Taking every thought captive for obedience to Christ (2 Cor. 10.5)

Outcomes
Higher Education
It would be difficult to overemphasize the power of ideas and language to shape the course of life and culture.

In his classic, The Captive Mind, Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz described what happens in a society where ideas are under the control of a guiding elite, who brook no disagreement with their point of view, and redefine all of life according to narrow, political ideals. Thought and expression are carefully policed. Research is harnessed for the cause, not of truth, but ideology. Art is trivialized, reduced to a means for self-expression rather than for expressing and enshrining noble ideals. Religion becomes quaint and irrelevant.

Rather like what we see happening on the campuses of most American universities today.

Robert Boyers argues that the liberal, progressive atmosphere on college campuses is stifling all debate of ideas and promulgating an ideological hegemony unhealthy for the pursuit of learning (“How ‘Safe Spaces’ Stifle Ideas,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 13, 2016).

Mr. Boyers invokes Milosz to define conditions among liberal academics, who are devoted to protecting students from anything other than their view of truth.

Liberals, far from being the “free thinkers” they like to portray themselves as, actually guard their classrooms against the intrusion of any ideas considered to be not in their mainstream. Students are not encouraged to think for themselves, but to parrot back the narrative unfolded for them in the classroom. Any ideas faculty may regard as potentially “harmful” to students are either proscribed or served up with a warning about “triggering.”

Thus universities, rather than providing the rich soil of academic freedom, sowed with the seeds of ideas and cultivated by healthy intellectual exchange and debate, are instead fortresses of indoctrination. Academics and administrators are determined to produce intellectual clones of themselves, students protected against any ideas their mentors might regard as naïve, dangerous, or simply wrong.

Universities today are outposts for “‘missionary regimes’ promoting what they take to be ‘advanced values.’” Mr. Boyers explains, “More and more in such settings, the learning agenda is controlled by cadres of so-called human-relations or human-resources professionals and their academic enablers...”

From such settings, “the life of ideas is also increasingly compromised in precincts beyond the academy.” All of life and culture are affected by this captive mindset of liberal progressivism, as students complete their studies and spread the ideological poison of their captive minds into every area of life and culture.

The great tragedy of this particular moment of intellectual history, of course, is the absence of a strong Christian mind to expose the lies of progressivism and liberate thinking into the bright light of Gospel truth. From Harry Blamires to Mark Noll, Christian scholars for a generation have bemoaned the lack of a Christian mind to provide intellectual leadership out of the darkness of unbelieving thought. But the situation has changed only a little since Mr. Blamires first wrote about it in the middle of the last century.

But now is not the time for despair or giving up. We must continue to believe that God intends His goodness to flourish in the land of the living, and we must wait faithfully on Him to bring truth to light as His Kingdom advances on earth (Ps. 27.13, 14; 1 Jn. 2.8). As believers, we have the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2.16); and, in the Word and Spirit of Christ, we are called to take every thought captive for obedience to King Jesus, whether in the lofty intellectual atmosphere of the college classroom, or the equally thoughtful but less stifling arenas of everyday life and work.

The option of checking your brain at the door is simply not open to the believer. Either we will think Christ’s thoughts after Him, into the glorious freedom of truth and the Gospel, or we will give way to the captive mind and the Lie, and condemn our generation to continuing darkness and unbelief.

For reflection
1.  You have the mind of Christ. How does that affect your approach to your daily calling?

2.  What does “taking every thought captive for obedience to Christ” look like in your life?

3.  Meditate on Ephesians 5.15-17. Apply Paul’s exhortation about time to the life of the mind.

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The Week features insights from a wide range of topics and issues, with a view to equipping the followers of Christ to take every thought captive for Jesus. Please prayerfully consider supporting The Fellowship of Ailbe by sending a gift to The Fellowship of Ailbe, 19 Tyler Drive, Essex Junction, VT 05452.