BY definition, living logically means talking to yourself instead of listening to yourself. And when you’re talking, talking Scripture!
Why are you cast down, O my soul?
And why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him
For the help of His countenance. Psalm 42:5
DO you ever talk to yourself? What response do you hear? Is it your own reasoning from experience, what others have told you to think, or thoughts learned from life’s influences?
IN the previous posting I introduced what has become for me an annual, at least once a year musing from World Magazine writer Andree Seu Peterson, Living Logically. Here resides an opportunity to promote World Magazine and say if you are not subscribing to this monthly publication, you should. It is a great antidote to the troublesome mainstream media we are subject to every day, providing reports and analysis from a Christian worldview. How refreshing! But back to the topic at hand, Living Logically.
I QUOTED Psalm 42:5 here. In its context, the entire psalm is a call to reflection and remembering. Actually verse 5 is repeated again at verse 11; and then again a third time in Psalm 43:5. Some commentators believe that these two Psalms are actually one. …Anyway, Psalm 42 is the opening to Book Two of the Psalms, titled a Contemplation of the sons of Korah. I call it a STAR Psalm.
STAR is one of several mnemonics devices or helps I taught the students of CCA to assist students in their learning and discipline. It means Stop, Think, Acknowledge, and Respond, STAR. I never weary of pointing out what I call “STAR” moments in Scripture. One of my favorites is Psalm 62; take a moment and read it, and see if you can see “living logical” – talking to yourself – there as well. There is really no end to such examples in the narrative of our redemption in Christ. It is the essence of bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ – Living Logically, living or thinking Biblically.
ANDREE Seu ends our reading with Part 2 below, leading off with another favorite verse, Deut. 29:29. Remember, the entire piece is posted here on my website at: https://captivethoughts.net/living-logically/
With that, let us proceed from where we left off.
In the inexorable riches of Christ,
Joe
Neh. 8:10; Isa 30:15; Job 2:10; Jas. 1:2; Prov. 21:30
*********
Living Logically – Part 2
A New Year’s Resolution | by Andree Seu
I am keeping two separate piles from now on, based on Deuteronomy 29:29: the things I can do something about, and the things I can’t; those that belong to me, and those that belong to God. Responsibility; sovereignty.
“Sin boldly,” Luther said: If you’re going to choose sin and not Christ, do it whole hog, all the way; be hot or cold but not lukewarm. I’m with him. Or with his soulmate Elijah: “If the Lord is God, follow Him, but if Baal is god, follow him” (1 Kings18:21).
And logically speaking, if it turns out that Christianity isn’t true, then it is more than a mistake; it is the hoax of the universe. In that case I go with Paul: Let’s have a party (1 Corinthians 15:32). That’s the logical thing, not your bourgeois random-acts-of-kindness morality. Of course we’ll all be perfectly miserable because even with God dead we just can’t shake this guilt. But we can drown it in margaritas.
All right, so logical isn’t in the Bible (neither is hermeneutics or trinity). But I speak as to reasonable men. If you like I can say biblical, but it’s all the same to me. Christianity is more than logical, but it is at least logical, calling for the whole heart, and for the whole mind too. I stake my claim on an all-or-nothing, go-for-broke religion. And when I mess up in 2001—as I will—and lapse into the irrationality of sin, I will pray the prayer of Daniel to my God of mercy. It’s only logical.
