We have an intellectual problem in the modern West. We’ve forgotten the intellectual underpinnings of all knowledge.
That’s Jesus by the way.
The resurrection of Jesus is the central beating fact of all existence. Our response to it is the core of our lives. Christians whose lives look the same as their neighbours are a deep sadness, a withered tree.
Anderson, who my writing has been meandering with for a little while now, states it like this:
God’s love in Jesus Christ is the open secret of the cosmos.
Called into Questions, 111
Our intellectual inquiry is supposed to start here. All our thinking is to start here. All our lives are to start here. Whatever you do for a living is dramatically shifted and changed by Jesus, as is everything else in your life.
This is what it is to think Christianly: to start with the revelation of God in Christ and then move outwards towards other disciplines.
How is Mathematics different? Or tax law? Or plumbing?
I suspect most of us want to say that I’m over-spiritualising things and that honestly most of life continues on unabated. I simply don’t think that can be true. The way we view the world has to start with Jesus.
There is no such thing as being ‘unbiased.’ You cannot start your thinking, or your doing, from a neutral place. That standpoint doesn’t exist. This all sounds very critical theory, but that isn’t what I mean. What I mean is that we are never formless and void, we are given as children a way of looking at the world. We are, as Anderson puts it, ‘indoctrinated into a way of seeing things.’
Everyone is. We all have it. This is what some people call ‘worldview.’ I’m not sure that’s the best framing, but the lens that we look at everything through is what we mean. You see life through lenses you’ve been given. I’m saying we should see life through Jesus lenses. We should also think through Jesus lenses.
This all sounds very academic, I appreciate. That is my propensity. What difference does it make to the average person? Well, everyone is thinking about their lives all the time. Everyone needs to learn to think Christianly.
How do you decide who to marry? Or what house to rent or buy? Or how many kids to have? Or where to send them to school? Or what job to get? Or what to do with your money? Or what to do with your spare time? Or how to vote? Or what to do in your community?
The Bible answers these questions, in the main by teaching us how to think so that we can answer them. Not all of them have the same answer in every situation, but all of them have Christian answers that are different to how your neighbours and colleagues would choose to answer them. When I say ‘think Christianly’ I mean all this ordinary, earthy stuff too.
We are possessed by our belief in Jesus. We didn’t choose him, he chose us. No one ‘freely makes up their mind about their beliefs,’ Anderson again argues that instead ‘our beliefs possess us.’ Jesus certainly possesses us, and he doesn’t ask for much: he asks for everything.
It’s true in academia too. I work at a University and am in a church with lots of University students. Every subject studied in the University should also start with Jesus. Sometimes the differences would be very subtle, sometimes they would be very large, but we begin thinking with Jesus.
This sounds like some sort of crazy indoctrination plan that you’d find in some backwoods American homeschool (apologies to backwoods American homeschool friends). I’m not sure that’s as bad as us sophisticated Brits like to think it is, but that’s not my point. The security of working from a foundation is what frees us to ask genuine questions about everything. The faith is intellectually robust enough to withstand any shaking, but pretending we can be neutral is a fool’s game. Pretending that the resurrection of Jesus doesn’t fundamentally change everything is mad.
I suspect many scientifically minded friends would want to say that facts remain facts. The thing is you would have been taught a way of viewing the world in your scientific studies. It’s implicit, the academics may not be doing it consciously, but everything comes with a way of looking at the world. Those facts might be absolutely correct, but they might look very different set in another way of looking. More likely they look similar but they paint a very different picture of the world.
This world is not a machine, it’s a temple to God. You are not a machine, you’re made of dust. You are not the master, but a creature. You are not over creation, but here for its stewarding. The arc of history is long, but it bends towards new creation.
What if every tree is a hymn to God? Would that change how biologists study them? Would it change how you regard them when you pop down to the park at lunchtime or sit under their shade in the sun?
We could go on, but how we think of the world and speak of the world does matter for what we think Christians should be doing in and with it. Think Christianly, friends.
When you do, you’ll find that the world is not just an arrow pointing to the heavens but a gift from the hand of the God who loves you. Delight in it, explore it, discover it, conquer it, and exercise dominion over it. When you know how to look you’ll find that written through the core of everything is Jesus’ smile, beckoning you in love to die and rise again.
Christ is the start of all inquiry and the end of our exploring.
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
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