Thinking Against the Tide
You and I see a flood of images, hear a torrent of words, deal with a steady daily downpour of impressions on our senses, mind and emotions.
Most of us know how a catchy ad jingle can get in between the ears and rattle around, unwelcome. Just so, these unruly streams tend to show up in your thoughts and perspective. If you just sit there and let them wash over you, they will soak in more and more until you consider them reflexively to be the reality you live in.
This fact is a big problem, because the marinade is spiked with ingredients calculated to appeal to the basest desires, most cynical attitudes, and arrogant fantasies of intellectual superiority.
“As a man thinks, so he is,” says the Bible. (Proverbs 23:7)
“As a man thinks, so he is,” says the Bible. (Proverbs 23:7, KJV) You could reasonably view the Bible as an owner’s manual for your soul, provided for your good by the God that made you and loves you. This warning about your thought life is in the manual because you have the right and the responsibility to choose what you welcome into your mind, and what you think about every day.
Besides responsibility for our choice of thoughts to think, the Bible gives us specific advice. Peter says, “I have written . . . to stimulate you to wholesome thinking.” (2 Peter 3)
Paul says, “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” (Philippians 4)
And of the other side of the ledger, “But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed . . . . Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving.” (Ephesians 5)
Does the advice seem a little theoretical, or out-of-reach? Maybe that is because it is written for a person that has already entered into a personal relationship with God through Jesus the Messiah: “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.” (Colossians 3)
But that could be you.
If you want an inner life that you won’t have to apologize for, before God, and if you have come to Jesus for that life, you’re on the right track.
To fulfill the promise of John 3:16, though, you need to set your sights on the man Jesus as your standard of what is normal. That means climbing for moral altitude above the polluted words and images that flood our campus these days.
Just remember that the only cynics and prodigal sons you will find in heaven will be reformed cynics and repentant prodigals. Certainly God is no cynic; if you call Him your Father, aim for the pure, loving, undefiled normality He has exampled for us all in Jesus Christ.
Possibly to your surprise, the floods, torrents, and downpours of our cynical, greedy society will part before you, too.
Philip Chamberlain, BR ’70