In our day to day lives, we are encouraged from all angles to use our minds and intellect, also known as logic, in order to solve problems, find more efficient ways of accomplishing our work, or to manage everyday tasks. Whether its buying a new house, refinancing a car loan, or buying a new gadget, we all know that things usually turn out better when we apply logic and reasoning to our decisions that eventually shape how we live out our lives and how well those lives turn out to be.
When it comes to the life of faith, the religious life, as Christians in particular and Evangelicals specifically, things trend in the opposite direction. We are told that when it comes to the things of God, to check our minds, our intellect, or our logic at the door. We are told to believe things without actually understanding them. We are encouraged to shut off our brains, and engage in groupthink by accepting things because someone from the pulpit “said so.” Thinking Christians, we are told, need not apply.
Why is this the case? Why are we encouraged to use our brains when it comes to making career choices, planning a vacation, or choosing a restaurant, but when it comes to our faith, which, according to most/some Christians has/will have eternal repercussions, we are told to give up on logic and reason and believe things with little intellectual involvement?
If the Christian faith is to have an effect on the life of the believer, then it follows that this would apply to the whole being, intellect included. Why would God provide to humanity a revelation through the written word, only to then expect us to shut off our brains, the crown-jewel of his creation? It doesn’t make sense.
This is because evangelicals have internalized, or privatized, the Gospel. It isn’t about being transformed by the renewal of our minds, as Paul so eloquently put it, but to be emotionally convicted to accept and recite neat little confessions of dogmatic, superstitious, and eisegetical readings of scripture. Christian leaders are more concerned with appealing to people’s emotions than they are about engaging the mind. We don’t need to be dismissive about emotions, as they are a crucial part of what it means to be human, but we shouldn’t sacrifice the mind at the altar of feelings.
The result of this separation of faith and logic is that the Christian is no longer effective in the public square. It’s why Christianity, a faith with an intellectually robust tradition has become nearly irrelevant in the marketplace of ideas. All because while the wider culture understands the importance and effectiveness of developing the mind, the Evangelical church has retreated into an anti-intellectualism that has led to its irrelevance to all but those who want to bury their heads into the dirt.
It’s time to #MakeChristiansThinkAgain.
