Love God With All Your Mind part1

© 2 0 1 5 T h i r d C o lu m n M in i s t r i e s


Introductions


Book for this class

Two editions of this book.

First edition 1997

Second edition revised and

updated 2014

Some chapters taken out

new ones put in

Old edition has an audio

book format


The book covers 4+1 areas

• Why the mind matters in Christianity

• How to develop a mature Christian mind

• What a mature Christian mind looks like

• Guaranteeing a future for the Christian mind

• Appendix recommended resources


Recommended Books


The Problem


Why this class?

• Why a class on loving God with all our minds?

• Why are you interested in this class?


Discussion

What does “For as he thinks within himself, so he is.” (Proverbs 23:7) mean?

How doe we find out what it means?

What did the author mean in the original context?

We need to read it in context.


When you sit down to dine with a ruler,

consider carefully what is before you,

and put a knife to your throat

if you have a big appetite;

don’t desire his choice food,

for that food is deceptive.

Don’t wear yourself out to get rich;

stop giving your attention to it.

As soon as your eyes fly to it, it disappears,

for it makes wings for itself

and flies like an eagle to the sky.


Don’t eat a stingy person’s bread,

and don’t desire his choice food,

for it’s like someone calculating inwardly.

“Eat and drink,” he says to you,

but his heart is not with you.

You will vomit the little you’ve eaten

and waste your pleasant words.

Don’t speak to a fool,

for he will despise the insight of your words.

Proverbs 23:1-9 (HCSB)


“There is no longer a Christian mind.”

- Harry Blamires

“Christians view humble

ignorance as being more

noble than a cultivated

mind.”

Richard Hofstadter Anti-

intellectualism in

American Life


My people are destroyed

for lack of knowledge.

Hosea 4:6


The Battlefield

“…thought control, as conducted through the agency of the national media

and related elements of the elite intellectual culture.”

Noam Chomsky, Necessary Illusions, Thought Control in Democratic Societies


"The battle for humankind's

future must be waged and won in the public school

classroom...between the

rotting corpse of

Christianity...and the new

faith of humanism.

Humanism will emerge

triumphant."

• John Dunphy; The

Humanist;

January/February, 1983


College is a battlefield of ideas

FreeRepublic.com


College is a battlefield of ideas

FreeRepublic.com

“[Professors] are rightfully

unimpressed with the inability of

most Christian students to

defend their beliefs.” Frank Turek



"Unless one receives a strong religious grounding in a religious

school and /or religious home, the average young person in

the Western World is immersed in a secular cocoon. From

elementary school through graduate school, only one way of

looking at the world— the secular— is presented. The typical

individual in the Western World receives as secular an

indoctrination as the typical European received a religious

one in the Middle Ages. I have taught college students and

have found that their ignorance not only of the Bible but of

the most elementary religious arguments and concepts—

such as the truism that if there is no God, morality is

subjective— is total.“ – Dennis Prager


Recent Studies

• Percentage of students leaving the faith while in college

61%

Barna

Study

2006

66%

Assemble

of God

Study

70%

LifeWay

Research

2007

88%

SBC

Family

Life 2002

35%Return to

faith later



Not Equipped

• “…it’s not so much that Christian minds are lost at college —it’s that Christian minds rarely get to college. They rarely get to college because many parents and churches emphasize emotion and ignore the biblical commands to develop the mind, which means that most kids skip off to college equipped with nothing more than feel-good emotionalism.”

• Frank Turek

• “A tepid Christianity cannot withstand a rabid secularism.”• Ravi Zacharias


Salt has lost it’s saltiness

“You might expect that parents who are born-again Christians would

take a different approach to raising their children than did parents

who have not committed their life to Christ, but that was rarely the

case.“

- WorldNetDaily.com

“For years we have reported research findings showing that born-

again adults think and behave very much like everyone else. It often

seems that their faith makes very little difference in their life.”

- Barna Group


As a class we listened to an

interview by Peter

Boghossian, author of A

Manual for Creating Atheists.

Class discussion follows.

Listen to what Boghossian

says about Christians and

Faith.


Listen to the interview by Peter

Boghossian, author of A Manual for

Creating Atheists Paperback

“Faith is an unreliable epistemology”

“The book helps talk people into a

reliable epistemology”

“God is a conclusion someone

comes to when they have an

unreliable epistemology:”


Listen to the interview by Peter

Boghossian, author of A Manual for

Creating Atheists Paperback

“I am trying to lead people to live

thoughtful and examined lives”

“We are trying to move people to

the adult table”

He wants 10,000 to go and confront

people of faith “Intervention”


Review

“The problem on the side of the

church is not lack of information.

The problem is desire to have that

information and awareness of the

problem a lack of information

causes. When someone abandons

the life of the mind, it is sad. When a

Christian does it, it is a travesty.”

Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Christian Ministries


• Faith in vs. Faith that

• Cold-Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospels

• by J. Warner Wallace


Resources


Recommended Books to start with


Thank you for participating!

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• Be a guest speaker

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Love God With All Your Mind part1