Thinking Inside The Box
By
Rick Shrader
G .K. Chesterton wrote, “The mind that finds its
way to wild places is the poet’s; but the mind that never finds its way back is
the lunatic’s.”1 It seems we have no shortage of “visionaries” and
“original thinkers,” but fewer and fewer of them seem to be able to find their
way back home! It is a day of point and click exegesis, word-searched
information, downloaded knowledge and back-lit preaching. A.T. Pierson told of
a country church member commenting on the new pastor: “Well, I’ll tell yer how
it is. He’s de best man I ebber seed to tak’ de Bible apart, but he dunno how
to put it togedder agin.”2
We have heard the expression, “thinking in (or out of) the box” for
quite a while now. I think it is an attempt to describe one who can think only
within set parameters, as opposed to one who can think beyond those
parameters. In Christian circles it is frequently applied to stuffy people who
will not accept new ideas or think in any way except what has been done in the
past. On the surface, most of us would agree with the criticism, as A.W. Tozer
wrote, “The stodgy pedestrian mind does no credit to Christianity.”3
But I am not convinced that that’s all there is to the expression of thinking in
(or out of) the box.
Does anyone still doubt that the world has lost its moorings when it
comes to thinking and normality? For them, thinking out of the box means the
absence of absolutes, the freedom for unlimited self-expression, or as one
popular restaurant advertises, “No rules, just right.” It means living in a
world where wild imagination is normal and the old normal is boring. In that
world, biblical Christianity has no place. One online writer criticizes
Christianity for holding too strictly to the Bible :
This is what happens when people take the stories their religions
offer a bit too literally. . . In that paradigm, if you subscribe to the right
story and follow the rules, all you have to do is hang in there and wait for the
ending, and you’ll be saved. Best of all, the real quandaries of human
existence—questions such as where do we come from, what is the right way to
live, and where do we go when we die—are all preordained. A closed book. . .
Thank[fully], we now have a way out of the story: We can write our own endings.”4
As the world criticizes us for thinking biblically,
we must not shy away from accusations that we do not think broadly enough.
We must not prefer the company of broad worldly thinking to plain biblical
thinking. In some instances I would agree that Christians ought to broaden
their thinking, but in many ways people think worldly and simply call it broad.
I am here advocating that a disagreement which is conservative is not
necessarily blind. There may be good reasons for it.
Too often, “thinking inside the
box” is a caricature of more conservative thinking that has become annoying or
even embarrassing in our day and age. Here are a few of those caricatures of
thinking which get labeled “in the box.”
Thinking that is Stagnant
We have all heard the explanations of how corporations go through a
cycle from being new and enthusiastic to old and stagnant. This can be true of
corporations and churches. We all fear crossing that line of old age where our
only topics of conversation are stories that everyone has already heard a
thousand times. But the reaction to this can be as bad and worse. An immature
answer is to disregard everything that is said. This is often done with
church. As Chesterton said, “The vice of the modern notion of mental progress
is that it is always something concerned with the breaking of bonds, the
effacing of boundaries, the casting away of dogmas. But if there be such a
thing as mental growth, it must mean the growth into more and more definite
convictions, into more and more dogmas. The human brain is a machine for coming
to conclusions; if it cannot come to conclusions it is rusty.”5
Thinking that is Irrelevant
Besides the things that are old and boring, many things can seem to be worthless
because they don’t “work” as well as they used to. Business lives and dies
with sales methodology and they must work or the product won’t sell.
Commercials have become what I call the obvious lie: we know it can’t
really be that way but we excuse it because we know it’s only a commercial.
The add is “truthful” if it sells the product. Reality is of little
consequence.
Irrelevance, then, is what is non-pragmatic. If it doesn’t get the
job done, why keep it? Albert Einstein called the modern age one of perfected
means and confused ends.6 R.C. Sproul wrote, “The Christian rejects
the spirit of pragmatism. He lives in terms of long-term goals. He eschews the
expedient. He stores up treasure in heaven. He is willing to wait for the hour
of God.”7
Thinking that is Negative
I have known truly negative people and they are hard to be around.
Some people don’t know there is another end to the magnet. But other people are
as afraid of a negative as this generation is of the law of non-contradiction.
The fact is, two opposites cannot both be true, and for every positive there is
its opposite which is negative. If the positive is true, the negative can’t
be. But if the negative is true, the positive can’t be. “Woe unto them that
call evil good, and good evil” (Isa 5:20). T.S. Eliot said, “Incumbent upon all
Christians is the duty of maintaining consciously certain standards and criteria
of criticism over and above those applied by the rest of the world.”8
Even if that is in a different box!
Thinking that is Pietistic
“Pious” has become one of those Christian swear words like
legalistic, traditional, progressive, controlling, liberal, etc. that we use on
someone we don’t want to talk to. Too often, even Christians shy away from what
seems too holy or pious. We are more used to the world’s standards than God’s.
Francis Schaeffer said, “Ancestral man has entered his own head, and he has been
adapting ever since to what he finds there.”9 Piety is too narrow of
a box for this generation. But God invites man to a far different
perspective! Though no Christian who fancies his thinking to be “out of the box”
would ever see his thinking as “unbiblical,” my fear is that that is what has
happened and far too often. When we don’t take the negative seriously enough,
we forget that it is different than the positive. The anti-biblical, with time,
can seem only non-biblical. And then the non-biblical, with more time, can seem
only preferential. Then the preferential becomes preferable.
An Alternative
The Corinthian church had gotten a little too far “out of the box”
for the Apostle Paul. Their thinking had become too much like the world around
them and Paul reels them back into the parameters of a biblical perspective. In
1 Corinthians 4:6 he told them that he had written to them so that they wouldn’t
think beyond what is written. This was their problem with preferring one
above another, and also their problem in every other area.
What is written means more than simply what Paul has already
said to them. They are not to think ύper (above, beyond) gegraptai (what
is written). This expression is used
throughout this book and many other New Testament books to introduce an Old
Testament quotation. For example: For it is written, I will destroy the
wisdom of the wise (1:19). This is the exact same form of the verb as Paul
uses in 4:6. They were not to go above or beyond what they Scripture says. G.G.
Findlay adds, “It was a Rabbinical adage—as much as to say, Keep to the rule
of Scripture, Not a step beyond the written word.”10
Regardless of how the world sees us, God says our reward is from
gold, silver and precious stones, not wood, hay and stubble; our message is the
foolishness of God, not the wisdom of this world; our preaching is with
demonstration of Holy Spirit power, not enticing words of man’s wisdom; and our
foundation is Christ alone, no other foundation can be laid. In chapter 4, Paul
chided them for remaining spectators of the real Christian life, while he had
become a “spectacle” to the world.
I think Paul could have said These things I have written that you
may learn not to think outside the Box of Scripture. Though we don’t like
to think we do, we are probably not more adept at knowing the parameters than
the Corinthians who also had the Apostle’s presence to guide them!
And So . . .
A.W. Tozer, who had a way of bringing our thoughts down to reality,
wrote, “Whatever keeps me from the Bible is my enemy, however harmless it may
appear to be. Whatever engages my attention when I should be meditating on God
and things eternal does injury to my soul. Let the cares of life crowd out the
Scriptures from my mind and I have suffered loss where I can least afford it.
Let me accept anything else instead of the Scriptures and I have been cheated
and robbed to my eternal confusion.”11
Notes:
1. G.K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong With The World (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994) 92.
2. A.T. Pierson, Pulpit Legends (Chattanooga: AMG, 1994)
xii.
3. A.W. Tozer, Born After Midnight (Harrisburg: Christian
Publications, 1959) 95.
4. Douglas Rushkoff, “Playing God,” Yahoo Internet Life, Dec.
2000, p. 101.
5. G.K. Chesterton, Heretics (Nashville: Nelson, 2000)
151.
6. Quoted by Phillips & Okholm, Christian Apologetics in a
Postmodern World (Downer’s Grove: IVP, 1995) 25.
7. R.C. Sproul, The Mystery of the Holy Spirit (Wheaton:
Tyndale House, 1990) 172.
8. Quoted by Bruce Lockerbie, Dismissing God (Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1998) 20.
9. Francis Schaeffer, True Spirituality (Wheaton: Tyndale,
1971) 112.
10. G.G. Findlay, Expositor’s Greek New Testament, W.R.
Nicoll, ed (Grand Rapids: Eerdman’s, 1970) 800.
11. A.W. Tozer,
Worship and Entertainment
(Camp Hill, PA:
Christian Publications, 1997) 42.
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