Piper, John. Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God, 2010.
A pastor of over 30 years with a fervor for solid, Biblical exposition, John Piper adds to the pile of evangelical books calling for the renewal of the evangelical mind. Piper’s ministerial thesis has been something he calls Christian hedonism, which claims that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. In this book, Piper explains the role thinking provides in glorifying God and allowing us to be truly satisfied in Him. The book will work best if you approach the chapters as devotional sermons. This is not a work of scholarship so much as an exemplary book of Bible study. If you want to know the answer to the question, “What does the Bible say about the life of the mind?” you’ll get answers. If you’re on board with Piper’s general theology and specific thesis about God’s glory and our satisfaction, you’ll find his discussion even more illuminating. I recommend the book as a great starting place to consider with prayer and humility how the Bible directs us to love God with “all our minds.”
Thinking well leads to knowing God better which leads to loving Him more.
The aim of thinking, Piper maintains, is knowing God, and knowing God is a means to loving God more. In short, thinking is never its own end. It is a God-appointed means for developing a relationship with Christ and then proclaiming the truth of who Christ is to the world. True biblical thinking will always lead to loving God which will in turn lead to loving others.
Piper emphasizes two biblical passages throughout this book. The first is from Proverbs 2. The writer says that if we seek understanding, God will grant it to us. The second comes from Paul’s second letter to Timothy where Paul instructs Timothy to “think over” what he has been taught because God will grant him understanding. In choosing these two verses, Piper wishes to underscore that true understanding is something only God can give, but that He gives us a mind as a way to know Him truly.
Finally, because knowledge leads to love, we are to see thinking and feeling as inextricably connected. The head and the heart are not at odds in the true Christian’s life. As is often the case in his theological teaching, Piper turns to Jonathan Edwards for support in explaining this point. Edwards maintains that the connection between understanding and love are at the very heart of the Trinity and thus are reflected in every human made in God’s image. Good thinking will never be divorced from proper feeling, and the ultimate end of human affections is the treasuring of God above anything else.
Reading is an activity that demands thinking.
Piper maintains that thinking must be a God-given gift because He revealed Himself in a book. Reading demands thinking, and the paradigmatic act of thinking is working hard to understand what God has communicated to us in His word. Through reading the Bible, we discover beautiful gifts God has given us: a way to practice the Golden Rule (doing unto the author as we would have our audience do unto us), deferred gratification (needing to labor to understand a crucial point), and logical thinking (following inferences and chains of reasoning).
True reason leads to saving faith and delighting in God.
At its root, thinking is an issue of the heart. Evidence and logical explanations, in and of themselves, are rarely the reason we decide to believe or not believe something. Sin has disordered our thinking by causing us to love ourselves more than God. Piper defines faith as accepting Jesus Christ as our greatest delight. Faith is more than facts—head knowledge—about Jesus. The devil knows the truth, and his knowledge does not save him. Our faith is reasonable, and the faith we have is rooted in an understanding of who Jesus is. Simply thinking or even having knowledge about Jesus is not enough. If we understand who Jesus is, we will have our entire mind engaged by Him so that we will both love and be fully delighted in Him. We cannot love God without knowing Him.
Relativism is wrong because it handicaps our ability to know God’s truth.
In our current culture, good thinking’s primary opponent is relativism. By maintaining that all truth-claims are limited, relativism undercuts our desire to know God fully and truthfully. Using Christ’s words to the Pharisees, Piper shows that relativism is, paradoxically, a way of using thinking to cover up the truth. Relativism is often a thin cloak for pride and rather than freeing us from the bonds of God’s laws, it enslaves us in the prison of our own irrationalism.
Humility, not anti-intellectualism, is the proper response to prideful thinking.
Many Christians have disdain for the life of the mind, seeking refuge in either emotional subjectivism or pragmatism. For the first, thinking is at odds with passionately experiencing God’s spirit. For the second, thinking is too abstract and far removed from the needs of the world. Both obscure the truth. American evangelicals saw the hazards of prideful, human wisdom and decided that since logic alone can’t save, it cannot be an instrument of the holy spirit. But, as Piper points out, we are sanctified through the truth, and that truth comes to us by listening to, reading, thinking through, and understanding God’s word. Extensive education may not bring salvation, but neither does extensive common sense.
While passages where Christ says that the Father has hidden the truth from the wise or where Paul decries human wisdom may seem to denigrate the life of the mind, they actually point to the end of true wisdom: a glorying in Christ who sacrificed Himself on the cross for our sins. True wisdom is built on humility, while false wisdom “puffs up.” When we know more about Christ—about who we were before He saved us and who He is as our redeemer and Lord—we will not only love God more but extend His love to others. The solution to human pride is not less thinking but more love rooted in humility.
While pride is the great impediment to Christian scholarship, godly thinking has always benefited the church. This is a provocative call for any Christian scholar. To fail to acknowledge God in our work is to commit the ultimate act of rebellion and to exchange the ends for the means. But what a glorious charge to believe that in using our minds to learn about the world we will always come back to God, not simply to know Him more but to love Him more as well.