Seeking the Mind of Christ

by

We have a dear friend who has been so traumatized by toxic Christians that she refuses to believe in Jesus. Not long ago, we had lunch with our friend and her new husband of six months, also a follower of Jesus. Inevitably our discussion turned toward faith.

Our friend once again repeated her assertion that she didn’t understand how Christians can believe the things we do, especially those supernatural episodes we find in the Bible. While our friend’s husband insisted that Christianity centers on the moment of what John Wesley calls “justification” – when one confesses and repents of sin and places one’s whole trust in Christ – a different view popped into my head.

“When you come to know Jesus and what he taught and how he lived, you begin to see the world in a whole new way,” I said. “It’s what we call ‘having the mind of Christ.’ You see the world differently.”

I was struck by this reality again while reading email from our local outlet, the Dallas News. I found myself applying a steady stream of “why?” and “how?” to that day’s news. For example:

“A D-FW household has to have more than $59,500 in annual income to qualify to purchase a median-price house in the area, according to a new report by HSH.com. … Nationwide, you'd need to earn $55,390 to buy a mid-priced house,” Dallas News reported.

Upon further research, I found that according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median household income in the United States for 2016 was $59,039 – making a Dallas-area house unaffordable for most families.

As a Jesus follower, my first question of these statistics is, “Why? Why does housing have to be so expensive?” There followed new questions. If housing takes so much of a family’s income, what’s left for food? For clothing? For transportation? For health care? For education? Perhaps the most important question: Why do we maintain an economic system that doesn’t provide a basic quality of life for all people? Jesus’ teachings from Matthew 25 echo in my mind.

Then there are questions from the ongoing wave of revelations about sexual misconduct by prominent men. A popular meme from Facebook lists several prominent figures who’ve been undone by allegations or admissions of sexual misconduct, but then adds three politicians who remain in office despite equally damning reports. Why are some politicians exempt from the same kind of punishment meted out to men who are alleged to have sexually abused both women and men? Yes, politicians are subject to the will of the voters, but swifter means of redress for transgressions exist in the halls of power. Why aren’t those being applied?

For me, another reality makes these questions even more painful: many of those who resist affordable housing (“We don’t want ‘those people’ in our town”) and those who defend sexual predators (“It’s OK for older men to ‘date’ teenage girls”) identify themselves as Christians. Our skeptical friend’s resistance to Christianity becomes more understandable in the face of such mangled morality. If Jesus’ teachings aren’t enough to convince people to protect the welfare of their neighbors, why bother believing in Jesus?

These musings on our time’s cognitive dissonances continue to convince me we’re living through an apocalyptic era, when the mask of false faith is being ripped away to expose the corruption beneath. A Facebook friend recently noted that distortions have so warped the image and teachings of Jesus that it may be necessary to go all the way back to Christianity’s beginnings to reclaim the true and complete gospel. As someone who has taken monastic vows to live for the Church of Jesus Christ, I find this prospect simultaneously daunting and exciting. Hard as it is to live out what Jesus taught his disciples – a calling in which I fail daily and must beg forgiveness – how can one search the mind of Christ?

In his presentation to the Uniting Methodists Movement’s recent conference, Dr. David N. Field, provided a focus to start our spiritual renewal. For Dr. Field, as it was for John Wesley and Jesus, the first, unchanging, eternal guide is love. To have the mind of Christ, to see the world through Christ’s eyes, is to look constantly from love, with love. Even when one brings to account those who have done wrong, that correction must be done in love.

Therein lies the danger, because love, as Jesus taught it, is offensive. Truly loving offends people’s sense of “balancing the scales,” which they misunderstand as justice but more often means retribution. Loving like Jesus offends people’s concepts of worthiness, the expectation that people get what they deserve, whether blessings or curses. Loving like Jesus “subverts the dominant narrative,” as we say in community organizing, because loving embodies God’s gift of grace against structures of power and dominance.

To have the mind of Christ, we must think love, say love, do love, be love, every day in every encounter. Yes, truly living as a follower of Jesus, the Christ, is hard work, the work of love. Our skeptical friend and others like her have not received such love from Christians in the past. It’s time to put love into action, for even the smallest steps taken in love can move us forward from the unhealthy places where we now find ourselves.

Cynthia B. Astle serves as Editor of United Methodist Insight, which she founded in 2011.