(5) Action Oriented

This is so because a Christian mind is action oriented. The truth is something that must be done to be known. Jesus described himself as "the way, the truth and the life." We only know the truth when we recognize its intimate relation to Christ – He alone gives meaning to anything we "know" – and when we respond to Him in dealing with our knowledge. Hence John can say, "If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in the darkness, we lie and do not the truth." (I John 1:6) Biblical knowledge involves intellectual understanding, emotional commitment, and volitional abstraction. There is no place in it for the process of abstraction which allows us to remain aloof from the object of knowledge and satisfied with concepts which demand no response.
Another way to say the same thing is to say that Christian knowledge is responsible knowing. In the Old Testament, the husband who heard his wife make a vow and said nothing to restrain her was then committed with her to its fulfillment. The Israelite who heard the "voice of adjuration" in connection with some misdeed and did not divulge his knowledge of the deed became as guilty as the perpetrator of the deed. In the New Testament, Jesus said, "If ye know these things, blessed are ye if ye do them." (John 13:17) Western man has learned how to know violence, cruelty, and wickedness of the worst kind without feeling called to become involved in doing anything about it. This irresponsibility is not part of a Christian mind.

(6) Vocational

A sixth characteristic is what could be called the vocational aspect of a Christian mind. The word "vocation" comes from a Latin root meaning "to call," and a Christian mind is one that senses the call of God in every part of its activity. Abraham is called the "father of the faithful" not merely because he "believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness" (Romans 4:3) but because his character was formed through his response to God in every formed situation he encountered or each bit of new situation he acquired. What must have seemed to his contemporaries to be the rather ordinary life of a nomadic sheik was in reality the world-blessing career of a man characterized by a tent and an altar. The sense of vocation seldom left him; its persistence accounts for the stature of the man. He developed a Christian mind.

(7) Purity

It is this walking before the face of God which accounts for the purity of the Christina mind. (James 3:17) The word used in James, though sometimes meaning "chaste" or "unsullied," here has a wider meaning of "pure from every fault, immaculate." The sixth beatitude, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God," is double edged. Not only is seeing God a consequence of purity of heart; purity follows from seeing God. When John says, " . . . we shall be like him, for we shall see him even as he is," (I John 3:2), he is saying that the unalloyed quality of Christ’s mind becomes ours increasingly as we see him, here by faith, later by sight. That essential, uncontaminated quality is what makes James say that the "wisdom that is from above is first pure . . . without partiality, without hypocrisy . . ." (James 3:17). This purity is referred to in the Sermon on the Mount in these terms:

"The lamp of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness . . . No man can serve two masters . . . Ye cannot serve God and mammon." (Matthew 6:22-24)

It is the purity of complete commitment to God. Contamination enters the human mind as a person attempts to walk independently of God; Christ never walked independently for an instant. His mind and a Christian mind, is pure.

(8) Peaceable

Out of this purity arise the peaceable quality of the Christian mind. That is the promise of Isaiah 26:3, "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusteth in thee." There is a quality of quiet assurance, of settledness, about it. Paul reflects it in Philippians 4:6-7: "In nothing be anxious; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall guard your hearts and your thoughts in Christ Jesus." It was this calmness which surprised Pilate in his examination of Jesus and which drove the Sanhedrin to the point of violence in its interrogation. This same quiet assurance reappears in the conduct of Paul and Silas, beaten, feet bound in stocks in the inner prison, singing hymns to God at midnight (Acts 16:23-25). It is evident in Paul’s request of the Roman centurion, who had just recently rescued him from certain death at the hands of a fanatical Jerusalem mob, to be allowed to address that mob, and in the longing love and the laser-like logic with which he did so. It appears again in almost comic relief when, after two weeks in a raging Mediterranean storm and with all hope of rescue lost, Paul persuades his 275 companions on shipboard to break their long fast and fortify themselves for the survival effort which he alone was convinced lay with certainty before them. Spaceship Earth has come into storms today in which there is the most urgent need for this peaceable quality of a Christian mind.

(9) Accessible

Interestingly enough, James follows the adjective "peaceable" with the description of the Christian mind as accessible. It is "easily entreated, full of mercy and good fruits." Here is no ivory towered isolation, no abstract, theoretical withdrawal from human need. Here is a torrential concern for the welfare of the poor and the oppressed, linked in the indissoluble union with the justification by faith. "But let justice roll down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream." (Amos 5:24) Here is a compassion that is active, outgoing, and aggressive. It propels the Christian into involvement against entrenched, institutional sin, which has produced grotesque disproportion in the possession by earth’s inhabitants of the raw materials of the earth and in their enjoyment of even the most basic elements of political freedom and human rights in western as well as in communist countries.

(10) Authoritative

A tenth characteristic of the Christian mind is that it is authoritative, not authoritarian, not roughshod and tyrannical, not dictatorial, but authoritative. This quality so impressed out Lord’s hearers in Judea that Matthew says, " . . . the multitudes were astonished at his teaching: for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes." (Matt. 7:28-29) It is a quality that contrasts sharply with current descriptions of the mood of modern man. Phenix says, for instance:

"The perennial threat to meaning is intensified under the conditions of modern industrial civilization. Four contributing factors deserve special emphasis. The first is the spirit of criticism and skepticism. This spirit is part of the scientific heritage, but it has also tended to bring the validity of all meanings into question. The second factor is the persuasive depersonalization and fragmentation of life caused by the sheer mass of cultural products, especially knowledge, which modern man is required to assimilate. The fourth factor is the rapid rate of change in the conditions of life, resulting in a pervasive feeling of impermanence and insecurity." (see footnote 1)

Victor Frankl speaks of ours as the Age of Anxiety and describes the four symptoms of our collective neurosis as follows:

"First there is the planless, day-to-day attitude toward life . . . The second symptom is the fatalist attitude toward life . . . The third symptom is collective thinking . . .The fourth symptom is fanaticism. While the collectivist ignores his own personality, the fanatic ignores that of the other man, the man who thinks differently." (see footnote 2)

In contrast, there is an authoritative, Gibraltar like quality about the Christian mind. It is solidly founded on Christ as the Truth, the meaning-giver to all of experienced reality.

(11) Hopeful

Out of that solid foundation grows another quality which might easily be overlooked. A Christian mind is a hopeful mind. Peter speaks of "a living hope" to which we have been begotten again "by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead," and goes on to say that God rose Christ from the dead and gave Him glory "so that your faith and hope might not be in pessimistic society. It is no small thing that a Christian mind should be characterized by hope.

Editor: Al Greene

Alta Vista College

Footnotes:

1. Philip H. Phenix, Realms of New Meaning. New York, McGraw Hill Book Company, 1964, p. 5.
2. Viktor E. Frankl, The Doctor and the Soul. New York, Vintage Books, 1973, p. xvi.