Spirituality becomes self-determined, self-administered, and self-verified. I identify my felt needs, and as a consumer in the religious marketplace, I look for someone or something to satisfy those needs. The ultimate question is less “Is it true?” but “Is it pleasant?”⁴ Thus the final arbiter of the validity of a spiritual experience is me, myself, and I. So if I desire to be a better wife and mother does it matter if the author teaches an unorthodox view of the Trinity as long as that need is met? If I want to pursue a closer relationship with God, does it matter if an author’s depiction of deity bears no resemblance to the Triune God of the Bible provided it gives me feels?

I’ve been reading Aimee Byrd’s new book, No Little Women. So far, so good, and a review will be forthcoming, Lord willing. I did skip ahead, though, to the 9th chapter “Honing and Testing Our Discernment Skills.”¹ Aimee shares four essential questions to ask about what we read, and then lets the reader put it into practice on excerpts from popular women’s books. I’m posting more on these questions at Out of the Ordinary tomorrow, so stay tuned.

As I was considering Aimee’s call for discernment, my gut feeling is that women are at a disadvantage in pursuing a life of the mind because of past cultural norms. Therefore, we may be more inclined to accept rather than critique. But does evangelicalism even encourage this type of critical thinking in the first place? I may be wrong, but I believe it promotes the very opposite.

If you read authors like Nancy Pearcey, Mark Noll, David Wells, and Nathan Hatch, to name a few, history has shown that American evangelicalism has not cultivated serious thinking. Rather it has fostered a climate of anti-intellectualism. In its place, we’ve learned to cherish a privatized form of spirituality that is not about the pursuit of truth but subjective experience. So “Religion is not considered an objective truth to which we submit, but only a matter of personal taste which we choose.”² And “The concept of spirituality has come to mean an experience devoid of doctrinal content and detached from any testable historical claims – something that belong strictly in the upper story.”

Spirituality becomes self-determined, self-administered, and self-verified. I identify my felt needs, and as a consumer in the religious marketplace, I look for someone or something to satisfy those needs. The ultimate question is less “Is it true?” but “Is it pleasant?”⁴ Thus the final arbiter of the validity of a spiritual experience is me, myself, and I. So if I desire to be a better wife and mother does it matter if the author teaches an unorthodox view of the Trinity as long as that need is met? If I want to pursue a closer relationship with God, does it matter if an author’s depiction of deity bears no resemblance to the Triune God of the Bible provided it gives me feels? I’m not advocating faith for Vulcans. God gave human beings emotions, but a positive emotional response is not necessarily synonymous with the Holy Spirit. We may also need more discernment criteria than an author using the words “Jesus” or “God” with a sprinkling of Bible verses, context not required.

I really don’t like being a wet blanket, and I don’t want to have a reputation of being the “Mikey” in the church. (Let’s get Persis to read it. She won’t read it. She hates everything.) This is also not meant as a grudge against a particular group. My issue is with teaching, not people. But I lived most of my Christian life at the mercy of a “me, myself, and I” spirituality. I was taught, perhaps not in these exact words but the same meaning, that “The natural capacities of the human mind do not function in the realm of spiritual things.”⁵ To put it bluntly, ditch the mind and don’t think about what you believe. This led to assurance based not on what God said about Himself in His word but on my assessment of my current spiritual state.

My standing was not grounded in Christ’s finished work but on whether I had moved up another notch in pursuit of some higher plane. Given its subjective nature, you either think you are doing better than you are, which can lead to pride, or you live in fear because you have no idea where you stand with God. This is a horrible place to be. I also grieve when I see believers being tossed about by every wind of doctrine because they are discouraged from examining what they believe and why they believe it. My heart is broken when people are taught that they don’t need to know the gospel (it’s baby stuff anyway) or doctrine of any sort. Rather they just need to tap into an unmediated, mystical “knowing” that the “Spirit” will give them. As to how one “knows,” the standard answer is, “You just know that you know.” So rather than looking outside to Christ and His Word, the only hope is within, which isn’t much hope at all.

Don’t misunderstand me. The issue isn’t about smarts and who has the highest theological I.Q. It’s about discerning truth from error and wisdom from foolishness. It’s about thinking God’s thoughts after Him and loving Him with the minds He has given us. So please don’t devalue thinking as less spiritual. The Christian mind is a terrible thing to waste.

1. No Little Women: Equipping All Women in the Household of God, Aimee Byrd, P&R Publishing, 2016, pp. 221-251.
2. Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity, Nancy Pearcey, 2005, pg. 20.
3. Ibid. pg. 118.
4. “The proper question to be asked about any creed is not, ‘is it pleasant?’ but ‘is it true?’ Christianity has compelled the mind of man not because it is the most cheering view of man’s existence but because it is truest to the facts.” Mind of the Maker, Dorothy L. Sayers.
5. Quote from Lewis Sperry Chafer in The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, Mark Noll, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1994, pg. 142.

Persis Lorenti is an ordinary Christian. You can find her at Tried With Fire and Out of the Ordinary. This article appeared on her blog and is used with permission.

[Editor’s note: One or more original URLs (links) referenced in this article are no longer valid; those links have been removed.]