism, may
be Christian affirmations if they are true, but they cannot be if they are
spoken without love! If they serve the truth, Christ can take them captive
to serve him, and if he takes them as his servants, they will be spoken in
love.
Copyright©2009 by Robert
M Price
Spirit of
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