Mindless Religion

Luke 10:27 So he answered and said, " 'You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind,' and 'your neighbor as yourself.' "

In these words the Lord Jesus stated the first or greatest commandment. That is to say, this is the primary moral duty of the human race; namely, to love God. And not just to love God but to love Him above all other loves, including father and mother, wife and children, and our own lives also. And not just to love God above all else, but to love God with the totality of our created humanness: all our hearts, all our souls, all our strength, and all our minds.

The matter of concern in this article is the mind, loving God with all the mind. What does that mean? It must mean, at the very least, that we devote our minds to knowing God and His will to the utmost of our ability. It must also mean that we engage our minds in worshiping God and in serving God. Our worship and our service must be intelligent.

This ought to obvious to all of God's people from the very nature of the Bible. The Bible is a document of 66 books crammed with information.

This information demands study and thought. This information stretches the mind as nothing else can. Just consider one simple Biblical statement:

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

That is a descriptive statement of the essential identity of our Lord Jesus Christ; His eternality, His deity, His nature as the Revelation of God (the Word). There is enough in this simply worded statement to engage the human intellect forever. It honors God when we study and meditate upon such enormously challenging statements in His Word.

Now, it is very true that not every statement of Scripture is equally complex. The truth of Acts 16:31 is extremely clear and simple: believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. That is forthright and understandable even to children. Nonetheless, even here thought and effort are required: who is Christ; what does it mean to be saved; what is involved in believing. These questions have to be answered if this simple statement is to be understood correctly. The point is that true religion demands the use of our minds.

This brings me to my driving concern; namely, that the expressions of Christian worship and Christian witness of the present day are increasingly mindless. That is to say, there is less and less effort to understand, explain, and relate to God in terms of what He has said to us in the Bible. Instead, there is a decided increase in the use of devices designed to stimulate the emotions while bypassing the mind. Music is the chief such device. Old hymns, and some contemporary music (but a small percentage), engage the mind with beautiful yet provocative statements of truth. So much church music of the present involves a bare repetition of Scripture words with little or no effort to give a reasoned explanation of those words. And preaching, which is to be the chief instrument in presenting God's truth to the mind, is too often but a repetition of cliches and stories, designed primarily to stimulate an emotional response.

Mindless religion is not the religion God revealed in His Word. And it is not the religion that our souls desperately need. May God revive a love of truth and the sanctified application of the mind in using that truth for His glory.