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Creation Date
3-1-2007
Abstract
READ poster featured: Jan Fortner, History
Book selected: Habits of the Mind: Intellectual Life as a Christian Calling by James W. Sire
Date poster was featured: March 2007
Comments by Jan Fortner about the book:
"Sire’s title is directly drawn from an 1826 sermon of John Henry Newman in which Newman speaks of those “habits of the mind” which are pleasing to God. Thus, Sire is seeking to give content to Jesus’ statement that we should “love the Lord [our] God with all [our] heart and with all [our] soul and with all [our] mind” (Mt. 22:37; Deut. 6:5). Sire recognizes that not all Christians desire to be what we call an “intellectual,” however, “thinking,” Sire says, quoting Gilbert Highet, “is everybody’s business.” Thus, because of Jesus’ command, Sire seeks to answer the question, “what does it mean to love God with my mind?” Several of Sire’s suggestions are worth noting here as examples. First, as a Christian, I will be intellectually (mentally) honest. I will not lie to myself about myself or about my behavior. And, I will be quicker to be brutally honest with myself about myself than I am to be hard on my neighbor. Secondly, a Christian will live a life of God minded-ness: I will seek to know mentally and to live out the Truth-that-is-God rather than to vindicate myself, to defend this or that position, or to propagandize. Thirdly, as a God-minded Christian, I will recognize that I am responsible for my mind and that my mind is responsible for controlling its own thoughts and, thus, my behavior. I will realize that I can never be or live what I am not in my thoughts / mind. Sire further argues that such God minded-ness is difficult to achieve in a world filled with “noise.” We use cultural noise to help us mask our self-lies and to put off self-confrontation: work, meetings, shopping, entertainments, TV, music, and on and on. We even use good things such as the work of the church to fill our minds and prevent intellectual, or mental, honesty. And, where there is no time and peace for aloneness with God, inward reflection, self-conviction, and repentance, there can be no God-mindedness, no loving God “with all [my] mind.”
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Harding University
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READ Poster, Jan Fortner
