Audio Transcript

Thinking is essential in the Christian life. It’s essential to Bible reading. And we’ve spent time looking at how much we need to focus our minds to trace the logic flow of Paul’s thought as we read his letters — a dynamic you have shown us, Pastor John, using Romans 1:15–17 and 1 Corinthians 6:18–20 as great samples to show how the Bible assumes we will read. For that, see the APJ book (page 27 for those). Informative and inspiring.

But there are pitfalls to being a deep thinker, too. And Sarah, a thinker, wants to avoid those pitfalls. Here’s her email: “Pastor John, hello to you and thank you for taking my question. I’ve learned a lot from Ask Pastor John over the years, and I listen every week. Thank you, and thank you, Tony, for all your work in making it, and for compiling the new APJ book. It’s all very helpful.

“My question for you is about thinking. I am a thinker. It’s one reason why I love the podcast. You are a thinker. However, I have noticed that some thinking is very dangerous. Paul warns of the dangers of thinking in 1 Corinthians 8:1–4. And yet he also says that thinking is indispensable in Romans 10:1–4. Can you explain how knowledge is both indispensable and dangerous, and how you manage this balance in your own thinking? Thank you!”

I think that’s an excellent way to say it. Knowledge is both indispensable and dangerous. That’s good. Sarah doesn’t make a distinction between thinking and knowing. So, let me make that distinction. Thinking is the activity of the mind by which we gain knowledge. So, I would add the statement, “Knowing and thinking are both indispensable and dangerous.” The process and the product are both indispensable for the Christian — and dangerous.

Thinking Is Dangerous

Let’s start with the danger. I think the number one danger that the Bible warns against when it comes to thinking and knowing is pride. Qualification: that does not mean that people who don’t think and who don’t know much are automatically humble. There is just as much pride among ignorant people as there is among smart people. There is just as much pride among people who don’t know much as there is among people who know a lot.

But the people who don’t think, they boast in other things besides thinking and knowing — physical strength; sexual, alluring powers; ability to cook, play sports, sing, make music, make money, fight, be funny. The things we can boast in are endless. The possibilities of pride and boasting are endless, both for the ignorant and the intelligent.

“We know as we ought if our knowing produces love, not boasting.”

So, the point is not that intelligent, knowledgeable people are more proud than ignorant, unthinking people. The point is that the greatest danger about being intelligent and knowledgeable is pride. That’s the greatest danger people have if they are thoughtful and know a lot of things. And there’s something about thinking (and the skill you have in it) and knowing much that tempts us to exalt ourselves over others and think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think.

Paul’s Warning

Sarah refers to 1 Corinthians 8:1–3:

Now concerning food offered to idols: we know that “all of us possess knowledge.” This “knowledge” puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.

Now, I find those verses really puzzling. How do they fit together? And I’ve written a lot about them.

So, let me just give you my interpretation as best I can. I think what it means is this: How do we know that we know as we ought? Answer: we know as we ought if our knowing produces love, not boasting. If our knowing puffs up over others, it’s not right knowing. But if our knowing builds others up in love, then our knowing is right knowing.

When Paul adds a reference to loving God in verse 3 (“if anyone loves God”), he evidently implies that the love that builds up other people (by the way we use our knowledge for them and not to boast over them) is rooted in love for God, which he says originates in being known by God — that is, being chosen by God and loved by God, so that we are able to love him and thus be full of love for other people and thus use our knowledge rightly, lovingly. It’s a profoundly God-centered understanding of human thinking and knowing in those verses.

So, the first and foremost danger of thinking and knowing that Paul focuses on is that knowledge puffs up. Unless it is under the control of God-given love, it’s going to make us proud.

Jesus’s Warning

Jesus has a similar warning, I think, for the wise and understanding. He says in Matthew 11:25, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children.” Now, I think “little children” there signifies humble people, lowly people, simple people who are not boasting in their wisdom and their understanding but are looking away from themselves to God, the way a child looks to his parent and is willing to receive whatever he says is true. “If God says it, I’ll believe it. I’m going to look to God for my wisdom.”

So, the great danger of being self-reliant, self-exalting in our understanding is that we cut ourselves off from God’s revelation. Dependence on revelation from God for wisdom is a humbling thing. We don’t like to depend on somebody else having total wisdom and telling us what reality is like. Humans don’t like to be utterly dependent on God’s revelation of himself in order to have a true knowledge of life.

Nebuchadnezzar’s Example

One last illustration about the connection between pride and the right use of the mind is the vivid example of Nebuchadnezzar. When he boasted in his power and intelligence to build a great kingdom, God struck him down, made him like an animal who ate grass. Here’s the way Nebuchadnezzar described his recovery from that bestial, animal-like loss of his mind, his right use of his brain. He said, “At the end of the days I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High” (Daniel 4:34).

Years ago, I put that verse on my office door at church, the verse that says, “I . . . lifted my eyes to heaven, and my reason returned to me.” I love it. We will use our minds rightly when our eyes are lifted Godward. If we turn in on ourselves and begin to boast, our reason will become bestial and destructive.

Thinking Is Indispensable

Now, let’s shift gears and turn to the fact that knowing and thinking are not just dangerous; they’re indispensable. The prophet Hosea said, “My people [perish] for lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6). And he pleaded, “Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord” (Hosea 6:3). So, the faculty of knowing is first and foremost essential for knowing God. Let us know God. Let us press on to know God.

I think Jesus made that plain when he said about the Great Commandment in Matthew 22:37, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” Now, I take loving God with your mind to mean use your mind. Use your thinking faculty, your capacities for knowing. Use your mind in order to stoke the fires of love for God in your heart.

If the heart burns, the kindling is thrown by the mind. The mind works hard. It goes out and it finds the truth, the kindling of truth, and it throws it on the furnace of love in the heart. Put your mind at the service of your heart in loving God. That’s the ultimate purpose for having the capacity to think and know.

Again and again, I am bowled over by the sheer reality that the Creator of the universe has communicated himself to us in a book. We have a book, and the book is the very word of the Creator of the universe. One of the reasons that bowls me over is because it implies that the main way we know God is by reading or listening to someone who has read. If you’re preliterate and you have to depend on orality, someone speaking to you, they have to read the book or somebody has to read the book.

So, reading and listening are fundamentally processes of thinking. To read is to think. God has ordained to make himself known and to make a relationship with him possible through a book, which means we have to learn how to read. Learning how to read means learning how to think, which makes thinking indispensable.

I conclude with exactly what Sarah said: thinking is not just dangerous; it is indispensable.