Watch and listen to Jesus and you find an immediate roadmap—a way and a truth that brings life—for acting with love.
‘Acting with love’; that’s another way to say, ‘know what is important.’
We’re spending a few weeks working to find and metabolize into our hearts all the resources God has for us. Specifically, we’re working to understand and appropriate what the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2 we have, “the mind of Christ.”
In this moment, it’s clear we need the right mind. It seems, does it not, the whole world—to one degree or another—is out of its mind.
So is there anything more relevant for you than finding the right mind?
Here’s where we’ve been:
Part 1 | The mind upgrade you missed
Part 2 | You’re one thought away from peace
Today | Why it’s hard to believe you can have it
Next week | What actually counts as important
Confused by life
How do you find out from moment to moment what’s most important?
Your toddler throws another tantrum. How do you know what to do?
Your payroll is due, and revenues haven’t been where you projected for several months now. You either dip into savings or lay someone off and cause them turmoil. How do you know what to do?
You get a diagnosis you weren’t expecting that requires shifts and creates fear. How do you know what to do?
This is of course a values discussion. If you pre-decide your values, you have a roadmap of sorts for what to do when you don’t know what to do. Values are like road signs—they tell you which way to go.
And it’s a wisdom discussion. If you’ve taken the time and intention to cultivate wisdom and discernment, difficult moments have a way of seeming less difficult.
Jesus’ offer in the middle of our confusion
For a follower of Jesus, the person of Jesus and his commands form our path to wisdom and our value system. It’s why Jesus’ basic invitation in the gospels is simple: Follow me.
Do I forgive this person who hurt me?
Do I lie to save myself in a work environment?
Do I spread slander, gossip, and negativity about a person I don’t like or who is in the way of my agenda?
Do I look out for the interests of other people, even when they have no claim on me?
Do I do good work when no one is looking?
Watch and listen to Jesus and you find an immediate roadmap—a way and a truth that brings life—for acting with love.
‘Acting with love’; that’s another way to say, ‘know what is important.’
Yet there are still moments when, frankly, we don’t know what to do. We don’t know the important thing and don’t know if we can know it, ever.
Life can be so confusing, and life’s pain becomes an algorithm that sorts out us believing we can have what we need. Doubt enters the chat of the heart—doubt about God, doubt about ourselves, doubt we’ll ever figure it out, doubt we’ll ever get it right. Our heart sinks.
Paul in saying we have the mind of Christ is echoing Jesus’ basic invitation and offering a path forward.
The hinge question for you is this: Do you believe you can have it?
The many paths we try
There are as many opinions about how to get the right mind as there are people. The history of human thought and endeavor is the history of trying to find it.
In 1 Corinthians 1 & 2 Paul names several repeated human attempts.
-The individual search to be a good person.
-Religion.
-The social search for collective wisdom.
His response to them isn’t dismissal. He doesn’t say “Those don’t matter.” Instead, he says what we sense, “They are incomplete.”
In other words, you can:
-Search to be a good person.
-Become religious.
-Employ any number of social constructs for collecting wisdom.
That is, achieve.
Yet you know, don’t you, you can achieve all day long and still come up short.
Achieving as an end in itself is like a drug. It’s never enough. But the heart persists in trying justify itself with achievement. Here’s the degree I earned. The paper I wrote. The graduate seminar I attended. The title I won. The award I got. The certification I earned. The research I did. The company I created. The family I made. The career I built.
Paul’s judgement of our attempts is so insightful. They make a person subject to purely human judgments. (see 1 Corinthians 2:9-15)
“You aren’t good enough.”
“That’s the wrong way to be religious.”
“Those people you are learning from are the wrong people.”
Believing and receiving
He offers the counter-intuitive insight the heart craves but struggles to believe is possible for me.
“But we have the mind of Christ.” 1 Corinthians 2:16
Let’s break that down.
Paul says, contrary to most human thinking, the mind you need is not an achievement. It is an attachment.
In other words, you don’t achieve it, you welcome it.
This seems off. For most of human thinking, this sounds like foolishness or some sort of stumbling block in the way of human progress. Paul acknowledges this (see 1 Corinthians 1:20-25).
“You just receive a mind that somehow magically makes everything okay? Foolishness. “
“You don’t have to earn a life of wisdom and insight? That is a stumbling block to human flourishing.”
Human thinking is math. It must add up.
God’s thinking is relational. It lifts people up.
In telling you that you already have the mind of Christ, Paul is only describing the gospel. Listen to it. Because of what the world sees as foolishness—a man dying on a cross for the sins of the world—you are in a covenant relationship with God.
Covenant is an old word that confers security and trust. A covenant was cut--usually in blood--and tied two parties together with confidence, security, and pledges of trust. Your HOA covenant is decidedly not that. In modern terms, we might call covenant a secure attachment. Covenant means you are securely attached to God your Father.
And it’s inside a relationship with secure attachment—as any relationship coach will tell you—you find the strength you need to face life and a renewed mind that can actually see what’s important. The safety in your body and soul literally frees your brain to do higher level thinking. The strength of the relational bond is what helps you see.
This is the gospel. The mind of Christ is given to you by grace. You have it. It’s yours; the right mind that acts with love in a world filled with hate.
You have to receive what you believe.
That's pithy, isn't it? Pithy can get lost in the misunderstandings that come along with "pith."
Maybe clunky is clearer. Receive what God your Father is giving you and has already made arrangements in Christ to make yours. Receive how 2 Peter 1:4 says it: "...God has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires."
When the world goes mad friends,
pause,
breathe in your acceptance by grace,
lift your head, and say,
“but we have the mind of Christ.”