Love the Lord Your God with All Your Mind

To many, loving God is an issue of heart and spirit. It is an attitude demonstrates towards the God one believes in and worships. Christians tend to think that spirituality does not involve intellectual activities and mind. As somebody says this, one just need to empty his mind to enter into the church to receive whatever are taught without questioning and reasoning. Immersing in the presence of God is to empty of self and to be filled by God.

Mind and reasoning seem to be useless in our Christianity walk. They are deemed to be something sinful, contradict with the work of the Spirit and the hindrance of love a believer can have towards his God.

Yet how does Bible teach about loving God? Loving God and loving man are the two greatest commandments that the Lord Jesus gives to the Church.

The Bible has ample teachings about loving God. In Luke 10:27 Jesus affirmed the expert of the law that to inherit eternal life is to 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

It is amazing to know that Jesus demands a mind that is full of the truth and reality of God. A reasoned faith is worth living for and a reasoned belief is able to withstand the challenges and crisis that intrude our lives. Faith and Belief without reasons always end up more doubts and confusion when one encounters things and situation which he never think of and ponder about.

Our love for God must have valid ground to stand for. In a world that is full of doubts and questions, we need to be able to reason out our faith and love our God with all our mind and understanding.

Should Theologian Think "Out of the Box"?

“We need to think out of the box” is a common saying and it requires our mind to be liberated and able to think more and think it widely without any constraints. The contemporary pursue of a “free” and “creative” mind causes us to desire to perceive things beyond our current conceptions and understandings.

As Christians, we need to think in line with God and we need to have the mind of Christ. For us, God is limitless and nothing is able to restrict Him. If God is omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient, we would think that we need to think “out of the box” about God and theology. Yet God is a God of boundary and order, revealed in His written Word laying down the standards and commands for us to follow. His Word is definite and with moral standards for human beings. If God does not put His Word within a box, we have no standard to rely on and to measure with.

Yet God is “out of the box” in His doings and His wonders are beyond our thinking and understanding. God is able to do anything “out of our box” yet with the illumination of the Holy Spirit we are able to either understand or be assured of His sovereignty. Without that internal work of the Holy Spirit “in the box” in accordance with the Law of God, we will be liberals who think in an uncontrollable manners our flesh or mind leads us to.

Scriptures tell us to meditate on the Word of God and to not deviate from His path. As theologians all our study and thinking should be strictly be “in the box” of His self-revelatory and authoritative living Word. Yet we need to allow ourselves to be “out of the box” in our thinking whenever God’s revelation surpasses our corrupted mind and marred understanding, and gives us new thoughts and insights in His Word.

Jesus, the Full Revelation of God

Though God is known as revealing Himself through and in the Creation, the history and the human He made, yet the complete and full revelation is found in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, through whom incarnated, reveals the very nature of God Himself.

The Bible said in the Book of John 1:18, “No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known”. Jesus is the Word became flesh and revealed the glory of God. Whoever sees Him as He has professed, sees the Father.

We are told by John that Jesus does only what He sees the Father does, and He speaks whatever He has heard the Father speaking. His doings and His sayings are the very things of God Himself. Therefore it is through the Son, the manifold glory and truth of God be revealed. One cannot say he knows God without knowing the Son who reveals the fullness of the Father.

Knowing God

How can one know God? One can only know God through His revelation, be it general or specific revelation (Rom 1:19-20, 1Cor 2:9-10).

No one can know God unless God reveals Himself. Just like a born child is unable to know his parents unless thus is revealed to him who his parents are. The life he lives on with the parents, the love he receives, and the work and care he observes from the parents affirm him of who they are to him.

I agree with John Calvin’s view that God reveals Himself through the creation or nature, history and human personality. Yet due to our sinful nature which mars our understandings, we are unable to perceive the goodness of God through the corrupted nature, the bloody history wars and the distorted human personality. Only when God reveals in the hearts of us through His grace, we then come to perceive these through the eyes and mind of Christ.

Every Language Has its Say

It is unfair to deny the meaning of the biblical language which the Logical Positivism considers unverifiable by the test of sensory data.

The mathematical language does have its meaning by formulae and physical identification. One can count or analyze with scientific methods. Yet it needs an assumption for the formulae to be valid, or else the mathematical language will be rendered void.

Same goes with the biblical languages. The Biblical language is all about the Christianity faith and it is a way Christians communicate their faith and the truth they believe in. Though part of the language may be seen as "abstract" yet we are to be reminded that Human being is made up more than a physical part, but with soul and spirit too. The languages speak for these spheres have to be accepted as something meaningful for the individual, based on a common assumption accepted and understood by their circle. These languages can be verified by associated deeds and phenomena.

Every language worths its existence and it expresses the inner world of an individual or a community. And most of the languages can only be measured by its context and cultural settings.

Why A Need For Theology?

Many have perceived the term “theology” to be obscure and esoteric and prefer to run away from it.

I see the advantages of studying theology from both the perspective of Christians Apologetics and personal growth in God.

We are living in a multi-cultural and multi-religious world with multi-beliefs and philosophies springing up everywhere. There is an increasing need for God’s people to be anchored in the Truth in order to defend and explain the Truth in a comprehensive manner.

Those who know the truth are to be liberated in our relationship with God. Incomplete or partial knowledge about God always renders us in doubts and misconceptions of Him and His truth.

What Is Theology?

Theology is understood by me a study of God and His Word (“Ѳєός”and “λογος”). Thelogy shall be birthed through theologians who study the Word of God in relating with Him through prayers and worship. For God is a God of revelation and His Word found in the Bible is revealed to us through His chosen vessels throughout generations.

Thus theology as a way of expounding God’s truth in biblical, historical, systematic and even philosophical ways shall reflects that relational and interactive way between man and God. Any study of God and His Word without relationship and faith in Him is deemed philosophy and not theology.