Why Loving God with Our Mind Matters
Greg Carmer, PhD, serves as the dean of the A. J. Gordon Memorial Chapel at Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts. He lives in Beverly, Massachusetts, with his wife, Laura, and their three sons.
It is a sobering confession for a student of systematic theology to make, but nonetheless it is true: Jesus did little by way of telling people what to think. Given the Christian practices of producing doctrinal formulas, statements of faith, catechisms, and systematic theologies, it might strike us as odd that Jesus seldom spent time instructing His audience or quizzing His followers on what to think. Instead of speaking simple truisms, He was much more likely to confuse His audience by telling stories and riddles, asking questions, and employing metaphors. And when He did offer declarative teachings, they were often unexpected, enigmatic, and crafted to provoke thought. It seems that Jesus was much more concerned with getting people to think than with what they thought. Don’t get me wrong: right ideas are very important, but there is an undeniable emphasis on behavior over belief in Jesus’ ministry.
And yet, in His behavior, speech, and interaction with others, Jesus modeled for us a very thoughtful life! And more than that, when asked to identify the greatest command, Jesus answers by doing something quite startling; He alters the Shema, which contains three passages that Hebrews considered of utmost importance in the Hebrew Bible. Jesus changes part of the Shema, introducing a command that does not appear in the Old Testament, namely, to love the Lord…with all your mind (compare Deuteronomy 6:4–5 with Mark 12:29–30, NIV). Why would Jesus add an unexpected phrase to the familiar passage?
Receiving a New Command?
One clue to why Jesus may have added the exhortation to love God with our mind as well as our heart, soul, and strength may be found in the context surrounding Mark 12:29–30. Before being asked an honest question by an earnest inquirer about which is the greatest commandment, Jesus was quizzed and tested by members of different parties, each trying to challenge His authority and trip Him in His words. First were the chief priests and elders who demanded to know by what authority Jesus did what He did—driving the money changers from the temple, for example (Mark 11:27–33). Second, some Pharisees and Herodians—both of whom were opposed to the Roman occupation but offered competing alternatives for renewal—quizzed Jesus about His stance on paying taxes to Caesar (12:13–17). Finally, the Sadducees, a religiously liberal party, sought to trap Jesus in a hypothetical question concerning doctrine (12:18–27). In each case, Jesus responds by meeting their challenge and exposing their underlying motives. Each party had its own interests, positions, slogans, and associations; what these parties lacked, however, was the wisdom to discern the will of God in a turbulent time. They were trapped in their limited perspective, personal biases, and political prejudices. Because they were more concerned with winning arguments and retaining their standing, most of these challengers failed to love God through an honest quest for truth. Instead, they employed their mental energy in advancing their own goals and serving their own party’s ends.
In this context, Jesus says that it is not enough to love God with one’s heart, soul, and strength; one must engage one’s mind as well. Loyalty, enthusiasm, and strength of will are not enough; commitment to the party line will not cut it. Our love for God must also include both attentive insight into what is going on around us and a thoughtful response. A commitment to loving God entails a commitment to seek truth and pursue wisdom.
Responding Righteously
Loving God with our mind means more than learning a set of doctrines, memorizing a list of answers, or repeating party slogans. It means pursuing righteousness while gaining insight and understanding regarding current, concrete reality. It means finding responses to the historic situations in which we find ourselves and helping restore people to a right relationship with God, with one another, with the social reality, and with the natural world. In accord with the model presented by Jesus when He answered His opponents in Mark 11–12, this way of responding often requires reframing the situation in categories and terms other than those offered by prominent voices.
In other words, loving God with our mind means exercising the ability to see where things are disjointed and where right relations are broken by sin, selfishness, and systemic distortion; exposing them for what they are; and speaking God’s new reality and working toward a redemptive alternative. Rather than formulaically applying a set of extrinsic rules or following a how-to method for achieving desired goals, loving God with our mind means responding to the current reality with courage, creativity, insight, and humility. It means acting with justice, mercy, and love, as well as acknowledging that there may be more to the situation than we currently understand.
Such a response requires the ability to discern the underlying movement of what is unfolding and then to use our weight to either resist or advance that motion. It may mean that we follow Jesus’ lead, we spot lies, we confront injustices, we point out idolatry, we unmask the self-righteousness that prevents true self-knowledge, we reveal the motives of those who employ God’s name for selfish ends, and we expose the incoherent reasoning of those who would manipulate others in order to amass or retain power. It may also mean that we have the courage and the humility to face our own mistaken thoughts, misunderstandings, and personal prejudices. Such responses require minds that are open to the Spirit’s leading and conviction and that are not caught in limited ways of thinking. It is no coincidence that Paul links both nonconformity to prevalent patterns of thinking and transformed minds to the ability to discern God’s will (Romans 12:1–2).
Following the Right Questions
Loving God with our mind means exercising the discipline of allowing the right questions to guide our attention and lead our thinking. Bernard Lonergan (1973) observes that our mind entertains several types of questions when we are in the service of seeking truth and finding fitting responses. At a basic level, we are challenged to be awake, aware, and attentive. So we must direct our attention beyond our preoccupation with internal distractions, desires, and worries and toward the world around us and ask, What’s going on? What we encounter prompts further questions such as, What is it that I am seeing, hearing, experiencing, and noticing? These questions lead us beyond simple impressions and sensations to insight and understanding. Sometimes insights arise with little effort, especially when we are attending to familiar experiences. In other cases, we must put forth focused, sustained effort as we try to figure out what we are experiencing.
Because we are sometimes mistaken in our understanding, we must move beyond understanding to rational reflection: Is my insight correct? Have I understood rightly? Are there other perspectives that I should entertain? How can I check the accuracy of my understanding? Such questions move us beyond our current understanding and concerns and expand our comprehension of reality. Formulating an understanding of what is going on is easy; making a right judgment about what is really true is difficult! It may mean paying attention to what we have overlooked or trying out a new way of seeing things. Only after we have attended to what is happening, understood what is going on, and made a careful judgment about the truth of our understanding are we able to answer well the question, What shall be my response?
Of course, the more fully we are led by God’s Spirit and the freer we are from the sins of inattention, sloth, pride, and selfishness, the more we will be able to follow God’s leading. At each stage of question asking—from attention to understanding to rational reflection to deliberative decision making—we are called beyond ourselves and into a fuller engagement with truth and reality!
It is easy to fall prey to poor mental habits of inattention, lack of insight, and neglect of the difficult and time-consuming task of rational reflection. How often do we jump to false conclusions or give a hasty response before we have attended to all the relevant questions? Loving God with all our mind is a difficult and painstaking task, but it is this Spirit-led process of the transformation of our mind that leads us to becoming people of wisdom who can discern God’s good, pleasing and perfect will (Romans 12:2, NIV).
Reference
Lonergan, Bernard J. F. 1973. Method in theology. 2nd ed. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.
Thinking 12.3