Thursday, 22 June 2023

My mind - junk room or treasure trove?

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will. Romans 12:2

Have you ever wondered how it is that centipedes never suffer from nervous breakdowns (not that we know of, anyway)? After all, they have 100 legs, so how on earth do they make up their minds which ones to move next? They must live with constant strain.

Probably you haven’t. But the reason for their ease of mind is straightforward: getting their legs to move in the right rhythm is something they’re “programmed” to do from birth. They just do “what comes naturally”, so they don’t have to think or worry about it.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we humans were like that? – no worries, just confident that we will only ever do what’s right.

Well, no actually.

For while human beings are animals in one sense, the fact is that we are also a whole lot more, and many of the most important things we now do without thinking are things we had to learn to do.

Certainly, we didn’t have to learn to laugh when we were amused or to cry when we were distressed. But think… driving a car, or changing a nappy, or playing a musical instrument, or reading a book, or cooking a meal, or a million and one other things. For such activities or duties we needed to be “programmed”, to use that same word again, and that can be anything but easy. The programming is what we call teaching and training.

To live lives that please God is the same. Even if we would genuinely like to do it, it is way, way beyond us; the best we can achieve is paltry, and far short of anything approaching the perfection of God.

The apostle Paul focusses on this dilemma in Romans 12:2. Speaking to people who are genuine Christians - people who have put their trust in Christ and so found peace with God - he tells them that they are “not to CONform to the pattern of this world…”, but to “be TRANSformed by the renewing of your mind”. They are saved by God’s grace, no doubt about that: but that doesn’t mean they don’t have hard work to do! Verse 2 is worth taking apart…

First, Do not conform to the pattern of this world.

In other words, don’t just go with the flow. By “the pattern of this world” Paul means the prevailing customs and fleeting fashions of the age we happen to be born into. The Message puts this well: Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking.

How easily we do just that! Not that absolutely everything about our culture is bad – of course not – but, well, a lot is, and if we follow Jesus we should have nothing to do with it. Not prudes – but prudent; not self-righteous – but Christlike; not holier-than-thou – but simply holy.

Such denial is hard, for cultural practices suck us into their grip like spiders into a web, without us even realising it’s happening. Remember the two roads of which Jesus spoke: the broad way that leads to destruction, and the narrow way that leads to life (Matthew 7:13-14). The broad road is for human centipedes...

Second, … but be transformed…

The people Jesus calls to follow him are called to become, not nice people, or religious people, or well-behaved and law-abiding people – but transformed people: nothing less! People fit for heaven; people who not only have the Holy Spirit living in them, but who allow the Holy Spirit to shape their opinions, habits and behaviour; people who are becoming daily more like Jesus.

Third, … by the renewing of your mind…

How can such a transformation take place? By some kind of intense religious experience? No. By gaining a verse-by-verse mastery of the Bible? No. By extravagant acts of mercy and generosity, or breath-taking risks of faith? No. It requires the submission of the mind to God. We learn to think again, rather than trot out what we happened to read in the paper or picked up on television or on line.

Over the years our minds, unguarded, become dumping grounds for all manner of worthless nonsense, and a major clear-out is needed.

Go back to the centipedes. They have that wonderful walking skill because they are programmed in advance to do it. And God calls us to re-programme our minds, and that is a steady, day-to-day activity for which we are personally responsible, and for which the Holy Spirit is our helper and the Bible our guide.

The challenge, therefore, is: What is the state of my mind? Discerning? questioning? challenging? expanding in wisdom? always willing to change?

Some years ago an American pilot performed what many experts considered a miracle: he landed a falling plane on a narrow stretch of river, thus saving many lives. People were in awe at his skill. But when they asked him how he did it, he replied that he had simply drawn on many years of training and experience to do something he had never before been required to do, but which had been steadily and thoroughly absorbed through all those years.

To change the image, you could say that he had put regular deposits into the bank of faith in his mind, so that when an urgent one-off need arose there was plenty for him to draw on.

Never mind those clever centipedes: how much wisdom and faith are we steadily storing up in those mysterious things we call our minds?

Lord Jesus, help me to look to you every minute of every day and so to avoid the corruption of this fallen world and become more fitted for the world to come. Amen.

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