Jesus made it clear that we are to love God with all our minds (Mt. 22:37).

However, it is not always clear what this means for our daily Christian walk. It is easier for many Christians to understand how to love God with all their hearts, even though they may struggle in doing it, but we seldom refer to spirituality in terms of our minds.

When was the last time you thought, "Am I loving God with my mind"? It seems foreign, even prideful for us to talk this way. We hear echoes of "knowledge puffs up but love builds up". We may recall church teaching that discouraged us from asking questions and encouraged us to "just believe". I know it happened to me when I first became a Christian. I didn't ask questions because I was a skeptic but because I thought God would have the answers. But "faith" was set over against thinking as being more spiritual; thinking was considered worldly.

While there are many ways to analyse how this approach to spirituality has influenced contemporary western Christianity that is not the aim of this article. Instead, I would like to look at ways in which we can engage our minds in the whole enterprise of living the Christian life.

There are three areas of human experience which are essential for Christians to understand from a biblical perspective. These areas are common to people in every age even though the Bible gives unique explanations to them: knowing God, knowing ourselves, and knowing the world.

We all live our lives within these three horizons. If we are to be passionate about loving God with our minds, then we need to understand these areas of life, all of which come under the Lordship of Christ. Non-Christians always begin by thinking of themselves as autonomous. Richard Tarnas says that "the modem mind has itself been an expression of nature's unfolding, a process enacted through the growing autonomous human intellect".

On the other hand, Jesus says, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (John 8:31-32). The difference between Christian and non-Christian thought is that Christian thinking finds its liberation in Christ whereas non-Christian thought seeks to be free from God. The latter process results in a fragmentation of knowledge and, in our day, a denial of any overarching truth to unify that knowledge.

When it comes to knowing God, the writer of Proverbs tells us that "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding" (9:10).

When John Calvin was working on his Institutes of the Christian Religion nearly 500 years ago, he was well aware that the foundations of human knowledge were on the agenda for rewriting. It was not an accident that Book 1, Chapter 1 begins, "Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves."

Christian thinking is committed to the principle that the human mind is dependent on God's revelation to reach a clear knowledge of God's nature and activity in the world. While our dependence on the Creator is a reason to give thanks for all He has done, the natural bent of our minds is to reject this knowledge of God revealed in the creation. Instead, we try to become wise in our own eyes. Having cut off God, we worship the creation and no longer see ourselves as created in God's image. The several areas of human experience I have mentioned become distorted and subject to frustration unless our knowledge of God is restored in Christ.

The attempt to understand our place in the universe through human wisdom has failed. Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 1 and 2 that human wisdom failed at the critical time when it was unable to inform the rulers of this age that true wisdom was to be found in Christ.

When we engage God with our minds and bring all our thinking under the Lordship of Christ, we reveal the passion of the biblical mind. It is a wonderful, liberating passion that finds true freedom under Christ's Lordship. We are able to engage the wide horizon of human experience bit by bit, bringing our thought into conformity with what God has revealed. Knowing God becomes the beginning and end of our lives. Thinking becomes an act of worship.

Second, knowing yourself. Since many Christians are rightly concerned with the denial of the self as part of their calling, it may seem a bit strange to talk about knowing oneself as a central aspect of human existence.

It is interesting, in a sad way at least, to see the desperation of people who have lost their understanding of what it means to be human. I am not saying that they have ceased to be human; however, they are unsure of what being human means. Some social scientists say that it means what we want it to mean and that the concept is plastic enough to be redefined in each generation.

Social philosopher Francis Fukuyama realises that when we lose our understanding of what it means to be human we also risk losing the special dignity which we have attached to humanity and upon which much of western culture has built its social institutions. He sees clearly that the idea of human sanctity and dignity has Christian roots.

He says:

For Christians, the answer is fairly easy: it comes from God. Man is created in the image of God, and therefore shares in some of God's sanctity, which entitles human beings to a higher level of respect than the rest of natural creation.

This understanding of human nature as sacred is under challenge in our culture. Contrast the Christian view of human dignity with the befuddled thinking of a recent panel of "experts" who couldn't agree to sacrifice the life of a pig in order to harvest an organ which would have resulted in the saving of a human life. The definition of what it means to be human in our current cultural climate is now anyone's guess.

Thinking biblically about our identity as human beings is critical in our search to communicate the gospel better in our culture. We often encounter people who have made a lifetime investment in establishing who they are. When they become Christians they suddenly find out through repentance and conversion to Christ that they were wrong. They need to re-think their personal identity. How do you deal with a new convert who has spent years thinking he/she is the reincarnation of someone else? Their change of identity doesn't happen in a flash, but by the Spirit's illumination they come to understand biblically what it means to be human. This is critical for understanding what true self-denial means. I was speaking with someone recently who claimed to be practising self-denial. They said they didn't really exist and they spent all their mental effort on denying the reality of anything that made them self-conscious. This sort of self-denial has more in common with Eastern mysticism than with Christianity.

We live in a culture that is confused about what it means to be human. The Bible has the only true answers and Christians need to be clear in their explanation of the gospel to those who suffer under the yoke of human "wisdom".

The third aspect is the world around us. How do you understand that? Is it a stage on which you play out your life and then exit to nowhere? Is it an ominous sea of changing circumstances which threaten to drown you?

Again, human wisdom has been unsuccessful in providing a clarified vision for us. In its attempt to define reality on its own terms it has brought down the house and we are forced to live in the ruins. Philosophy, literally, the love of wisdom, has been frustrated in its search to find a unified understanding of the world. More recently, post­modern thinking has abandoned this search. But the collateral damage in the areas of ethics and discourse has been recognised by many. This post-modern approach to "knowing" the world is also destined to ultimate frustration and futility.

Not knowing the meaning of the world is akin to not knowing who you are. But it is worse than that. To mistake the nature and purpose of the world leaves us open to the danger of worshipping it. Today there are those who think the earth is a living being that will save itself and possibly the human race as well. Do we not know from the Scriptures that the earth is not divine although it reveals God's divinity? Do we not understand that the world is created and is not to be worshipped?

Although we know of God's eternal power and divine nature through the creation, His actual purpose for the universe is only discovered through the study of divine revelation. This is why we must love God and His word with all our minds. It is only as we understand God, ourselves and His world through the study of the Scriptures that we will be able to passionately glorify God and enjoy him forever.