Today's Guest Blogger is a young purpose-driven God-chaser, Medical Doctor, dedicated husband and father, great writer, and above all a thinker. I am so honored to have crossed paths with him. This Friday, he has a thought-provoking piece. I pray that after reading this your minds will be enlarged beyond your current scope of thinking:
Do you know what it is to be a Christian? I do not mean a Christian who goes to church at least twice a week – who says “God bless you” at the appropriate points in every conversation and clutches a bible to his chest, his head bowed, as he affects a pious pose for all to see. I do not mean the Christian who reads the bible at least once a day, prays quite often and never misses a church conference.
I am talking of something much more than that – I am talking of a Christian who knows that God created his spirit and, that God also gave him a mind – to think!
That the same God who delights in seeing him study His word, does not forbid him from exerting his intellect on the world, and indeed the universe in which he lives. A Christian who realizes that faith is not necessarily blind and that reasoning and thinking is not “doubt in disguise.”
Why have Christians given up the intellectual turf to non-believers? Through the course of the last century, Christians, for some reason, have slackened their grip in all fields of intellectual discourse – the arts, philosophy, astronomy, mathematics and apologetics. And no, I am not talking about simply going to a university and earning a degree, I am talking about being a “Thinker”.
In our present age, it is no longer considered “spiritually cool” to be a Thinker. Thinking is now looked upon as a sophisticated form of disbelief and an appeal to reason is not particularly welcomed. The bride of Christ has abandoned the arena of Cognitive Revery, taking bogus comfort in the false premise that faith in God, as a rule, must not involve the intellect and reason. There was a time in the not too distant past when the greatest thinkers in the land were men of faith –
Leonhard Euler (1707 – 1783): mathematician and physicist who wrote apologetics and argued against atheists in his time.
Bernhard Riemann (1826 – 1866): mathematician. Described Riemannian geometry, which enabled Einstein’s theory of general relativity. He even tried proving mathematically the correctness of the book of Genesis.
Friedrich Gauss (1777 – 1855): The king of them all. A child prodigy – corrected his father’s arithmetic before the age of three. Made groundbreaking mathematical discoveries while still a teenager. He is perhaps the most brilliant mathematician to walk the earth. He is nicknamed the “Prince of Mathematics” and he believed in an eternal, omniscient and omnipotent God.
Kurt Godel (1906 – 178): Mathematician, philosopher, and logician. He is the greatest logician that ever lived. His Incompleteness Theorem is an extraordinary feat of sublime genius. He once said “I believe in the afterlife independent of theology. The world is rationally constructed, according to which the order of the world reflects the order of the Supreme Mind governing it”
And an atheist is talking about logic? Hear the words of the greatest logician to walk the earth.
Time and space would not permit me to mention Gottfried Leibniz, Blaise Pascal (I could go on and on)
“Modern Christians” have given up the intellectual space and stage that these men occupied and of course, it would not be empty for long – the void has been filled with other ideas, the most pervasive of which is the constantly growing notion that "there is no God."
There are Christians who automatically equate philosophy with atheism – that is how ignorant some in the church have become.
Newsflash!
At least, two-thirds of the New Testament was authored by the greatest Christian philosopher in church history – Paul of Tarsus. Paul debated with the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers in Athens. What do you think he said to them? He met them on their turf and showed them the flaws in their reasoning.
Paul was a Thinker!
But fast-forward two thousand years later – it is no longer fashionable to think anymore. It is much easier to “go with the flow” to use a popular church parlance. We might just as well emblazon over the doorway of the modern church:
“Abandon Thought all Ye Who Enter Here!” –
That is the new canticle of the “fast-food-generation” church – that is the Zeitgeist – the spirit of the age, of the modern church!
Christians, I implore you all to read! – think! – read! – and think some more!
Christians, I implore you all to read! – think! – read! – and think some more!
Think, and you shall find!
Question for the Day: Are you a Christian Thinker or researcher? Or do you leave the 'thinking' to the Theologians?
You can find Eyitemi Egwuenu's Blogs HERE: http://thinkandyoushallfindit.blogspot.com/ OR http://talessbymoonlight.blogspot.com/OR http://thewhisperingsea.blogspot.com/
