This is the Lo-Fi Gospel Minute, a five-minute podcast about eternity. I’m Tripp Hudgins.
We’ve successfully completed one week of summer school here in my corner of Virginia. I’m teaching High School biology. You may have heard of it or even taken it. I love it. That may come as a surprise to some who cannot imagine a preacher loving biology, but here we are in such an awkward moment. Biology is gracious stuff.
[I was in college…in summer school, actually…taking biology because I had failed Physics and needed science credits to graduate. My failure was due to both having a poor attitude and a poor understanding of Calculus. The head of the Biology department was teaching the course that summer and somewhere along the line he pulled me to the side and asked, “Have you ever thought of being a Biology major?” I was a rising senior with most of a Religion degree under my belt. So, no, I had not considered it before that moment. But I was flattered and challenged to think of myself in a new light…as one who could think scientifically.]
In High School, we meet for five hours a day four days a week for six weeks. On average, I cover a normal week’s worth of material in a day. Last Thursday, for example, we learned All About Enzymes in one day. And though they are responsible for learning the material, the best I can hope for is that the students begin to understand Biology and science in general as a way of thinking rather than a certain kind of information.
I won’t teach them to think scientifically in six weeks. No. But I can help them understand that there is such a thing as “thinking scientifically” and perhaps that realization will open something up for them.
I share all that to say this: Christ invites us to think in a new way.
The Gospel of Christ invites us to think salvifically. And this is where I pull out my big floppy Bible.
"Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" He said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."
How do we love God and our neighbors with all our hearts, souls, and minds? That’s what I’m pondering most this summer…thinking in a new way. Teaching biology, a scientific way of thinking, to teen agers is bringing this call to the fore. Paul explains it well in his letter to the Philippians…
If, then, there is any comfort in Christ, any consolation from love, any partnership in the Spirit, any tender affection and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or empty conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he existed in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be grasped,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
assuming human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a human,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
Be of the same mind.
Have the same love.
What does that look like?
Do nothing from selfish ambition or empty conceit.
Regard others as better than yourself.
Look to the interests of others.
In other words, Paul says, think like Jesus.
So often, loving God with our minds gets confused with getting one’s thoughts about God right, about getting one’s theological ducks in a row. That’s a good thing to do, but that’s not what loving God with our minds is all about. To love God with our minds, to think salvifically, is to think like Jesus…to think like he does rather than having the right thoughts about Jesus. And this happens in community. Emptying oneself is something we dare not do alone. We are all to do this together. Salvation, thinking salvifically, is a group activity.
Apparently my students aren’t the only ones learning new ways of thinking.
My name is Tripp Hudgins. Thank you for joining me this week on the Lo-Fi Gospel Minute, a five minute podcast about eternity.
Episode 3