A "thinking person's way of life"

::mood::thinking
::music::The EDGECast 36: Dan Jarrell from Inversion's Winter Summit 2007

I had a conversation a few weeks ago regarding the necessity of the discipline of apologetics for followers of Jesus Christ. At the time, I had voiced my opinion regarding the matter, saying that no, it is neither the basis of our faith nor the effective method of witnessing, yet it still stands as a necessity for a Christ follower; to study and be ready to give an answer; to internally know why it is and how it is and what it is he actually believes.

Today I came across a podcast featuring Dan Jarrell where he succinctly describes exactly what it is I was trying to say then. The following is the excerpt that deals with this. Although, by posting this, I almost place myself in the very category he decries, I believe that my position before, agreeing with this now, which I found while continuing to study on my own, combined with my ongoing desire to search out truth for myself fairly places me in the "thinking person" category.

You'll see what I'm talking about. (WARNING: although it is long, and meaty, it's well worth the read.)

EDGECast: Dan, earlier this weekend you made a comment in passing when someone was asking a question [in which] you stated that you thought that Christianity was a thinking person's mentality; that it is a thinking person's way of life. Can you explain on that a bit? I thought that was really interesting.

Dan Jarrell: Biblical Christianity requires deep thought; personal processing of ideas. And yet, unfortunately, in America particularly, the church has become so institutionalized that we tend to not encourage independent thought. The church isn't nearly as diverse as the biblical picture of the church is, where people are thinking through, they're arguing, they're having conflict over truth, and not separating but coming to some resolution.

In 1954, Harry Blamires wrote a book called The Christian Mind. In that book he stated that you go to any church, it doesn't matter where it is, find someone who agrees with you on a social or moral issue, it could be any issue, and his argument was that Christians are so poor at thinking through what they believe that they could not have a discussion on how to arrive at that conclusion without getting in a fight.

So, what we tend to do is we tend to give that side of our faith away to someone. We find a dynamic leader, who is a systematic thinker, who knows the Bible, and that leader stands up, and he or she says something and we say, "Well that's right!" And that's it. "The Bible said it; I believe it; that settles it." Well, it really doesn't settle anything!

EC: Especially not if we're challenged by somebody who is a non-christian on that topic, and we can't give them a thinking person's answer.

DJ: Yeah, you don't even know how you got there!

And so, how attractive is it to a lost person is it when you say, "You know, why don't you consider biblical Christianity?" And what they believe is, 'Oh, to do that I have to kiss my brains goodbye! I have to give away my individuality. It's not ok to ask questions...'

EC: What's the line, Dan? "Love the Lord with all your heart, soul, and mind." I think we generally just skip over that last part.

DJ: That's right. But yet, if you look at the scripture, truth is everything about life. Jesus came to embody the truth; to show us what the truth was; to help us struggle to learn that, and know that. And the renewing of our minds is how that happens.

It isn't ONLY about the mind. But we can't just give that away. And I feel like if individual followers of Jesus Christ in the country would begin to go back and say, "Do I really believe what I say I believe?" that it would radically change our experience with one another and our experience with God. Our trust for one another would go up. Our appreciation of one another. We'd stretch each other more.

We don't have to agree. Unity and unanimity are not the same thing. In fact, if everybody's unanimous, you don't even know if there's unity, because everybody agrees! Really, unity exists in the context of disagreement and submission to a greater goal.

EC: Do you think there is a direct correlation between the fact that we are not thinking as Christians in America and the fact that the church is losing ground? Whereas around the world it is really growing in huge numbers in Asia and Afica and other places?"

DJ: I don't know how big of a connection [there is]. Well, I don't know about the world. Now I do think one of the reasons that the Christian faith is less attractive to an emerging mindset in the US is because it's not well thought through. And when it's not well thought through, it's not well applied. You know, the mosaic generation is not looking to [say], "OK, explain it all to me in detail." But they are saying, "Does it work??"

Fellowship [Bible Church], which I love, I was here for 12 years, is a Bible church. It came into being during the time when we were embracing an academic model of spirituality. The church across the nation was a kind of knowledge broker. The concept was that if you know the Bible, then you'll walk with God. But the Bible was never given to us just to be understood academically. It was given to us to be lived and experienced. You cannot do that without processing the thought.

If you just stop to think, you find humor in the person of Christ and incredible irony in the things He says. And a depth and substance in His stories that are remarkable. And that's tasty! It's tasty to me. It's tasty to anybody. Because they see substance there.

20:05-25:29

For more info:
theedgecast.org
changepointalaska.com
inversionlr.com