A Biblical Mandate to Think

Do Christians have a mandate from God to think? The first chapter of Isaiah answers the question well.

“Come now, let us reason together,” says the Lord.

There are at least three conclusions we can draw from this verse.

The first conclusion is that God wants us to think.

To think is to reason logically and analytically. God approves of thinking. John Wesley once said,

“It is a fundamental principle with us that to renounce reason is to renounce religion, that religion and reason go hand in hand.” (Quoted in Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, p. 96)

The second conclusion is that God wants us to think with Him.

• To reason together with the Lord means to think under the lordship of Jesus Christ, not autonomously.
• To reason together with the Lord means to make our starting point God’s revelation, not our own reason.
• To reason together with the Lord means to find out what God thinks, then apply it to every aspect of life.

God’s thoughts in the Bible are presented to us as foundational principles. He has left it to us to apply those principles to every aspect of life.

The third conclusion is that God does not want us to think apart from Him.

The writer of Ecclesiastes provides us a testimony of a man reasoning apart from the Lord.

Ecclesiastes: The Best of Human Reasoning

Ecclesiastes is a unique book because it was written by a man who had fallen from a personal faith in God and was trying to explain life entirely from the framework of observation and human reason.

“Ecclesiastes is not a word from God, but a word from one of history’s wisest men. His conclusions are eminently reasonable, but are frequently wrong! If we read this book as an accurate portrayal of the best reasoning of which man is capable, we will sense the emptiness in human beings.” (Lawrence O. Richards, Article on Ecclesiastes in The Bible Reader’s Companion)

Observation is reflected in the expression, “under the sun,” a phrase Solomon used twenty-nine times in Ecclesiastes.

“I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.”

Human reasoning is reflected in the expression, “I thought in my heart,” a phrase Solomon used seven times.

“I directed my mind to know, to investigate, and to seek wisdom and an ex-planation, and to know the evil of folly and the foolishness of madness.”

Peter Kreeft had this to say about Ecclesiastes,

“Unlike all the other books of the Bible, it has no faith flashbulb attached to its camera to reveal the hidden meanings of life. It uses only the available light “under the sun,” sense observation and human reason. Ecclesiastes is the truest picture of the surface that has ever been written.” (Peter Kreeft, Three Philosophies of Life, p.19)

Solomon’s theme is explicit in the opening words, the body of the writing, and the conclusion: Life is meaningless.

“Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless. All things are wearisome, more than one can say.”

Meaningless. That is the inevitable result of any attempt to reason apart from the Lord. Noth-ing makes sense apart from God.

Conclusion

C.S. Lewis provided the clearest reason why Christians must learn to think when he said,

“If all the world were Christians it might not matter if all the world were uneducated. But to be ignorant now – not to be able to meet our enemies on their own ground – would be to throw down our weapons.” (CS Lewis, The Weight of Glory, p. 50)

Too many believers have thrown down their weapons. It is time to pick them up again.