Gary Thomas wrote a must-read (IMHO) article at Focus on the Family’s Boundless called Ignorant Christians. In it, he points out the importance of keeping the ol’ gray matter in shape.
We need a generation of first-rate thinkers, but we also need a generation in which every Christian sees himself or herself as a scholar.
Not, mind you, as an academic, but as one who takes seriously Paul’s charge to “watch your life and doctrine carefully; persevere in them because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers” (1 Tim. 3:16).
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The consequences of ignorance are many and severe: Our witness suffers greatly from Christians who speak up without having really thought through what they’re saying. Without a developed mind, we are easily led astray by foolish beliefs that the church dismissed as heresy centuries ago.
It saddens me that Christians today aren not generally considered to be among the leading minds of our time. And, honestly, we probably don’t deserve to be.
