Not Mysticism

It used to be that some of the finest educational edifices came from Christianity. Think Yale, Harvard, Oxford, Princeton, once schools that proclaimed the Bible as true and now proclaim religion as false. In that devolution, it seems as if there was an unexpected consequence. While the modern world moved to reject faith, Christianity moved to reject intellect. Today's modern Christianity now has a definite anti-intellectualism flavor if not a rule. It's as if we saw the lunatics take over the asylum, so we abandoned asylums as useless, even bad.

Part of the problem, I think, is that we're not too keen on thinking too deeply. We come by that naturally. Sin rots the brain (Rom 1:28). (That's why our world is so crazy. Feed the "debased mind" with more sin and you get "crazy.") We are "recovering crazies," so to speak, so we might naturally tend to avoid thinking too deeply. So we find our comfort and solace in places that not only avoid deep thought, but find protection in being without thought. We discard "think it through" and replace it with "feel it." Oh, we use more spiritual terms, of course. "Feel the Spirit." "The Spirit moves me." That kind of good, religious stuff. This kind of thing, you see, is unassailable by "thinkers." "You wouldn't understand; you don't have the Spirit." So we cloister ourselves in our safe, anti-intellectual, faith-versus-reason world so we don't have to ... you know ... reason.

It is a sad and even slanderous way of thinking. We are commanded to "love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind" (Matt 22:37) but we think we're superior by dropping that last bit. The very word for "faith" in Scripture means "to be convinced (by evidence or reason)" but we think the only right way to go is "blind faith" (a plain contradiction to biblical faith). We've preferred to move to mysticism over against reason while Paul "reasoned" with the people he preached to (Acts 17:2, 17; Acts 18:4, 19; Acts 24:25). I don't know how to say it any clearer. The Christianity given to us by the Godhead is not anti-intellectual; it is reasonable and even requires reason (1 Peter 3:15).

The problem, of course, is much more basic than faith versus reason. The problem is we've missed the point of the Christian faith. The point of Christianity is Christ. That's a relationship, no doubt. It's also a truth claim -- His truth claim (John 14:6). It is an everyday, real, living, breathing fact. We don't believe it by some mystical means. It is true. We believe it as we believe any other point of data, only better. So when we cede the Word as "okay" or "somewhat man-made" or "it contains God's Word, but it's not actually God's Word," we give up rational thought and a reason to believe. We need to "take every thought captive to obey Christ" (2 Cor 10:5) and surrendering thought to mysticism is not the way that's done. That, as it turns out, is surrender to a lie.