Have we lost our minds?

As I see it…
Have we lost our minds? More specifically, have Christians lost their minds? I’ve been reading Mark Noll’s book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, and though I’m about 15 years late in reading it, I like what I see. He argues articulately for a position I’ve been advocating for the last ten years, at least. If I had realized what Mark had already written, I would have shut up more and just recommended his book! My concern has been that Christians have put their brains on hold and let the world do their thinking for them. We have allowed the “touchy/feely” side of humanity to impact the guidelines for a Christian voice in our culture far too long. We have stepped aside from the exercise of our brain and have allowed just “gut feeling” to take over in our arguments concerning our Christian witness. It starts at conversion and gets worse. People are encouraged to “come to Christ” and he’ll make all things well rather than preach the convicting work of the Holy Spirit against the raw discharge of our sin against a holy God. We even start many of our testimony times with “What would you like to share with us today?” rather than what has the Lord been teaching you in his Word or how has God convicted you about your Christian conduct? We have traded the exercising of our minds unto godliness for mindless exercises of endless hours of computer games and their ilk. Rather than sanctifying our thought life with the contemplation of the grandeur of God and his holiness as presented in the Word of God, we have schlepped off to our favorite easy chair and cuddled up with “Christian” romantic novels or worse. Both Paul and Peter admonish us about the use of our brains: “…present your bodies as living sacrifices…by the renewing of your mind…”; “…stirring up your minds by means of remembrance…” Basically, we have just become lazy when it comes to our thought life. We don’t think anymore; we allow others to do our thinking for us. We don’t seek the face of God on a personal basis, we accept the Sunday morning sermon as a reasonable substitute. If we were put in the position of giving the reasons for the hope that is within us how long would it take us to establish a biblical train of thought? Do we even bother to be “…renewed in the spirit of our mind…” as Paul encourages us (Ephesians 4)? I call upon my Christian brothers and sisters to firm up the muscles of your mind and lose the flab of emotional dribble that prevents intimate fellowship with a holy God.