Shine Like Stars (3): Contemplation

To shine as lights in the world we will need contemplation, or mind-renewal. Without wisdom courage becomes bravado. Without courageous thinking resistance to the pressures of world is not possible.

The bad news is that deep thinking has gone out of style. Mark Noll writes, "The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind. …Fidelity to Jesus Christ demands from evangelicals a more responsible intellectual existence." We must love God with our minds (Matt. 22:37), or as Dorothy Sayers put it, have a "'mind in love' with God." But we are heirs of generations of evangelical anti-intellectualism. And more recently, due to a careless response to the digital revolution too many Christians are in danger of having minds "wrecked by constant distraction and unfamiliar with concentration" (Cal Newport). Too few Christians are morally and mentally prepared for thought-war raging in our world.