With All Your Mind

Prostitute.  Whore.  Adulteress.  Unfaithful.  These are words you think would only describe a woman in the red light district, but no, these are words used in scripture to describe God's chosen people.  Israel had turned its back on the one true God to serve and worship false idols.  Like a common prostitute, the chosen people of God had been unfaithful to their one true love.  "There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgment of God in the land.  There is only cursing, lying, and murder, stealing and adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed.  Because of this the land mourns, and all who live in it waste away." (Hosea 4:1-3)  


At first glance I'm tempted to think that we are immune from this kind of treachery today.  Surely this unfaithfulness isn't found in the church?  Right?  Wrong.  Christians are not exempt from falling away into the arms of false gods, especially when we turn away from the Living God only little by little.  Anything that pulls us away from God is sin, and we are all too easily engulfed in it's tangles.  

Reading through Hosea this week opened my eyes to another way we prostitute ourselves.  Hosea 4:6-7 says, "Because you have rejected knowledge, I also reject you as my priests; because you have ignored the law of your God, I also will ignore your children.  The more the priests increased the more they sinned against me; they exchanged their Glory for something disgraceful."  What caught my eye was the phrase, "Because you have rejected knowledge."  Our faith is not some whimsical misty thing that floats around and fills our hearts with warm fuzzies.  Jesus commands us to, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind."  God doesn't want us to idly accept Truth, but to seek knowledge and understanding.  God doesn't want mere mental assent, he wants all of us.  And anything less is unfaithfulness.

The Israelites exchanged their Glory for something disgraceful, and in Romans 1:25 Paul says, "They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator-- who is forever praised."  There is a big push for tolerance and welcoming of all religious ideas and thoughts about God.  Let us remember the dangers in this.  When we start to look to the world for definitions of who God is, the lines of truth are blurred, and we slowly start to drift away from the one true God.  Pretty soon we are worshiping a god who does not exist.  We prostitute our minds when we subscribe to false doctrines and false gods.  Our hearts are sinful and desire to worship ourselves so we try to form God to our image rather than the other way around.  That is not worshipping God, it is worshipping an idol, and we must be on guard that it doesn't happen in our own hearts.

The beauty of the prostitute analogy is that though we have turned away, God still loves us and is still willing to save us.  He wants to bring us back from the precipice of death and give us new life.  He wants to remove our dirty rags and wash us clean.  "I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death." (Hosea 13:14)  When we turn back to God he welcomes us with open arms.  We do not have to live the life of a prostitute forever if we are willing to have the mind of Christ.

Paul tells us in Philippians 4:8-9, "Finally brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable --if anything is excellent or praiseworthy-- think about such things."  Loving God with all our minds means focusing on the things of God rather than the things of the world.  It means seeking the knowledge of God in all things, not closing our minds to it!  After all, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline."  (Proverbs 1:7)