Renewing the Mind Through Meditation

By Shirley Anne Leonard

My wife Shirley Anne wrote this piece a few days ago. I thought I would share it with others here.

Why don’t we have victory? We have never sat down and meditated long enough on the Word. What is meditation? Well, if you know how to worry you know how to meditate. Meditation is ruminating, working something over and over in you mind. Our minds just naturally do this all day long. Usually it is about how bad things are, about the ache in our bodies, or this or that problem confronting us.

Controlling the mind is like pushing one of those grocery carts that has a bad wheel and is always trying to swerve to the left. You have to purposely keep turning it back to the right. The good fight of faith is not always with an outside adversary, it’s more often with our own minds.

When the Word says to renew our minds, that’s not just a nice suggestion. God tell us that because He knows that if we let our minds go their natural way they take us down the wrong road — the road to sickness, worry, frustration and depression.

The Lord has another way to go. He tells us to think about ourselves and circumstances the way He does. Where does He say that? Well, He tells us to have the mind of Christ. If you have the mind of Christ then you are thinking the right thoughts. We’re victorious over the world as He was. Remember what Jesus said: “I have overcome the world.” And so can you!

So if someone asks you if you’ve ever meditated, don’t say “No.” You have meditated (worried) about all the wrong things. The solution is to sit down several times a day and purposely meditate on a verse of Scripture that tells who you are and what you can do — like the TV preacher who holds the Bible up at the beginning of a service and asks everyone to repeat the words, “This is my Bible. I am what it says I am and I can do what it says to do.”

Physical “Laws” and “Miracles”

Commentators customarily speak of the “laws” of the physical universe, such as the law of gravity, the law of inertia, or the laws of thermodynamics. Such terminology tends to portray the universe as a closed system of cause and effect in which natural phenomena cannot behave contrary to the “laws” of physics, mathematics and the like. Nor can any external power interpose to contravene those “laws.”

What such usage fails to recognize is that the term “law” is poorly chosen when applied to the operation of physical phenomena. “Law” is a construct of human culture and interaction, and the operation of laws depends upon social structures for enforcement and personal motives of compliance. That is, to be effective a law must be obeyed, and obedience requires the decision of a sentient being. The substance of the physical world consists of electrons and other subatomic particles. To ascribe to such phenomena the property of obedience to a law is to anthropomorphize them — to credit them with qualities or behavior applicable only to sentient beings, particularly human beings.

Phenomena of the physical realm do, indeed, behave in predictable ways, at least under “normal” conditions (recognizing that “normality,” itself, may be as questionable concept here as “law”). But to describe such behavior in terms of “laws” is only an inaccurate way of saying that the behavior of these phenomena has followed typical patterns. A solid object dropped from a third-storey window will, absent any extraordinary condition such as hurricane-force winds or strong magnetic attraction from a higher storey, be observed to fall to the earth. But to call such behavior the operation of the law of gravity is to ascribe mechanisms of enforcement and obedience to phenomena that have (as far as we can tell) no capacity for choice or decision. (And as for gravity, no one understands what it is anyway; it is not the same as magnetism.)

As Bernard Lonergan pointed out a half-century ago (Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, 1957), observed phenomena form a statistical continuum of events within a system. But such a continuum can never cover all possible eventualities. Statistics constitute an admission of ignorance; if all facts and events were known there would be no need for a statistical abstraction from specific observed data to a generalized system. On the statistical continuum there is always the possibility of a non-systematic “empirical residue” (to use Lonergan’s term), i.e., events that do not fit into the hypothesized continuum.

All of the above is relevant to the consideration of so-called “miracles,” or events that appear to run counter to the “laws” by which the physical universe operates. As stated above, no such “laws” are operative in the behavior of non-sentient phenomena. The observation of repeated events, such as the falling of an object when dropped from a height, can only form a statistical continuum masking our ignorance. No matter how often the phenomenon is observed, the probability that it will occur the next time in the same way cannot be extended to infinity.

What we call “miracles,” far from being perturbations in the operation of physical “laws,” are simply events that do not fall along the line of the hypothetical statistical continuum. They are non-systematic “empirical residue.” As to how and why such events occur, no explanation may be possible in terms of the four-dimensional world in which the physical “laws” are said to operate.

Jesus calmed the storm with the command, “Peace! Be still” (Mark 4:39). The disciples asked, “Who then is this, that he commands even wind and water, and they obey him?” (Luke 8:25). Such language may be the only way human beings can speak of the inbreaking of the non-systematic into a supposed closed system of physical laws. But in speaking this way we need to recall that Scripture testifies to the way Christ is ever “upholding the universe by his word of power” (Hebrews 1:3). The phenomena of the universe are not blindly obeying physical laws. In some way inaccessible to our comprehension they are responding to the “word” of their Creator.

Offering the “High Praises”

The expression “high praises” occurs only in Psalm 149:6. “Let the high praises of God be in their throats and two-edged swords in their hands.” The word in Hebrew is romemot, the plural construct form of romam, high or extolling praise. The Hebrew verbal root for the word is rum (pronounced “room”), with the basic meaning of “rise, be exalted.” A similar expression, derived from the same root, is found in Psalm 66:17, “I cried aloud to him, and he was extolled (romem) with my tongue.”

Note that the word is plural, not “high praise” but “high praises.” This suggests that the focus is not on the concept of exaltation or praise, but on the actual activity of praise as performed repeatedly and simultaneously by a group of people gathered together for this purpose. The “high praises of God” are not offered by an individual worshiper, but by an entire worshiping community in festive assembly.

Psalm 149 is an interesting expression of the power of spiritual warfare. Through the “high praises” of God” and the “two-edged sword” of his judgment, the enemies of his rule are subdued. The “two-edged sword” could be taken literally as the enforcement of the precepts of God's law upon the order of society. But, as we know, the “two-edged sword” is also a biblical metaphor for the Word of God (Hebrews 4:12, cf. Revelation 1:16; see also “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God,” Ephesians 6:17).

Psalm 149 thus combines two central elements of biblical worship: the free and enthusiastic corporate offering of praise to God, and the proclamation and enactment of his Word. The language of the psalm reinforces our understanding that Christian worship is an action of spiritual warfare. Through our gathering together to exalt the name of the Lord in “high praises,” and to rehearse the judgments pronounced in Scripture against everything that opposes his kingdom, we are taking part in the battle against the forces of darkness and evil.

The psalm is therefore a paradigm for strong, vibrant worship that celebrates the majesty and integrity of the living God. It is an exuberant worship marked by a certain holy abandon in the presence of the Almighty, an exercise in “high praises” including great rejoicing and gladness, the “new song” (which may be free-form singing “in the Spirit”), the use of festive instruments, and even the movement arts such as dance or procession.

Psalm 149 leaves no place for an insipid, sentimental kind of “worship” that focuses on how we feel, or caters to our preferences and our hurts. What passes for worship in many churches is, I fear, a “celebration” of the faith of the worshiper, rather than a celebration of Him to whom that faith and worship are directed. There is, of course, a place for reflection and self-examination in the Christian life, and our gatherings can make a place for these things where appropriate. But the victorious worship-warriors of Psalm 149 are not concerned with themselves, but with the judgments of God against an ungodly world. They go forth armed not with their own resources but with the weapons of God, which they take in their mouths and in their hands. They do battle not as isolated individuals, but as a community bonded by their common concern for the exaltation of God, his enthronement upon the praises of his people (see Psalm 22:3), and the enactment of his justice in the face of the evil structures of world cultures. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Biblical Logic

People who live since the Enlightenment of the seventeenth century, when a supposedly “scientific” view of reality came into vogue, have trouble with the Bible because they feel compelled to reconcile various parts of Scripture that seem to be contradictory, or at least not to mesh very will with each other. And they feel compelled to reconcile what we read in the Bible with the findings of today’s science and cosmology. The modern view of truth is that words, to be true, must correspond to an external, scientifically verifiable, reality. In this view the Bible is true because it can be proven to correspond to “truth,” scientifically and logically established. The Bible, then, is referential to truths that are external to the Bible.

Consider, though, what this does to the authority of Scripture. Instead of the Bible being the authority for our view of reality, science and logic become the criteria, and Scripture must be forced into their mold. But Jesus Christ said, “Thy Word is truth.” In other words, we begin with Scripture and try to understand it on its own terms, without forcing its words into the framework of a world view that came into vogue only three or four centuries ago. Instead of letting our culture build our world view, we start with the Bible’s world view and allow it to critique the pathological world views being foisted upon us by Western or other world cultures. (On biblical logic and world-building, consult such titles as G. B. Caird, The Language and Imagery of the Bible, 1980, or Hans Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative, 1974.)

This means that when we read the Bible we must enter its own world and be governed by its logic, or we misread its message. Biblical logic is not linear, like modern logic that says “If this condition exists, then that follows.” Biblical argumentation is circumferential, rather than linear. That is, to make a point the speaker or writer surrounds his topic, approaching it from as many angles as possible — and any particular way of approaching the subject may not necessarily be consistent (by modern standards) with the others. The purpose of a biblical argument is not to prove a point, but to “talk it to death.” Obviously, in a biblical argument the “winner” is whichever speaker is left standing after the problem has been bombarded from all possible viewpoints. The loudest or most persistent voice, in other words, is the one whose argument prevails.

The Book of Job is a primary example of biblical logic. Though Job’s three friends offer perfectly good arguments that are consistent with other parts of Scripture, they are ultimately in the wrong because Job meets Another with a more powerful voice than they who is finally able to confront Job with his own presumption. The young man Elihu interrupts the debate with what he considers to be a conclusive argument in defense of God’s ways. Nevertheless, neither Job nor God take any notice of Elihu’s utterance. Only when God himself speaks does the issue come to any resolution, even though God’s argument was anticipated in many of the things Elihu had said.

Proverbs 26:4-5 provides another example of biblical reasoning:

Answer not a fool according to his folly,
lest you be like him yourself.
Answer a fool according to his folly,
lest he be wise in his own eyes.

The question is, How should one respond to a foolish person’s utterance? By “modern” logical standards the advice of the second couplet contradicts that given in the first. But the approach of biblical logic is to surround the question and bombard it from two directions at once.

A New Testament example of biblical logic appears in Paul’s discussion of the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15:12-20. Paul’s argument for the certainty of resurrection seems to be circular. He asks, in effect, “How can you deny the resurrection, since we testify that Christ has been raised?” On the other hand, if there’s no resurrection then Christ has not been raised, after all. There’s no “logical” way out of this circle, so the escape is provided not by reasoning but by an event that demonstrates the power of God: “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep” (15:20).

Although the above may challenge some traditional assumptions regarding the message of the Bible, it is well to follow the example of the Jews of Beroea, who “were more noble than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with all eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see if these things were so” (Acts 17:11).

For an extended version of this entry, see the study Biblical Logic and Interpretation on the Laudemont Ministries web site.

No Laughing Matter

The latest issue of a prominent Christian magazine includes a cartoon in which a self-satisfied man stands next to a wall with a no-smoking sign. He’s saying to his companion, “Don’t forget: we Christians were intolerant of smokers years before it caught on with the rest of society!”

I’m not sure what the editors’ purpose was in including this cartoon. Were they lampooning smug Christians who highlight their long-standing tobacco prohibition as a badge of honor, now vindicated? If so, the lampoon falls flat. I don’t see the point of making fun of someone who’s been right all along about a major social issue, regardless of his or her attitude. Would that more people would be right about such issues, despite popular trends!

I grew up as the son of a minister and college professor in a major Protestant denomination. Our church circles weren’t evangelical, by any means. In fact we belonged to the “modernist” wing. But there was a residue of piety in our ecclesiastical environment that ruled out the use of tobacco and, for that matter, alcohol. During my preteen and earlier teen years we didn’t even know people who smoked or drank. My parents wouldn’t patronize a restaurant where alcohol was served.

Once my brother and I found a pack of cigarettes someone had dropped on the sidewalk. My mother let us go upstairs in our garage and smoke the stale things, just to see what they were like. That was the end of it. And, through the years, my use of alcohol has been pretty much limited to receiving Holy Communion in liturgical churches, or perhaps sharing half a glass of wine with my wife once a year at an Italian restaurant.

These habits — or the lack thereof — go back to my childhood in that non-evangelical denomination where, at least, we got a few things right about healthy living. That was the 1950s, and that denomination has since moved even further away from Bible-believing faith. I’ve changed denominations since then, seeking an evangelical environment where our tithe money didn’t go to support Marxist revolutionaries in Africa. But the old no-smoking, no-drinking life style stays with me.

You can lampoon that no-smoking, no-drinking mentality if you want to, and call it hypocritical because it overlooks some other important issues. But that’s a shallow response. I remember debates in college where the question of hypocrisy came up in relation to these strictures. Somebody finally pointed out that few people are killed by drivers who are hypocrites, compared with those who die at the hand of drivers who drink. As for the harm that comes from the use of tobacco — you may not smoke yourself, but when you pay your taxes or your medical insurance premiums you’re paying for the societal costs generated by those who do.

Make fun of blowhards who pat themselves on the back because of their intolerance of smoking? Go ahead, but I wouldn’t call it a laughing matter. Christians, evangelical and otherwise, got some things right a half-century ago.

The New Hitler Youth

During the Nazi era in Germany all young people were required to join either the Hitler Youth (Hitler-Jugend) for boys or its sister organization, the League of German Girls (Bund Deutscher Mädel). Members of both groups were indoctrinated in the National Socialist belief system, including its anti-Semitism and the motivation to fight for the official "party line" of the Hitler movement. Even young Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), growing up in Bavaria, was forced to join the Hitler Youth although his parents were bitterly opposed to Nazi policies.

A year or so ago my wife and I were guests for "Grandparents' Day" at the elementary school attended by two of our grandchildren. In the classroom session our granddaughter's teacher enthusiastically presented a unit on environmentalism, laying out all the life-style changes that were supposed to be good for the earth and counter the effects of global warming. The study materials gave no consideration to the possibility that man-made climate change was only a scientifically questionable theory; the teacher listed all the things children should do to play their part in the environmentalist movement.

Then, recently, I was speaking with an older granddaughter who attends high school. In her mind, global warming is a reality brought about by malevolent human activity. I suggested that a cycle of solar warming could be the cause of temperature increases on the earth, not the factors usually cited by environmentalists. I referred to the finding that temperature increases have also been detected on Mars. Our granddaughter insisted that people were responsible for global warming on Mars as well; no logic I applied to this view could convince her otherwise, so thoroughly has she been brainwashed.

Indoctrination of our young people, on a par with that of the Hitler Youth, is a reality today in our public school system. The purpose of this indoctrination is to soften children, and through them their parents, to the efforts of a ruling elite to force life-style changes upon the entire population of our nation. Once people accept the theory that human activity is creating global warming, it's a short step to the control of all facets of our life by a small cadre of ideologues. Not only environmental behavior but social and personal activity of all types, including issues of sexuality, will come under their purview.

In short, our public education system has become the New Hitler Youth. One can only hope that the indoctrination it offers will be about as effective as some of the other things it tries to teach.

Common English Errors

Listening to people talk, reading online email or forum messages, and even checking out some web sites I notice several recurrent errors in English usage.

One of the most common errors is to insert an apostrophe in the possessive pronoun its, as in “She returned the item to it’s place.” The word it’s is a contraction for it is, but the proper form of the possessive pronoun is its, by analogy with his or hers (no apostrophe). Even some seasoned writers fail to make this connection.

A frequent mistake is to use lay in place of lie, as in “After supper I will lay down.” Lay is transitive; that is, it takes an object. You can lay something else down, but if you place yourself in a position of repose you lie down (intransitive). The confusion arises because lay is the past tense of lie, as in “Yesterday I lay down for a while.” The past tense of lay (transitive) is laid, as in “He laid the book on the table.”

Another error is to treat lead as a past-tense verb, as in “Then he lead me to the door.” The past tense of lead is led. “I will lead you now as I led you in the past.” The confusion no doubt arises from the pronunciation of lead as a name for a metal. (English is crazy, isn’t it?)

We often hear something like, “He was reticent to take that step.” The speaker meant, “He was reluctant,” that is, not eager to do something. The word reticent means to speak little, as in “She was reticent about her many accomplishments.”

Even news broadcasters and politicians commit a frequent speech error when they say something like, “The thing is, is she didn’t really say that.” There is no need for the repetition, is is. Do people not listen to themselves when they speak? If they did, they would recognize the redundancy. And they should recognize the error in “It was a good move for Michael and I.” Would one say, “a good move for I,” instead of “for me”?

How often have you heard something like, “So I brought him all his books and papers, eck-cetera,” taking the abbreviation etc. (Latin et cetera, “and the rest”) as though it were ect. or something similar. That brings up another error, the confusion of bring and take. We hear, “I’ll bring you over to Kristin’s house,” when the speaker is at Justin’s house. The speaker should have said, “I’ll take you over to Kristin’s house.” Only if the speaker were already at Kristin’s would she be correct to tell Justin, via telephone, “I’ll bring you over.” To bring means to transport someone, or something, from there to here. When transporting from here to there, the correct verb is take.

Another mistake is to assert that something is very unique. If a thing is unique it is, by definition, one of a kind, so there can’t be any degrees of uniqueness. It’s either unique, period, or it’s not unique at all.

My favorite overheard expression is, “It’s raining outside.” I’m tempted to say, “Thank goodness—it’s not raining inside.” Hopefully, all your rainstorms will deposit their precipitation on the exterior of your residence. If the situation is otherwise, call a roofer.

Monitor your speech and writing for these and other common errors. They can slip in when we’re not watching. As a friend of mine used to say, “Correct me if I’m not mistaken.”