The Christian Mind

From that time Jesus began to show to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day. Then Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, “Far be it from You, Lord; this shall not happen to You!” But He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.” Matthew 16.21-23

The Christian Mind
Harry Blamires (1916-)
“My thesis amounts to this. Except over a very narrow field of thinking, chiefly touching questions of strictly personal conduct, we Christians in the modern world accept, for the purpose of mental activity, a frame of reference constructed by the secular mind and a set of criteria reflecting secular evaluations. There is no Christian mind; there is no shared field of discourse in which we can move at ease as thinking Christians by trodden ways and past established landmarks.”

Shortly after World War II, Lituanian-born Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz defected to the West and published his book, The Captive Mind. There he showed how, through a combination of uncritical thinking, too close association, and mere convenience, the best minds in Eastern Europe succumbed to the relentless pressures of Marxist thinking to turn all of Eastern Europe into a culture of conformism and a drab existence of political manipulation and fear. Something similar to what Milosz described has occurred within the Christian community, although the drift has been going on for over 200 years now. We confine our Christian thinking, such as it is, to a narrow sphere of experience. Meanwhile, when we’re out in the world – at work, in the community, at school, pursuing our diversions – we tend to think with the materialistic, narcissistic, and pragmatic mind of the times. When it comes to the everyday realities of life in the world, we are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men. And I wonder where such thinking originates?

Do you agree that our Christian minds have become captive to what Francis Schaeffer referred to as “the spirit of the naturalism of the age”? Why or why not?

Introduction to Christian Worldview
Our course, One in Twelve: Introduction to Christian Worldview, uses twelve diagrams to provide a comprehensive framework for thinking and living Christianly in the world. It’s free, online, and available for you to study by yourself or with your leadership team, at your own pace and on your own schedule. For more information and to register, click here.

Mission Partners Outreach
Thinking and living like a Christian begins in our daily lives, as we are going about in the world to which God sends us each day. Our Mission Outreach Partners programcan equip you to equip your church members to identify and work their Personal Mission Fields from the vantage point of a Gospel worldview and Holy Spirit power. I’m looking for some men to go through this program with me. If you’d like me to take you through this free, six-month program, and help you see how it could be used in your church, drop me a line at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. All quotations from The Christian Mind are from Harry Blamires, The Christian Mind (Ann Arbor: Servant Books, 1963, 1978).