Integrative Essay

                The other day I was thinking about the name of the course, Developing a Christian Mind. One of my first thoughts was, haven’t I already developed a Christian mind at school, in my home, in Sunday school and catechism classes? Well, the answer is that yes I had developed a Christian mind in all of those places, but just because I have developed a Christian mind, does not mean that there is no room for further development. Quite the contrary, as there is an infinite body of knowledge to be known about God, so my mind as a follower of Christ must be under a constant state of development. What I learned in my childhood and teenage years at catechism and school were the fundamentals, a foundation on which to firmly place my feet. Now, in my college years my mind will continue to develop, but in a slightly different way. This class, Developing a Christian Mind, helped to expose that to me.

                In many ways, when I was thinking about this concept, I was reminded of Our English Syllabus by C.S. Lewis. In this essay Lewis exhorts students in higher education, such as me, to pursue learning as opposed to education or a specialized vocational training. So, the student becomes educated in a broad spectrum in grade school and high school, and then is equipped for learning. “Here’s your gun, your spade, your fishing tackle; go get yourself dinner. Do not tell me that you would sooner have a nice composite menu of dishes from half the world drawn up for you. You are too old for that. It is time you learned to wrestle with nature yourself.” This same principle ought to be applied to every follower of Christ. We learn the Bible stories as children, we are told to memorize certain verses in the Bible, we are instructed in doctrine; by the time we are seniors in high school we ought to be able to articulate what our world view is and then place our feet firmly on that so that we cannot slip. This is the gun, spade, and fishing tackle Lewis talks about. Now we are equipped to do some exploration, to go see what is out in Creation, to read some literature that is written by someone who might have a false conception about God. But you see, when you build your house upon a rock, though the winds and waves beat against it, it shall not be moved. Our English Syllabus certainly was the reading that had the biggest impact on my own thinking.

                That is not to say, however, that Lewis had written nothing else that is worth reading! I mentioned in my blog at some point that I am engaged to be married next summer, so the essays Have No ‘Right to Happiness’ and on the love Eros out of Lewis’ book The Four Loves were both of particular interest to me. Certainly since my engagement on August 10, 2010 I have been interested in further developing my Christian understanding of the topics concerning sex and the marriage relationship, but even before, that, since the vast world of dating was opened to me in high school, I have been interested in these topics. Lewis further excited that development.

                Have No ‘Right to Happiness’ was a reading that really resonated with me. I advocate the view that divorce is strictly forbidden by the Bible except in the case where one of the two spouses has committed adultery. Even in that case, however, I believe that it would be desirable if the innocent spouse would forgive the sin of the other (unless of course the one spouse will have nothing to do with forgiveness and deserts). In any case, Lewis’ essay resonated with this concept that I believe is truth. In his essay Lewis speaks of the attitude of many that the sexual impulse basically justifies any action taken. So a man and woman may be married for a number of years, and then one of them chooses to desert their spouse because an opportunity to increase sexual happiness (from the purely carnal point of view of the physical aspect) has arisen. To demonstrate this, Lewis invented an imaginary couple called Mr. and Mrs. A, in which Mr. A deserts Mrs. A in the pursuit of sexual happiness. “The real situation is skillfully concealed by saying that the question of Mr. A’s ‘right’ to desert his wife is one of ‘sexual morality’….Mr. A’s action is an offense against good faith (to solemn promises), against gratitude (toward one to whom he was deeply indebted) and against common humanity.” I would go even further and say that it is a direct offense against God’s Word such as the words of Jesus in Matthew 19:9, “Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, comitteth adultery…”

                Lewis also caught my interest in his writing on the love that the Greeks called Eros, which is between lovers (in the bond of marriage). I found Lewis’ description of the beginning of the feeling of Eros to be beautiful as well as inspiring. It is a bit long but I quote it here:

“Very often what comes first is simply a delighted pre-occupation with the Beloved---a general, unspecified pre-occupation with her in her totality. A man in this state hasn’t leisure to think of sex. He is too busy thinking of a person. The fact that she is a woman is far less important than the fact that she is herself. He is full of desire, but the desire may not be sexually toned. If you asked him what he wanted, the true reply would often be, ‘To go on thinking of her.’

This reminded me of my first date with Lisa, in which we spent an hour or two laying on a sled at the bottom of a hill simply staring at each other and talking non-stop. It was cold outside but neither of us noticed because we were so intensely focused on what each other were saying or expressing. When I relate this to developing a Christian mind, I am right away reminded of Christ and His church.

 The members of the church look at Christ with an intense thirst for knowledge about Him. All of the suffering that we experience in the world is inconsequential, our afflictions do not really even matter that much in fact we hardly even notice them because we are so “pre-occupied” by our Beloved. But, we do still have a flesh that needs mortification. In our regenerated heart, the heart which Christ has poured His Spirit into, we want nothing but Him. When we are made new by the resurrection, no longer bearing our sinful flesh which wants to sin, then our whole being will sing aloud with joy and reach up to the Saviour. But in this present life we still have flesh, and so God uses pain as a means to mortify that flesh, making us holy. Lewis describes the will of the flesh in his book The Problem of Pain, “Our will, when we are happy, is carried away in the happiness as a ship racing down a swift stream.” So our flesh delights in the things of the world, which makes us forget about our Lord, and shuts up our heart that thirsts for knowledge of Him. But we have a gracious Lord who “shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

We are constantly learning, developing our Christian mind. Our hearts, being filled with the Holy Ghost, are pure and long for our Lord. But we live in a world in which we experience pain. Christ works through that pain, sanctifying us so that we long for Him even more. In spite of the swirls of darkness in this present life we have the reassuring words of the Heidelberg Catechism in answer to the question “What is the only comfort in life and death?”

That I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Savior Jesus Christ; who, with His precious blood, hath fully satisfied for all my sins, and delivered me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, and therefore, by His Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto Him.”

When we understand the reality of this confession, we have a sense of shalom in our life. We place our hope in Christ, who gives us peace. Shalom is beautifully described by Cornelius Plantinga in his book Engaging God’s World: “Shalom means universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight---a rich state of affairs in which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts fruitfully employed, all under the arch of God’s love.”

                So, the development of the Christian mind is an ongoing process, but with it come blessings that cannot be found otherwise. When our feet are firmly placed on the rock of Jesus Christ, then as the Apostle Paul describes it in Romans 8:31, “If God be for us, who can be against us?”  We simply must develop our minds to be like the mind of Christ, in all issues that we face. When we are facing a new challenge or a new phase in our life, we turn to the Bible for guidance. When we experience pain and affliction, we cast our cares upon our Lord. In this we receive “flourishing, wholeness, and delight” deep within our soul.

Works Cited:

Holy Bible: King James Version. Indianapolis: B.B. Kirkbride Bible Co., Inc., n.d. Print.

Lewis, Clive S. Have No “Right to Happiness”. Print.

Lewis, Clive S. Our English Syllabus. Print.

Lewis, Clive S. The Four Loves. Orlando: Harcourt Books, 1988. Print.

Lewis, Clive S. The Problem of Pain. Print.

Plantinga, Cornelius Jr. Engaging God’s World: A Reformed Vision of Faith, Learning,
and Living. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002.

The Confessions and the Church Order of the Protestant Reformed Churches. Grandeville, MI: Protestant Reformed Churches in America, 2005. 83-84. Print.