Loving God with all of my mind

Well, Leah's been on my case lately about how long it's been since I posted anything on here. Honestly, my lack of posting hasn't really been intentional. I just know she does such a good job of keeping everyone up to date with what's going on with us that I don't have to worry about it.

Anyway, here's a few thoughts on school.

I'm taking nine hours again this semester, Ancient Near Eastern History, Personal Evangelism and New Testament Survey II. The classes are all pretty enjoyable, but Ancient Near Eastern History and Personal Evangelism are definitely my favorites. Our Sunday School teacher, Dr. Betts, teaches the ANEH class, so I was really looking forward to that one. I didn't know anything about the other two professors (Dr. Randy Smith in Personal Evangelism, and Dr. Dave Deklavan in NT Survey II), but I have come to really appreciate both of them as well.

In fact, the professors have probably been the most pleasant surprise about Boyce. Before starting school, I was sort of skeptical about how they might be. For some reason, I had this preconceived idea that the professors were all going to be arrogant scholars who were more interested in proving how smart they were, than on the loving Jesus and other people. But that isn't what I've found at all. All six of the professors I've had so far have been some of the most humble, godly, men I have been around. That's not to say they aren't extremely smart or serious about academics, because they definitely make us work hard and place a high emphasis on excellence in the classroom. But they all stress the fact that the reason we strive for excellence in our schoolwork is because doing so glorifies God. After all, the Bible says to "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your MIND and with all your strength." (Mark 12:30, NASB)

For whatever reason, it seems that many Christians have the same attitude I had before coming to school, that its somehow unimportant - or dangerous even - to study the "meatier", more complex aspects of theology. Since coming to Boyce, I have come to reject this idea. I believe God wants us to use our minds to know as much about Him as we possibly can. Having said that, there is a very real danger of falling in love with knowledge for the sake of knowledge, and focusing too much on secondary matters that quite frankly none of us will know the answers to this side of heaven. In my Personal Evangelism class this week, Dr. Smith gave us an example the other day of some theologians who once had a whole debate on how many angels could stand on the head of a pin.

I was reading in 1 Timothy last night, and I think this is exactly the sort of thing Paul addresses in the first chapter when he instructs Timothy to stay on in Ephesus to correct some bad teaching that was taking place there. This is what Paul tells Timothy:

"But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. For some men, straying from these things, have turned aside to fruitless discussions, wanting to be teachers of the Law, even though they do not understand either what they are saying or the matters about which they make confident assertions." (1 Timothy 1:5-7 NASB).

Unfortunately, I think these verses could apply to a lot of the students here at Boyce and Southern. I seem to hear a lot of confident assertions being made by students about matters that quite frankly I doubt they understand well enough to be making, and are ultimately part of fruitless discussions. On the other hand though, like I said, so far I haven't seen this at all with any of my professors. In fact, I have heard Dr. Betts warn our Sunday school class (which is comprised entirely of students and their spouses) about this exact thing on numerous occasions.

As a student on this campus (and probably any seminary campus for that matter), there is a fine line between loving God with all of our minds, and turning aside to fruitless discussions about matters we do not understand well enough to make confident assertions. But fortunately for me, the example of my professors proves that it is a line that can be walked, and that just because there is the danger of the latter is not an excuse to ignore the former.