Where is Christian thinking most needed today?
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By John Piper
About Life of the Mind
Part of the series Ask Pastor John
The following is an edited transcript of the audio.
Where is Christian thinking most needed today?
I think there's a never-ending call for the Christian church to exercise its intellectual life on behalf of the Bible, understanding it and defending it.
I think we go in waves. We have a season where the Bible becomes an issue. Its critics become virulent, and God raises up defenders. And then we go for a season where that isn't the case. But I think that always needs to be there. We need to have scholars who are showing how the Bible came into being and, from a scholarly and intellectual standpoint, why this book can be trusted.
And over against that I would say that the whole cultural dimension of life needs Christian thinking.
The media would be a crucial one, and maybe the whole internet, computer, email dimension. How is all of that transforming the church and transforming worship? I recently saw a book by Quentin Schultze about the wise use of presentational technology specifically in worship. So there is a person who has given serious intellectual effort to think through what many of us just absorb and take for granted. So the whole dimension of technology in its effect on the human spirit and its effect on the corporate human spirit in worship would be another area for Christian thinking.
But, really, the reason it's hard for me to come down to any particulars is because I think that every single area of public life—politics, entertainment, business, international affairs, war, and social issues like abortion, poverty, homelessness, addiction, and marriage—all of those require thought, intellectual effort. None of those is to be dealt with simply emotionally or with authoritarian force. But we're supposed to have people who think about this book the Bible and apply our intellectual efforts to saying true things and bringing true solutions to the problems that the world has in those regards.
So I just want to say, let's cultivate an appreciation for the life of the mind, the life of hard thinking in every area of life.
