The Knowledge That Makes Us Better
Isn't my word like fire? says the Lord; and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces? — Jeremiah 23:29
For the word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and is able to discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart. — Hebrews 4:12
Author
Faustino de Jesús Zamora Vargas
Summary: The culture around us seeks to shape our thoughts and can draw us away from spiritual growth through empty, impure, or enticing content. Therefore, we must renew our minds, reject double standards, and abandon the false assurance that we are immune to such contamination. The Christian life has obstacles, but the Word of God enables us to recognize what comes from the Lord and turn it into integrity, dignity, goodness, honesty, and action. The Bible contains the wisdom that truly makes us better. Let us listen to God’s loving and authoritative voice, be filled with Christ, and cultivate pure thoughts instead of presenting one face to the world and another to Him.
The culture of postmodernity and its tenets, not only regarding truth but also many other aspects of life, tends to throw us off balance and seeks to mold Christians according to principles that, in principle, we must reject. Daily life sometimes prevents us from having true moments of wholesome meditation and from thinking about what is good above any other thought. Computing and its offerings, cheap literature, and addiction to the soap operas about disordered loves offered by worldly television can become real obstacles to our spiritual growth and can prevent the thoughts that come from God from prevailing in our minds, which are often captivated—that is, enslaved—by the residue of secularism.
God calls us to renew our minds and not to saturate them with the garbage the world offers us wrapped in gift paper, which produces only one result: thoughts that have nothing to do with virtue. Of course it is difficult! Or has God ever said that the Christian life is a drive down an obstacle-free road?
I imagine that one of the things the Lord must hate most is double standards. Going around with two faces—one to please the world and another to try to ingratiate ourselves with Him—is no game to the God who wants us to fill our minds with Him. The truth is that impure, unworthy thoughts often come into our minds; we fill ourselves with vain, intellectual knowledge; we fall into the trap of believing that we are invulnerable to contamination, and we allow ourselves to be seduced by the multicolored roulette wheel of a game that inevitably leads to the death of the most precious thing we have to offer God: our heart.
The Word of God is the key. Socrates once said: Only the knowledge that makes us better is useful.
And what makes us better is the Word of God. If we allow the world's garbage into our minds, we too will inevitably become garbage. Christians are called to define and identify the thoughts that come from the Lord and turn them into personal virtue—that is, into integrity, dignity, goodness, and honesty. God can do this for each one of us, but first we must know how to listen to His loving and authoritative voice.
The Bible makes us better. Filling ourselves with its wisdom and teachings not only makes us victors, but makes us ever better men and women, sons and daughters of God, for the Bible contains the mind of God, and God desires purity of thought from His children, thoughts that are then translated into action.
Beloved brothers and sisters, let us fill ourselves with Christ! His love brings forth the wonder of a mind filled with everything that comes from Him—that is, with everything good, everything worthy of His fatherhood. Let us cast aside the double standard that makes us occasional Christians and dilutes the beautiful, desirable joy that thirsts to fill our minds with the one and incomparable God.
May He bless you!