They are intellectually lazy, they are intellectually disloyal to the Lord without even knowing it in many cases.
Jesus said we should pay attention to our minds, to love Him and glorify Him in all that we do." ~Greg Bahnsen, transcript from lecture, The Myth of Neutrality found here.
"Now if carnal living is a lifestyle that does not submit to God's Word, then how should we define carnal reasoning?"
"The same way, I suppose?"
"Right. It is not enough to submit to what we do externally to God; we must also submit the way we think. Your friends are trying to defend God's standards for living by abandoning His standards for thinking. It cannot be successful."
...
"But it is also easy to drink too much, not watch your tongue, lust after women, and so forth. And these are things which the church recognizes as sin, and warns the people against. But carnal reasoning is also easy, and almost no one warns the people."
"Why not?"
"Sheep are hungry because shepherds don't feed them. Shepherds don't feed them because shepherds don't have food. Martin leaned forward in his seat. "The shepherds don't have food because they don't study their Bibles." ~ Douglas Wilson, Easy Chairs, Hard Words: Conversations on the Liberty of God
I listened to Greg Bahnsen's lecture while wrapping gifts last week and I was reminded of the similar ideas presented in Doug Wilson's book so I typed them both up to remember them and share them here.
For a partial list of authors that my husband and I read from, see this post from earlier this year.
2 Cor 10:5: "Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;"
ReplyDeleteHow much better the tangible things of my day to day life would be if I quickly suffocated the thoughts that lead me to stumble in the first place. If instead of following my doubts down the garden path, I doubted my doubts first. When John, from prison, inquired if Jesus was the Christ, or if he should wait on someone else, Jesus didn't say, "What do you think? Do you feel that I am the one?" He asked him to check his reasoning. Jesus called him to examine what he saw and heard and test it: Matthew 11: “Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.”
I feel like it was the kindest of rebukes: taste and see that the Lord is good.
Love to read your thoughts Heather - love - kathleen