Sermon: With All Your Mind

The Power of Love:

Love the Lord Your God With All Your Mind

Cynthia O'Brien

February 19, 2006

Romans 11:33 – 12:2

^{RO 11:33} Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!

How unsearchable his judgments,

and his paths beyond tracing out!

^{RO 11:34} "Who has known the mind of the Lord?

Or who has been his counselor?"

^{RO 11:35} "Who has ever given to God,

that God should repay him?"

^{RO 11:36} For from him and through him and to him are all things.

To him be the glory forever! Amen.

^{RO 12:1} Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God--this is your spiritual act of worship. ² Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will.

2 Corinthians 5:11-15

^{2CO 5:11} Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade men. What we are is plain to God, and I hope it is also plain to your conscience. ¹² We are not trying to commend ourselves to you again, but are giving you an opportunity to take pride in us, so that you can answer those who take pride in what is seen rather than in what is in the heart. ¹³ If we are out of our mind, it is for the sake of God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. ¹⁴ For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. ¹⁵ And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.

Philippians 3:10 - 4:1

¹⁰ I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, ¹¹ and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

^{PHP 3:12} Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. ¹³ Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, ¹⁴ I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

^{PHP 3:15} All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. ¹⁶ Only let us live up to what we have already attained.

^{PHP 3:17} Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you. ¹⁸ For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. ¹⁹ Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things. ²⁰ But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, ²¹ who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.

^{PHP 4:1} Therefore, my brothers, you whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, that is how you should stand firm in the Lord, dear friends!

Ignorance is bliss. Or is it?

Californian ignorance about Oregon is kind of a sad thing. Back in the spring of 1996, I met an Oregon minister at a conference and he told me that churches in Oregon were looking for ministers. I was seriously uninterested at first because of my misconceptions about the Northwest. Look at the life I might have missed if I stayed in my Californian ignorance.

American ignorance. I think it’s sad that so many Americans know so little of the world we live in. After 9/11, I was concerned about the country singer who sang that he didn’t know the difference between Iraq and Iran. I would rather that he had taken the time to learn some things about the Middle East nations and maybe he could have enlightened us instead.

There’s the ignorance that comes from lack of education, so charmingly promoted by Sam Cooke in his song, “Don’t know much about history”

Don't know much about history

Don't know much biology

Don't know much about a science book

Don't know much about the French I took

But I do know that I love you

etc.

And then the part that would upset my husband:

Don't know much trigonometry

Don't know much about algebra

Don't know what a slide rule is for.

But I do know that one and one is two…

There’s Christian ignorance, in which we hold to a limited understanding of Christianity and block out the rest of the world. I had a friend back in the early 1980’s who put a bumper sticker on his car. It said, “God said it, I believe it, that settles it.”

For him -- what HE was trying to say was: I have enough information, I am not interested in your point of view, so don’t expect me to listen to you.

It’s true that the Christian faith can be accepted simply, even by children. But we are also called to pursue God with our mind, and to apply our intellect to our faith.

Think back to creation. God created male and female in God’s image. The ability to think and reason is a gift of God, and is to be used. We are commanded to love the Lord our God with all our mind.

Let’s think of it this way: First, We love God with all our mind when we use our intellect to pursue God. Second, We love God with all our mind when we use our intellect to carry out the mission of Jesus in the world.

First, use our brain to pursue God.

Many people I know are actively pursuing God with their minds. Our former pastor, Slider, always said that he was “going hard after God.” But I know a lot of people who do not seem to be in a pursuit of God, or else they have gone to great lengths to hide it from the rest of us. They don’t pick up a Bible, they don’t read inspiring books, they don’t go to church, they avoid talking about religion at dinner. They certainly believe there is a God, but they don’t seem to be pursuing God.

That would be just the opposite of the Apostle Paul, who said,

I want to know Christ ... and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

...Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on ...

Paul was a zealously religious person, first in following the Law, then when he was confronted by the risen Christ on the road to Damascus, he became zealous in his pursuit of Jesus Christ.

Presbyterians have historically loved God with our minds. We have been the first to support public education and start colleges. We are very literate – just look how many words we give you to read in the Sunday bulletin, and even that involves a great deal of restraint. We’d love to write more.

It’s important to your church leadership that you become educated in your faith. That’s why there are so many classes. There are theological classes like Gail and Bette’s Wednesday group. There are devotional approaches, like Ruth’s study with Beth Moore. You can even learn by watching videos and eating a dinner that someone else cooks, which is how the Alpha Course works. We offer these opportunities because it’s important for each of us to pursue Christ with our intellect.

Loving God with all my mind means using as much of my brain as I can. You know, it seems to me that, for a lot of people, there’s a gap in our sequence of learning. We are on a steep learning curve when we are young, but there’s a gap between the time we graduate from college or grad school, and when in retirement we start doing the crossword puzzle to try to stave off Alzheimer’s. All of a sudden, late in life, we realize that we need to be exercising our brains. But what about these middle years?

It’s not easy to stay sharp, but many people do. I had a wonderful discussion with about a dozen thoughtful people last Thursday about the book The Kite Runner. We opened our eyes to Afghani culture, came alongside a deeply flawed character and tried to understand what life is like for recent immigrants to the United States. We took up issues of friendship, betrayal and redemption.

There’s one strange thing about this book, and that’s who’s reading it. The author, Khaled Hosseini, has said in interviews that he is surprised that for a book which is a brutal memoir about men in Afghanistan, that his readership is largely women. All the people in my discussion were women. I asked them if men don’t read or if men just don’t get together to discuss books.

One woman said that in the years when her husband was working, he was too busy to read and too tired when he came home at night. Now, in retirement, he has discovered the reading that he had been missing those many years.

God gave you a brain to use.

We don’t just use our intelligence to pursue God, but we also use our minds for the common good.

As Christians, the more we understand our world, the more we can engage it and try to influence people for good.

One woman in the book group said that she had lived a very sheltered life. She wouldn’t normally read a book this far out of her comfort zone, but she felt it was important to know about other cultures and places, like Afghanistan.

I have seen Christians, like my “that settles it” friend, who try to insulate themselves from the culture as much as possible. They are very careful about where they go, who they make friends with, what they read, what movies they see, so that they are not polluted in any way. If that is what they need to do to keep the Christian faith, then that’s what they have to do.

But I have always admired those who engage the world head on, and follow Jesus’ call to be as “wise as serpents and innocent as doves.”

I had that experience several years ago one night after high school group. Colin McGeorge and Nathan and I were sitting around talking -- Colin was maybe a 10^th grader -- and we were talking about the school shootings at Columbine, and the documentary Bowling for Columbine by Michael Moore. Colin’s parents, Steve and Barbara, had taken Colin and his older brother and sister downtown to see it, and Colin talked as intelligently as any adult about the issues. He had a depth of insight I wasn’t used to seeing in people his age.

Thinking back on that this week, I sent a message to Steve McGeorge where they now live in Washington, D.C., and reminded him of that conversation I had had with Colin. I told him that it had confirmed to me what I already knew about the McGeorge family, that they saw movies and read books that expanded their minds, that they listened to NPR and talked about issues at home. It seemed to me that this was a kind of parenting that I wanted to emulate, as opposed to trying to shield my children’s eyes from anything that might be objectionable.

Steve wrote back Friday and said,

Cynthia: I shared your message with Barb and it makes both our days! Hope all is well with our family at Smith- we miss you all.

Personally I 'm of the opinion that in today's information age its really impossible to shield anybody from anything disturbing, disgusting or objectionable. It is all out there and part of the world we live in. Censorship doesn't work.....You just have to deal with it, acknowledge it and be honest. If you have "trained your children in the way they should go" there is some measure of confidence they will understand the warped and sicko things in this world are just that, and unfortunately some can be fixed and others can't. There is evil in the world... ignoring it won't make it go away and taking a peek at it isn't always bad. Trying to ignore "the elephant in the living room" is unrealistic.

Steve McGeorge

Being aware of what is happening in our world is part of loving God with all our mind. Why? Because God loves the world. In fact, God so loved the world that he gave his only Son...

I know many Christians, who are loving God with all their minds by using their superior intellect for good.

State Senator Rick Metsger represents Mt. Hood, Welches, Damascus and Boring in the Oregon Senate. (I don’t know if you knew that we had Senate parents in the church, but Rick belongs to Bob and Velma Hall.) Anyway, I read in this week’s paper that Rick was just named to co-chair a Senate Commission on Educational Excellence.

This will be a bipartisan, blue ribbon panel of parents, educators, business leaders, legislators and other school advocates. Their charge is to recommend potential solutions to improve the daily experience of Oregon students.

Remember what someone said about Tom Potter’s big education meeting the other day? Something about how we have all these smart people in the room, we should certainly be able to come up with solutions. I think Rick is one of those smart people.

I invited Rick for coffee a while back because I wanted to get to know him and learn more about what’s happening in our legislature, and to thank him for inviting me to Salem to pray at the Senate last year. We talked about taxes and policy, and bills that should go through but don’t, and bad legislation that somehow gets approved, and I learned a couple of things.

One is that he is smarter than the system allows him to act. That is to say, he has been doing this long enough to know the path to the solution, but the political system is so flawed that it prevents him from getting there. For example, there are big loopholes that excuse big corporations from paying their share of taxes. There was a bill that would close the loophole, and everybody should be able to agree that’s a good idea. But somehow, by the time it gets to the voters, it either includes an increase in the average person’s taxes, too, or it looks like it does, and the people vote it down.

Rick was considering a run for governor this year, not necessarily because he thought he could beat Ted Kulongoski, but because there were issues he wanted to see debated and this would be a way to bring those issues to the forefront. He was ready to sharpen his intellect for debate, not to mention have to raise a whole lot of money, because he cares.

As a Christian, Rick is loving the Lord with all his mind. He is using the brain God gave him on behalf of you and me, to make the state of Oregon a good place to live.

The least that I can do to support Rick and the other faithful Christians in politics is to be an informed voter. The 6:00 news is not going to give me what I need in order to do it. If the Christians in the State Senate and House – Democrats and Republicans, Christians on both sides of the aisle – can come to agreement or compromise well enough to bring something to my mail-in ballot, the least I can do is be informed and get that ballot turned in on time.

I try to stay on top of the issues. In my car oftentimes I pop out my Pink Martini CD so I can listen to news analysis on NPR. I ask my friends for their opinions. I have friends who are extreme conservatives and extreme liberals, those who read the Wall Street Journal and those who read The New Republic.

One year, at our house, Michael was subscribing to The Weekly Standard and I was subscribing to Mother Jones. We figured we would totally mess up our FBI file if anyone cared to snoop on our politics.

But it was all about being a good citizen, which comes back to being a faithful Christian right where I live, which comes back to loving God with all my mind.