Habits of the Mind: "A Mind for God"

Breakpoint with Chuck Colson ^ | 7/31/2006 | Chuck Colson

[Mr. Silverback]

A few years ago, a professor at Pasadena City College led a class discussion on the famous story “The Lottery.” In the story, a seemingly normal village carries out a bizarre ritual involving human sacrifice. The professor, Kay Haugaard, had taught the story many times over the years and was anticipating the usual shocked reactions from her students.

Instead, she found that she was teaching a room full of moral relativists who thought that the ritual might be all right “if it’s a part of a person’s culture . . . and if it has worked for them.” To Haugaard’s horror, she realized that “no one in the whole class of twenty ostensibly intelligent individuals would go out on a limb and take a stand [even] against human sacrifice.” The very mentality that Jackson’s story warns us about—“the dangers of being totally accepting followers, too cowardly to rebel against obvious cruelties and injustices”—had become the mentality of this group of intelligent college students.

Haugaard writes, “It was a warm night when I walked out to my car after class that evening, but I felt shivery, chilled to the bone.” James Emery White tells this story in his excellent new book A Mind for God. White, the new president of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, wants us to understand just how dangerous it can be to live life without a worldview that teaches that “each person has value, and there is meaning and purpose to every life.”

To have such a worldview, White explains, we must believe that “there is Someone above and outside of our existence who stands over us as our authority.” Without that belief, our sense of morality can be based only on shifting values in the culture around us. And any sense of morality with such a weak foundation is doomed to erode—and create the kind of minds that are blasé about human sacrifice.

Even those of us who do believe in God can be endangered by a relativistic culture like the one we live in. White tells us of an encounter with a woman, who identified herself as a Christian, who informed him that Jesus “lived a long, full life, got married and had kids.” (And people said that The Da Vinci Code would not have any effect on anyone’s religious beliefs?)

How do we shore up our faith against a corrosive culture and develop a true “mind for God”? White’s book is designed to answer that question. He urges us to read, to study, to reflect on our faith and our culture, and he suggests books, websites, and other resources to help us get started. He encourages Christians to create what he calls “a rule for the mind”—a set of disciplines like those once followed by Christian monastics—to help us develop a pattern of Christian thinking that applies to all of life.

“Our minds are deeply spiritual,” White writes, “and so developing our minds must be a spiritual discipline.” I agree, and I can’t think of a better place to start than in this book. Jim White is a gifted Christian thinker, but what I like best is that he writes for laymen at an accessible level.

So you can visit our website, BreakPoint.org, for more information on A Mind for God and for some more Christian worldview resources, including some of White’s other books. All of us need to learn the disciplines of thinking Christianly about all of life.

[Mr. Silverback]

James Dobson has said he fears a coming generation of moral relativists more than he ever feared nuclear war...and consider that this he's lived next to a primary target for most of his career.

There are links to further information at the source document.

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[Mr. Silverback]

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[Blue Eyes]

Please add me to your ping list. Thanks!

[twigs]

I just ordered "Born Again" for a Christian sister whose college-aged son just began a prison sentence. What he did was morally wrong, but we believe the sentences was a miscarriage of justice. Be that as it may, Colson's book was one of those foundational books I read when I was in college during Watergate. I appreciate this thread. And I wholeheartedly agree with the point. I have a 21-year-old daughter who has a strong sense of right and wrong. Yet even she sometimes struggles with these issues without realizing it.

[Restorer]

Without that belief, our sense of morality can be based only on shifting values in the culture around us.

Not actually true. Some agnostics and atheists have the mental fortitude to resist the societal pressure around them based strictly on their own internalized values.

But it is certainly true of most.

[TampaDude]

A "mind for God"? Which God? Jehovah? Zeus? Osiris? Cernunnos? Our laws come from reason and logic, not some divine authority.

Nomex suit on...

[Dark Skies]

I would like to be placed on your Chuck Colson list. Thx.

[dinoparty]

For most people, life events will scare people from their atheistic moral relativism. Its just an indoctrinated theory that is not very deeply rooted. I am more frightened by the impulsive tendencies of our young people -- do what feels good, no patience, materialism -- and the vacuum created by a lack of a moral education.

[Lx]

Ok, I just read the story.

http://www.americanliterature.com/SS/SS16.HTML

Not exactly Huck Finn or even Harrison Bergeron.

[HaveHadEnough]

Be that as it may, Colson's book was one of those foundational books I read when I was in college during Watergate.

But Born Again was written in 1996. Mr. Colson wasn't writing too much during Watergate.

[dinoparty]

Even if you believe that, you must admit that there is a terrifying lack of reverence for ANYTHING today, whether it be God or the dictates of reason.

[newheart]

""Without that belief, our sense of morality can be based only on shifting values in the culture around us.""

"Not actually true. Some agnostics and atheists have the mental fortitude to resist the societal pressure around them based strictly on their own internalized values."

I beg to differ. The agnostic and atheist may have mental fortitude, but they long ago bought into the foundational message of the shifting values in the culture around us. That is the idea that those values are purely subjective, up to the individual to pick and choose and the only real meaning that those values have is the meaning that the individual ascribes to them.

[twigs]

It was written long before that I believe. That must have been a later edition. I believe it was written in the late 70's. I could be wrong. But I'm sure I didn't read it post 1996.

[twigs]

I just looked. 1977.

[twigs]

Sorry. I wrote a sentence that was difficult to decipher. I was in college during Watergate. But I went to grad school, so I was still around after Watergate when Colson wrote his book. So I did read it in college; it was written some years after Watergate.

[chris_ab]

I read a book and it was good...

Now you be the judge...

Now it's written at a pace that can be read by most... So if your head is big and fat - you are arrogant and think you know it all (and we do have many like that here at FR)... have some grace. Anyhow, the book shows some of the common "ins and outs" of relativism in todays society and historically.

Also, I don't fear relativism... I'm not an Alarmist. Why? Because kids grow up to become parents.

So sure we will always have some cocky undergrads and older professors (in Ivory Towers) that will always think that they discovered a new post modern way of thinking (or post-post-modern way of thinking or a post-post-post-modern way ...) but in the end it won't get off the ground.

If we do have an individual here or there that is a moral relativist and she/he takes it to it's natural barbaric/sociopathic conclusion or end, guess what?

That's what we have police for... to keep order and, specifically, for those sickos. Keeps the Police in business.

Plus, they will be exposed on the Bill OReilly show. Bill O'Reilly is "looking out for you!"

: ) I love FR.

***********

Now, I have to say where Moral Relativism does get tricky is when it's implemented in Gov't policy. When that happens look out! Seriously... Rwanda, Germany, etc...

***********

Now back to a more natural setting - domestic life.

My sister used to say "I can do whatever I want - so long as I'm not affecting anyone". In and around that time she had been knocked up by 2 different guys and had 4 babies. Neither of the men offered marriage.

My mom was always at odds with my sister but my mom became the Father. : )

My mom bought the diapers... My sister said, "I can do whatever I want - so long as I'm not affecting anyone".

She was so stupid.

Now she has to fight her kids when they say the same thing... she will be older and a little smarter at age 45.

[No.6]

"The agnostic and atheist may have mental fortitude, but they long ago bought into the foundational message of the shifting values in the culture around us."

I think what he means is that an agnostic or atheist may assert a reasonable value system sans faith and through self-assurance hold it against societal pressure.

What I think he's missing is that this reasonable value system doesn't just spring up a priori, but only occurs in the presence of a faithful culture, or at least the knowledge of one (not all persons growing up in Communist ratholes turn out to be rats, for instance).

This is like the old joke about the materialist scientist who claims to be able to create life: "First I take this dirt and..." at which point God interrupts and says "Hey, get your own dirt!" :)

[chris_ab]

Oh btw, the book is titled...

Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air

[GourmetDan]

That's like the lady who had one small tattoo and was 'shocked, shocked' when her daughter turned up with several, large colorful ones.

"They sow the wind, and reap the whirlwind." Hos 8:7

[chris_ab]

Most excellent...