Give Thought

 

Hey, Cobblestone,

     Last week I pulled four simple words from Scripture for us to live by: Let love be genuine (Romans 12:9). Isolated from their context, turned out they weren’t simple at all. Thank God, the awesome Explainer, for context! With a few nuggets of further instruction we were off to the races, ready to let love be genuine with measurable, repeatable progress – Yay! So let’s try the same experiment again, only this time with half as many words:

 Give thought… (Romans 12:17).

 Ready? Go!

…………………. Are you thinking? What are you thinking about? Are your thoughts tracking in a useful direction? Have they produced any action yet? Are you wishing you could reach back through our digital devices and pinch me for setting you off on a wild goose chase? Now, there’s a thought. How did that happen – the thought, I mean? What process produces thought? Well, there are differing opinions; I’ll present a couple of them, and you can give thought to which one makes more sense. Really, you can.

     Not long ago I was introduced to a thing called Glutamic Theory. At the risk of oversimplifying, the idea is that thoughts, particularly the unhelpful ones, originate at the glutamate synapse, and are regulated (or not) by whatever stew of chemicals happen to be cooking in the brain. One avid proponent has said that “the word ‘evil’ is mostly meaningless” – evil’s origin is totally neurochemical. By extension (if I may), the full spectrum of human thought is the direct result – favorable or not so much – of chemical combinations. Or, as one neurologist has said, every nuance of life boils down to “neurons that fire and glands that squirt.”

     Hmm. Allow me to present an alternate view:

     O Lord, our Lord,

    how majestic is your name in all the earth!

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
    the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
    and the son of man that you care for him?

Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
    and crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
    you have put all things under his feet… (Psalm 8:1, 3-6).

     Give thought, Christian. Would it make any sense for the LORD, our Lord, to put everything he’s created under the feet of creatures who are nothing more than chemically induced firings and squirtings? Why would he crown such creatures with glory and honor? Why would he claim them as his inheritance? There must be more to us.

     Take our two test words, “give thought,” plug them into context, and this is what you find:

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all (Romans 12:14-17).  

     In my house there is a small dog. I’ve been feeding that dog every day, twice a day, for nearly fifteen years. But if I put a hand between dog and food, the dog will bite me. And has. Lately. As if the sum total of the dog’s existence lies in that feed bowl. It aggravates me, but doesn’t surprise me. The dog gives no thought whatsoever; it is unfiltered reaction to input. I have expected better from my children, and still do, when they’ve been around my table – and so far not one of them has bitten me.

     Do synapses fire? Yep. Do glands squirt? Uh-huh. Are they affected by chemicals within the body? Absolutely. One more question: Has God designed persons – the imago Dei – to be forever and always at the mercy of the firing and squirting? No way! Even before salvation, humans are gifted with the ability to reason and make decisions, to wrangle the unhelpful thoughts and capitalize on the helpful ones. And for we who are saved, our bodies qualify as temples of the Holy Spirit (see 1Corinthians 6:19) and our brains have the ability to think like Jesus (see 1Corinthians 2:16). Fire-and-squirt is not the only game in town.

     I’m a big fan of science, actually. So is God, I think. Why else would he have given us science as a vehicle of discovery? The problem arises when science becomes an end in itself. And when science is presented as the only means for examining the complexities of the soul, it slams the door on the Creator, who is the only reliable cure when the soul is hurting or sick. Science is not a stand-alone proposition; it exists within the context of God’s dominion – not aside from, and certainly not above.

     The first two verses of Romans 12 urge us to offer our bodies as living sacrifices and be transformed by the renewing of our minds. This is what’s necessary if we’re going to live out the instructions given in verses 14 through 17 – blessing those who persecute us, living in harmony, repaying no one evil for evil. Those won’t happen by accident or by chemical reaction. It’ll take some thought. Good thing we have spares to give.

     From the glory God has crowned us with, let’s return glory to him, and give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all, to live out what he has said is possible and fruitful. Someone is bound to notice, and give glory to our Father in heaven.

Grace and Peace (and time to think),

 

John