So many believers need to begin to think, and to think carefully, for God’s glory. Here are 30 quotes by 17 Christian authors (out of so many) stressing the importance of loving God with our minds and with the totality of our being.

Some cynics might think that my title offers an oxymoron. ‘What, do Christians actually think?’ Yes, I get that: too often believers do not use their minds. And some might even relish that sad reality. Too many of them think that Romans 12:2 says this: “Be transformed by the removing of your mind.” But it in fact says this: “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

The biblical Christian should never be in that camp. The importance of the mind, of thinking, of truth, of reason, and of the intellect is stressed throughout Scripture, and is found in the pages of church history. And Jesus told us what the greatest commandment is: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:34-40; Mark 12:28-34; and Luke 10:25-8 – all drawing from Deuteronomy 6:4-9).

The truth is, one of the things I most often say to Christians (or at least want to say to them) is this: ‘You really need to start using the mind that God gave you instead of letting it go to waste.’ So many believers need to begin to think, and to think carefully, for God’s glory.

Here are 30 quotes by 17 Christian authors (out of so many) stressing the importance of loving God with our minds and with the totality of our being:

Harry Blamires

“There is no longer a Christian mind.”

“My thesis amounts to this. Except over a very narrow field of thinking, we Christians in the modern world accept, for the purpose of mental activity, a frame of reference constructed by the secular mind and a set of criteria reflecting secular evaluations. There is no Christian mind; there is no shared field of discourse in which we can move at ease as thinking Christians by trodden ways and past established landmarks.”

William F. Buckley

“The purpose of an open mind is to close it, on particular subjects. If you never do – you’ve simply abdicated the responsibility to think.”

G.K. Chesterton

“[Beware] a hardening of the heart with a sympathetic softening of the head.”

“The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid.”

William Lane Craig

“Evangelicals have been living on the periphery of responsible intellectual existence. The average Christian does not realize that there is an intellectual war going on in the universities and in the professional journals and scholarly societies. Christianity is being attacked from all sides as irrational or outmoded, and millions of students, our future generation of leaders, have absorbed this viewpoint. This is a war which we cannot afford to lose.”

“It’s not just Christian scholars and pastors who need to be intellectually engaged with the issues. Christian laymen, too, need to be intellectually engaged. Our churches are filled with Christians who are idling in intellectual neutral. As Christians, their minds are going to waste. One result of this is an immature, superficial faith. People who simply ride the roller coaster of emotional experience are cheating themselves out of a deeper and richer Christian faith by neglecting the intellectual side of that faith. They know little of the riches of deep understanding of Christian truth, of the confidence inspired by the discovery that one’s faith is logical and fits the facts of experience, of the stability brought to one’s life by the conviction that one’s faith is objectively true.”

Jonathan Edwards

“All truth is given by revelation, either general or special, and it must be received by reason. Reason is the God-given means for discovering the truth that God discloses, whether in his world or his Word. While God wants to reach the heart with truth, he does not bypass the mind.”

Os Guinness

“A leading problem in Western evangelicalism [is] anti-intellectualism. Anti-intellectualism is a disposition to discount the importance of truth and the life of the mind.”

“Intellectualism is not the answer to anti-intellectualism. Our passion is not for academic respectability, but for faithfulness to the commands of Jesus”.

“Privacy is harder than ever when everyone is invited to be linked in, connected and transparent to others, but it matters. Reading books is time consuming, but it matters. Reflection is easily drowned out when life is fired at us point-blank, but it matters. Independent thinking is hard when the social media reinforces group-think, but it matters. Thinking for ourselves is difficult when it is so much easier to download an expert opinion, but it is essential to the freedom of our own agency, so it matters. Conversations with an iron-sharpens-iron quality are rarer when minds seek carbon-copy approval from others in their own bubble, but they matter. History is more crucial than ever when the relentless modern focus is on the present and the future, but it matters. The courage to hold unfashionable convictions is more difficult when social media mobs give the thumbs-up or thumbs-down like a Roman Emperor, but it matters.”

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