“Let my people think” has long been the need of the hour. Too many believers are not using the minds that God gave them, and it shows in how they live, how they talk, and the sort of public witness they have. But the believer is commanded to love God with the mind as well as with every other part of their being.
There is one story concerning this urgent need that I have often shared with my students over the years. It comes from the Introduction to the Os Guinness volume, Fit Bodies, Fat Minds. He writes:
‘I want to ask you my $64,000 question. It’s something I’ve asked each speaker at the sessions I’ve attended.’
There was an audible gasp. A rush of attention swept the room. It was partly because the other speakers included many of the big names of American Christendom. It was partly too in anticipation of the question. Would it be about the meaning of life, the problem of evil, the state of the world, or simply the headline of the day? But the interest was also because of the questioner. Slim, svelte, and tanned, she was a striking blond in her late twenties who would clearly look just as much at home on a California beach as in the packed seminar room in Orange County.
‘How is your body?’ she blurted out.
Somewhat taken aback at her $64,000 question, I was silent for a few seconds and then—almost without thinking—replied:
‘Madame, I’m English. How’s your mind?’
There was a roar of laughter, in which she joined, and the questions immediately swung back to subjects more important than my body and her mind. But the incident lingered with me. Coming after a serious speech in a serious Christian convention, it jolted me to consider a leading problem in western evangelicalism – anti-intellectualism.
Anti-intellectualism is a disposition to discount the importance of truth and the life of the mind. Living in the sensuous culture and an increasingly emotional democracy, Western evangelicals in the last generation have simultaneously toned up their bodies and slackened off their minds. The result? Many suffer from a modern form of what the ancient stoics called ‘mental hedonism’ – having fit bodies but fat minds.
That pretty well sums up too much of the evangelical world today. Lots of Christians spend countless hours at the gym trying to ‘get the look’ while spending little or no time cultivating their minds so that they might love and serve God better. So here I offer some important books that stress the need to love God with our thinking as with other areas.
But a few qualifications first. The books I list below are mainly about how Christians should use their minds for the glory of God and the work of the Kingdom. There would be far more volumes to include if I was talking about related things such as the Christian worldview, the war on truth, and so on. But see this older bibliography for some titles along those lines: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2012/08/21/recommended-reading-on-the-biblical-worldview/
Moreover, it is obvious that this is about the need for believers to think and to think carefully, critically and biblically. Thus all the authors here are Christians, except perhaps for Bloom. And there would be many more books worth mentioning if I was just interested in discussing the process and ability of thinking in general.
Also, some Christians might be skeptical about all this. They might believe that knowledge is dangerous and prideful, and intellectualism has nothing to do with biblical spirituality. Many of the writers I mention here address these concerns. But the words of John Piper do a good job of dealing with this objection. Early on in his book Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God he notes the tension we can have about knowledge, and how Scripture speaks about how it can be both dangerous and liberating:
There are some sentences in God’s word that make knowledge sound dangerous and others that make it sound glorious. For example, on the one hand, it says, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up” (1 Cor. 8:1 NET); and, on the other hand, it says, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32). Knowing is dangerous. Knowing is liberating. And that is not an isolated paradox. So what I want to do in this book is take you with me into the Bible itself to see how God has ordered this act of thinking in relation to other crucial acts in life. How does it relate to our believing, and worshiping, and living in this world? Why are there so many warnings about “knowledge” (1 Tim. 6:20), and “the wisdom of this world” (1 Cor. 3:19), and “philosophy” (Col. 2:8), and the “debased mind” (Rom. 1:28), and “the wise and understanding” who can’t see (Luke 10:21), and those whose understanding is darkened (Eph. 4:18)?
In spite of all these warnings, the overwhelming message of the Bible is that knowing the truth is crucial. And thinking—eagerly and humbly using the mind God gave us, and using it well—is essential to knowing the truth. Two passages of Scripture provide the main point of this book. The first is 2 Timothy 2:7, where Paul says to Timothy, “Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.” The command is that he think, consider, use his mind to try to understand what he means. And the reason Paul gives for this thinking is this: “For the Lord will give you understanding.” Paul does not put these in tension: thinking on the one side and receiving the gift of understanding from God on the other side. They go together. Thinking is essential on the path to understanding. But understanding is a gift of God. That’s the point of this book.
How To Think: A Guide for the Perplexedby Alan Jacobs (Author)
Here then are 33 titles that you might be interested in:
Barna, George, Think Like Jesus. Integrity Publishers, 2003.
Blamires, Harry, The Christian Mind. SPCK, 1963.
Bloom, Allan, The Closing of the American Mind. Simon & Schuster, 1987.
Bock, Darrell, Andreas Kostenberger and Josh Chatraw, Truth Matters. B&H, 2014.
Boice, James Montgomery, Mind Renewal in a Mindless Age. Baker, 1993.
Calver, Clive, Thinking Clearly About Truth. Monarch, 1995.
Gill, David, The Opening of the Christian Mind. Wipf & Stock, 2022.
Green, Bradley, The Gospel and the Mind. Crossway, 2010.
Groothuis, Douglas, Truth Decay: Defending Christianity against the Challenge of Postmodernism. IVP, 2000.
Guinness, Os, Fit Bodies, Fat Minds: Why Evangelicals Don’t Think & What to Do About It. Baker, 1994.
Guinness, Os, Time for Truth. Baker, 2000.
Henry, Carl F. H., The Christian Mindset in a Secular Society. Multnomah, 1984.
Henry, Carl F. H., Remaking the Modern Mind. Eerdmans, 1948.
Hicks, Peter, Evangelicals and Truth. IVP, 1998.
Holmes, Arthur, All Truth is God’s Truth. Eerdmans, 1977.
Jacobs, Alan, How to Think: A Guide for the Perplexed. Profile Books, 2017.
Lindsley, Art, True Truth: Defending Absolute Truth in a Relativistic World. IVP, 2004.
McAndrew, Stephen, Why It Doesn’t Matter What You Believe If It’s Not True. DeepRiver Books, 2012.
MacArthur, John, The Truth War. Thomas Nelson, 2007.
McDowell, Josh and Thomas Williams, In Search of Certainty. Tyndale House, 2003.
Moreland, J.P., Love Your God with All Your Mind. NavPress, 1997.
Murray, Abdu, Saving Truth. Zondervan, 2018.
Noll, Mark, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. Eerdmans, 1994.
Piper, John, Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God. Crossway: 2010.
Ream, Todd, Jerry Pattengale and Mark Devers eds., The State of the Evangelical Mind. IVP, 2018.
Seaton, Chris, Your Mind Matters: Developing a Christian Worldview. Pioneer, 1993.
Sire, James, Habits of the Mind. IVP, 2000.
Stott, John, Your Mind Matters. IVP, 1972.
Strachan, Owen, Awakening the Evangelical Mind. Zondervan, 2015.
Trueman, Carl, The Real Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. Moody, 2012.
Veith, Gene, Loving God with All Your Mind. Crossway Books, 2003.
Wells, David, No Place for Truth; or, Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology? Eerdmans, 1993.
Wells, David, God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams. Eerdmans, 1994.
If you asked for my main recommendations, well perhaps go with some of the slightly older evangelical volumes that have stood the test of time – those by Guinness, Henry, Noll, Piper and Wells.
2 Replies to “33 Top Books on the Importance of the Christian Mind”
Great recommendations for reading on the topic of a Christian Mind. Thanks for sharing. My prayer is that more believers will take your suggestion seriously. In my experience, less and less people are actually reading. I blame the internet, YouTube, and Television as the root causes. That and laziness.
Great recommendations for reading on the topic of a Christian Mind. Thanks for sharing. My prayer is that more believers will take your suggestion seriously. In my experience, less and less people are actually reading. I blame the internet, YouTube, and Television as the root causes. That and laziness.
Thanks Dave.