Transforming the Mind
My dear friends, I am sorry for the blog silence. I have been bending every effort to finish my final seminary course. I am now officially a graduate of Reformed Theological Seminary! Woo hoo!!! 7 long years is all it took.
I wanted to post, tardily, some additional thoughts related to last week's message. We spoke about renewing the mind, based on Romans 12:2. Dallas Willard suggests that spiritual formation requires intentional work on 3 different aspects of our mental life: ideas, images, and information.
Ideas are very general models of or assumptions about reality... [they] are never capable of definition or precise specification... Therefore, it is extremely difficult for most people to recognize which ideas are governing their life and how those ideas are governing their life.
Christian spiritual formation... is very largely a matter of replacing in ourselves those idea systems of evil with the idea system that Jesus Christ embodied and taught.
Images are always concrete or specific, as opposed to the abstractness of ideas, and are heavily laden with feeling... Every idea system is present among us as a life force through a small number of powerful images... To manipulate images - and thereby people - is the work of the propagandist and the advertiser... By contrast, to loosen the grip of fallen imagery and its underlying idea structure is a fundamental part of what mental health professionals must do to aid their patients. It is also essential to the Christian ministries of inner healing and evangelism.
We must take care that we are nourished constantly on good and godly [images]. We need to be in the presence of images, both visual and auditory... [that] can constantly direct and redirect our minds toward God, Jesus Christ, the Spirit, and the church (people of God).
Without correct information, our ability to think has nothing to work on. Failure to know what God is really like and what his law requires destroys the soul, ruins society, and leaves people to eternal ruin. This is the tragic condition of Western culture today, which has put away the information about God that God himself has made available.
We must seek the Lord by devoting our powers of thinking to understanding the facts and information of the gospel. This is the primary way of focusing our mind on him, setting him before us. (Might we call this "gospel transformation?")
I wanted to post, tardily, some additional thoughts related to last week's message. We spoke about renewing the mind, based on Romans 12:2. Dallas Willard suggests that spiritual formation requires intentional work on 3 different aspects of our mental life: ideas, images, and information.
Ideas are very general models of or assumptions about reality... [they] are never capable of definition or precise specification... Therefore, it is extremely difficult for most people to recognize which ideas are governing their life and how those ideas are governing their life.
Christian spiritual formation... is very largely a matter of replacing in ourselves those idea systems of evil with the idea system that Jesus Christ embodied and taught.
Images are always concrete or specific, as opposed to the abstractness of ideas, and are heavily laden with feeling... Every idea system is present among us as a life force through a small number of powerful images... To manipulate images - and thereby people - is the work of the propagandist and the advertiser... By contrast, to loosen the grip of fallen imagery and its underlying idea structure is a fundamental part of what mental health professionals must do to aid their patients. It is also essential to the Christian ministries of inner healing and evangelism.
We must take care that we are nourished constantly on good and godly [images]. We need to be in the presence of images, both visual and auditory... [that] can constantly direct and redirect our minds toward God, Jesus Christ, the Spirit, and the church (people of God).
Without correct information, our ability to think has nothing to work on. Failure to know what God is really like and what his law requires destroys the soul, ruins society, and leaves people to eternal ruin. This is the tragic condition of Western culture today, which has put away the information about God that God himself has made available.
We must seek the Lord by devoting our powers of thinking to understanding the facts and information of the gospel. This is the primary way of focusing our mind on him, setting him before us. (Might we call this "gospel transformation?")
posted by Bob | 1:37 PM
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