Review:
John Piper
begins his book Think with “a plea to
embrace serious thinking as a means of loving God and people. It’s a plea to
reject either-or thinking when it comes to head and heart, thinking and
feeling, reason and faith…It is a plea to see thinking as a necessary,
God-ordained means of knowing God. Thinking is one of the important ways that
we put the fuel of knowledge on the fires of worship and service to the world” (John Piper, Think,
Crossway, 2010, p. 15).
The book draws from Piper’s in-depth
years in both academia and the pastorate.
He has strong sections on the folly of anti-intellectualism and
relativism and exposes the vast difference between the wisdom of God and the
wisdom of men. He notes that people who rely on human wisdom often reject the
cross “because it stands for the ungodliness and helplessness of man…and human
wisdom celebrates man’s resourcefulness, self-sufficiency and
self-determination” (pp. 146, 149).The
Biblical wisdom he celebrates leads Christ’s followers to be utterly dependent
on God’s free grace, on God’s revelation for understanding and on Christ whom
they are “to treasure above all things”(p.15)
This book gives necessary value to God-centered thinking in today’s secular,
materialistic world. A wise perspective.
M.L. Codman-Wilson, Ph.D.,
11/18/13
Excerpts:
Thinking
“Thinking is not the goal of life. Thinking like
non-thinking can be the ground for boasting…But thinking under the mighty hand
of God, thinking soaked in prayer, thinking carried by the Holy Spirit,
thinking tethered to the Bible, thinking in pursuit of more reasons to praise
and proclaim the glories of God, thinking in the service of love – such
thinking is indispensable in a life of fullest praise to God (p.27).
The Bible
“The Bible is the main place that we come to know God and
the Bible is a book and a book requires thinking. From the foundation of knowing God through
this book, it is then possible to move out and think fruitfully about all of
life” (p.41). “Thinking means working hard
with our minds to figure out meaning from texts. Then, of course, we go on from
there to think how that meaning relates to other meanings from other texts and
from experiences in life. On and on the minds goes, until we build a coherent
view of the world so that we can live a life that is rooted in a true
understanding of God’s Word and its application to the world” (p.45).
“Humble questioning of the text in order to understand and
believe and obey…expresses eagerness to grow and to uncover truth. That is very
different from academic gamesmanship and unbelieving cynicism and indifferent
dismissal (that are based in pride)…We need to think in order to receive what
God has to give us from the Bible….We observe carefully. We ask questions. We
work hard with our minds to try to answer the questions. And we weave the
answers into a evermore extensive fabric of understanding that helps us live
lives of love to the glory of Jesus Christ” (pp.50,55).
Wrong Thinking
Relativism comes
into play when someone says, “There is no knowable, objective, external
standard for right or wrong that is valid for everyone…No one standard of true
and false, good and bad, right and wrong…can preempt any other standard” (p. 98). “Relativism provides the cover people
need at key moments in their lives to do what they want without intrusion from
absolutes” (p.102). [But] “Relativism is a
revolt against the objective reality of God…[and] against the concept of divine
law…It cultivates duplicity…because the very process of thinking about relativism
commits you to truths that you do not treat as relative…In claiming to be too
lowly to know the truth, relativists exalt themselves as supreme arbitrators of
what they can think and do. This is not humility. This is rooted in deep desire
not to be subordinate to the claims of truth. The name for this is pride” (pp. 106, 113).
Anti-intellectualism
is also a destructive use of the mind. “It exalts pragmatism and subjectivism.
Subjectivism says that thinking is useful as a means of justifying subjective
desires. Pragmatism says that thinking is useful as a means of making thing
work…But missing from both views is the conviction that thinking is a gift of
God, whose chief role is to pursue and love and live by ultimate truth” (pp.119-120).
Those Christians decrying the rigorous use of the mind note
that Jesus “committed the promulgation of his religion to unlearned and
uneducated men” (p.128). They note that
much thinking in the secular world has caused arrogance and that “institutions
of higher learning relentlessly drift away from their allegiance to Christ and
his Word” (p.174). Piper also laments
those realities. He notes that “every
level of mental life - from the most
educated to the most uneducated – is fraught with the alluring power of living
for the praise of man. The unique
vulnerability of the intellectual elite is that the world buttresses this pride
with extraordinary approval and esteem” (p.170).
But Piper takes serious issue with Christian
anti-intellectuals who proof text their emphasis by Jesus’s and Paul’s words
that God hid things from ‘the wise and
understanding and revealed them to little children’ Lk.10:22, I Cor.1:9.
Piper says: “’The wise and understanding’ [for both Jesus and Paul] are those
who are proud;…man’s wisdom delights in seeing himself as resourceful,
self-sufficient, self-determining and not utterly dependent on God’s free
grace…The ‘little children’ are those who are humble and depend on God for
their understanding…They know and feel themselves helpless and unworthy of any
good from God. They have renounced all pride and boasting. They do not free
resourceful in themselves to know God or to save themselves from judgment… God’s wisdom makes the glory of God’s grace our
supreme treasure…’Little children’ admit with longing and hope and confidence
that Christ is the way to wisdom and the sum of all wisdom” (pp. 149-150).
The goal of all
learning
“All learning, all
education, all schooling, formal or informal, simple or sophisticated –
exists…to help us know God more so that we may treasure him more. It exists to
bring as much good to others people as we can” (p.167).
“To see reality in the fullness of truth, we must see it in relation to God who
created it and sustains it and gives it all its properties, relations and
designs” (p.169).
Scholars “whose attitude is of ‘little children’ have been
so humbled by the glory of God’s grace…that all their energy aims at
discovering more of God in his world and displaying what they have seen for
others to see and enjoy” (p.171).
In summation: “Without a profound work of grace in the
heart, knowledge – the fruit of thinking – puffs up. But with that grace, thinking
opens the door of humble knowledge. And that knowledge is the fuel of the fire
of love for God and man. If we turn away from serious thinking in our pursuit
of God, that fire will eventually go out” (pp.
164-165).