Thoughtful Christianity, Part 4: Empty "Threats" and the End of Knowledge

Your Mind Matters: The Place of the Mind in the Christian Life, by John Stott
progress: completed

Mindless Witness

Someone once shared a story she had read about the immediacy of the need for witness. The main point was a question, "What if you knew your neighbour's house was going to burn down this very night - wouldn't you warn them?" I've heard similar metaphors before, and of course I understand that the main point is that we need to take matters of the soul seriously. But that particular day, my mind took a different turn. I couldn't help but ask myself, "But would they even believe you?" If someone came to me and said something along those lines, my first thought would probably be, "How do you know?" and, depending on who was telling me, I might even wonder if they were trying to threaten or intimidate me. Whether I took the risk of believing such an apparently outrageous suggestion would depend on who was telling me, and how well he or she knew me. If a stranger said it, I would likely consider them a quack, and perhaps even a threat to my safety. If a family member or close friend said it, I would be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and hear them out.

A person will rarely accept even the well-intentioned advice of a complete stranger, at least not without sufficient information to make an informed decision of their own. And that requires both the advisor and the hearer to exchange and evaluate ideas in order to make wise choices - namely, to use their minds.

(c) Becky Bonham

Instead, what we as Christians can sometimes fall into is what John Stott describes as "an emotional, anti-intellectual appeal for 'decisions' when the hearers have but the haziest notion what they are to decide about or why." (66) It seems to me that the street-corner preacher with the sign "Believe in Jesus and be saved!" has very little hope of attracting any real interest, because he has so little to say about who this Jesus is, or why anyone should believe in him. When Jesus is reduced to nothing more than a pithy slogan or appeal, he is thereby stripped of his identity and rendered meaningless to the hearers. Stephen's speech to the Sanhedrin in Acts 7 is the consummate example of a thoughtful, thorough sermon that spoke right into the hearers' realm of knowledge and experience, giving them all they needed to accept his message (or refute it, as they did in this case; well-reasoned evangelism doesn't guarantee a well-reasoned response).

As much as we can heartily acknowledge the Spirit's ultimate role in preparing, softening, and turning hearts toward God, that doesn't change the fact that our role is to reason with unbelievers. This, as Stott points out, is made clear in the abundant use of words throughout the Acts especially that intertwine evangelism with the affairs of the mind: "persuade," "argue," "explain," and "prove." He writes,

To set the Holy Spirit and a reasoned presentation of the gospel over against each other is a false antithesis. (72)

and then goes on to quote Gresham Machen from his book The Christian Faith in the Modern World:

There must be the mysterious work of the Spirit of God in the new birth...Without that, all our arguments are quite useless. but because argument is insufficient, it does not follow that it is unnecessary. What the Holy Spirit does in the new birth is not to make a man a Christian regardless of the evidence, but on the contrary to clear away the mists from his eyes and enable him to attend to the evidence. (quoted on page 72)

I risk getting a little quote-happy here, but Stott's closing comments for this section are worth repeating in their entirety:

Our objective is to win a total man for a total Christ, and this will require the full consent of his mind and heart and will.

I pray earnestly that God will raise up today a new generation of Christian apologists or Christian communicators, who will combine an absolute loyalty to the biblical gospel and an unwavering confidence in the power of the Spirit with a deep and sensitive understanding of the contemporary alternatives to the gospel; who will relate the one to the other with freshness, pungency, authority and relevance; and who will use their minds to reach other minds for Christ. (73-74)

Amen! May I grow more and more into just such a person.

Conclusion

Stott sums up his little book with a reminder that believers are not to view knowledge as an end in itself, but as a means to an end. "Knowledge," he writes, "carries with it the solemn responsibility to act on the knowledge we have, to translate our knowledge into appropriate behavior." (80) The appropriate behaviour, the end of knowledge, is expressed in four main areas of the Christian life: worship, faith, holiness, and love ("For by itself knowledge can be harsh; it needs the sensitivity which love can give it." (83)). He concludes with a warning:

Knowledge is indispensable to Christian life and service. If we do not use the mind which God has given us, we condemn ourselves to spiritual superficiality and cut ourselves off from many of the riches of God's grace. At the same time, knowledge is given us to be used, to lead us to higher worship, greater faith, deeper holiness, better service. What we need is not less knowledge but more knowledge, so long as we act upon it. (84, emphasis mine)

Learn and grow in knowledge, and in wisdom act upon it.

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So ends my journey with John Stott - for now at least. I've been coming back to these themes again and again, being challenged and convicted in my own life as I seek to live out my knowledge and my faith with intentionality and integrity, and I trust this is only the beginning of the journey. Further up and further in!

~Becky

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