The Way of Christ

“Be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (Romans 12:2).

We often hear that people are Christians.  How does that show in their way of thinking?  How does that appear in their behavior?

1. Framework for Thinking

There are many frameworks for thinking about the world.  Philosophies have frameworks that are used for thinking about life.  Businessmen have frameworks they use to think about financial decisions.  Lawyers have frameworks they use to think about arguing cases.  College students, especially those in graduate programs, are taught to fit data into frameworks that are often devised by a scholar or a group of scholars.

It is important to understand the role of frameworks in our lives.  While many of the frameworks we encounter in our lives do not really affect our understanding of the world as a whole (like the ones we see in college), others like the ones from philosophy, business, and law affect us directly.  They can even change the way we view ourselves, our families, our careers, how we deal with others, and how we approach God.

This is important to understand because our Lord Jesus Christ gave us the framework for thinking about the world.  Our Lord Jesus Christ being God is the Creator and Lord of the Universe.  A mistake many people make when they come to Christ is that they try to fit His teachings (and the Apostles’ teachings which derive from Him) within their own frameworks when it should be the other way around.  They lift their frameworks to be above Him and His teachings, and submit His teachings to them.  But since He is Creator and Lord, His framework is above all.  We should rather see how ours fits within His.  We should rather understand our philosophies, business and financial dealings, and our relationships through His framework.

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An Example of Frameworks

For example, our Lord Jesus Christ said that the second greatest commandment in the Old Testament was “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39).  If I have a business-minded framework, then I may apply that to my own family, and if I do not like how my wife is working, running the house, and raising our children, then I may file for divorce from her and marry another whom I think is more successful.  If I do not like the way my children are learning because they may be disabled, I may disown them because they did not meet the goals I had for them.  We see this all the time in the world.  It is not even something uncommon.

But, let us see what our Lord Jesus said about the matter.  He said, “‘The two shall become one flesh’; so then they are no longer two, but one flesh.  Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate” (Mark 10:8-9).  Also, Paul the Apostle said, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her” (Ephesians 5:25).

Disowning children because of a learning disability fundamentally goes against our Lord Jesus’s personal command to us that we “love one another” (John 15:17).

What our Lord Jesus said is radically different from the above frameworks.

Some may begin to think at this point that this is uncomfortable, and they have not thought about it this way before, but that is what our Lord actually said.  Our Lord Jesus Christ asks for all from us, not only some.  This includes our minds.  When someone had asked our Lord Jesus what was the greatest commandment in the Old Testament, He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37).  This includes frameworks that changes the way we act.

What about one framework for spiritual life and another framework for everyday, business, and family life?

Our Lord Jesus did not accept such a difference.  He taught one standard for private life and public life because all life is lived in front of God who sees and knows all.

We often find people who appear to be nice and sweet in one context like home or church, but then at other contexts they are some of the most difficult people we can deal with; they can be mean, malicious, and destructive.  These people think they have reached the balance that will work for them in life, but St. James the Apostle wrote, “A double–minded man [is] unstable in all his ways” (James 1:8).  These people, sooner or later, find their professional, social, familial, and spiritual lives collapsing.

Our Lord Jesus Christ spoke sharply against double-mindedness in the Revelation when he addressed the Church of Laodicea comparing following Him to being hot, and to stepping away from Him to being cold, “I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot.  I could wish you were cold or hot.  So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth” (Revelation 1:15-16).  They had one foot in the church and the other foot in the secular world.  That was not acceptable to Him.

2. Way of Life

“Be transformed by the renewing of your minds” (Romans 12:2).

Transformation comes from the mind, and the mind has a framework, and frameworks inevitably lead to ways of living.  If one believes that the only hope for respect, prestige, and honor will be in a successful career, then they will burn a lot more resources and time on schooling for those careers than they do on their spiritual lives.

Augustine is a great example of where this type of thinking will lead.  According to his own words in his great work The Confessions, his father, who was not yet a Christian (but Augustine’s mother was a Christian), spent a lot of money on his education even though he was not as rich as others.  When he left his hometown to pursue a higher education, Augustine got involved in the party scene.  There he ended up living with a girlfriend for more than 10 years and fathering a child with her.  While in higher education, he lost faith in Christianity to only join a heretical group with heavy demands and secrecy.  Afterward, he became a skeptic not knowing what to make of life in general.  Furthermore, as he finished his education and went to Rome (a big city where opportunity abounded), he made close to nothing in terms of money there.  All he had prepared for had ended up in nothing for him.  He was living an extremely dissatisfied life.  He was under stress, tension, anger, fear of the future, bitterness, spiritual loneliness, and anxiety.

Does this sound familiar?

It describes many people who focus too much on their educations at the cost of their spiritual development.  It describes many people going through college who began as Christians and ended up losing faith there.

He became somewhat in conflict with his mother, knew he was living a less than full life, and there was not much promise in the future.

That is not where the story ends.

The Way of Christ

After so many years of walking contrary to Christ for many reasons including because of his education and preparation for his career, he met a Pastor, Ambrose the Bishop of Milan.  He had moved to Milan after failing to build a career at Rome.  In many ways, it was like moving to a suburb where no one was excited to move to.  St. Ambrose who was also a well-educated intellectual showed Augustine how his doubts about Christianity were founded on a wrong understanding of what Christianity was.  Little by little Augustine began to read the Bible and seek pastoral guidance from Ambrose.  He found his framework of thinking changing, and slowly his way of life to the point that he became a Christian, changed his way of life, and even became a bishop in the church.

He was not any bishop.  He wrote more works than almost any other Christian in the ancient world did.  In those works he showed people how to pray to God, to praise God, and to think about the world in the light of Christ’s teachings.  That is the transformed life.

There are too many works to list that Augustine produced.  In a way, he became the spiritual father of Latin Europe for the next 1000 years.  Despite the shortcomings of some of his teachings, in a way, if it were not for him, the faith may not have spread and been preserved for Europe.

A book that can transform the way that you approach God, view the world, view your career and life, view your family, and view yourself is The Confessions.  I highly recommend this book.

Come to our Lord Jesus Christ, and let your framework of thinking be the framework He gave us.  At that point, you will experience transformation and find that you are full of joy, do not have fear of the future, and you will be full of love for others.

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