A Mind For God Reflection

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“Most Christians would rather die than think; in fact they do” (White, 17). This quote from Bertrand Russel is thought provoking and a most appropriate way to start a book on using your mind for God. A Mind for God by James Emery White is a fantastic piece of literature that delves deep into what it means to truly follow God with your mind. In just under one hundred pages White explains why, how, and what we need to follow God with all of our mind. “And he answered, ‘You shall 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 your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27, ESV). The overall theme of A Mind for God is serving God with our minds, but White uses his chapters to divide …show more content…

Before reading this book, I was struggling with the amount of reading that college was presenting. White does not waste time and gets to the fact that reading is an act of worship early on. He makes a connection with junk food and reading on page 43. If we feed our body junk all the time, we will become obese and ill. Similarly if all we read is junk, our minds will become ill and not reflect a mind for God (White, 43). When he says this he means that we should be engaging our brains with material that will make us think and grow intellectually. White states that in the middle ages, “learning in and of itself, was sacred, for it was pursuing the very knowledge of God, and life in light of that knowledge” (White, 53). Today learning has become something far from what it was intended to be back in the middle ages. Today we have removed the aspect of God from public schools and we focus on getting the grade instead of the knowledge. White suggests that, “the starting point of our education (or our commitment to learning) is biblical literacy” (White, 57). This fits into the Christian worldview, but not into very many other worldviews. Unfortunately many are biblically illiterate in today’s culture and White mentions several different types of Bible readers in chapter four. He mentions the “service readers,” “devotional …show more content…

He eludes to this concept briefly when recalling his discussion with the two women at Oxford, but that is all he really does with the topic. I believe this is essential to note in a book about having a mind for God because, non-Christians will use the Bible against Christians if they know more about it than we do. Other than that topic I agree with everything that White discusses in his book. After reading this book, I would recommend it to any college freshman. I think that White’s chapter on using the library as an armory will change the way that students think about their assignments and their attitude to higher education. In conclusion, A Mind for God by James Emery White is a fantastic piece of literature that delves deep into what it means to truly follow God with your mind. “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2,

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