You and I have got to stay tied to the teachings of Christ.

Everything else, everything else will prove false to us.

We cannot possibly know a lie if we don't know the truth.

And so we can just be swept into something

because it seems right, it feels right, it looks right,

and goodness knows it's fun, but we're just moving further and further away. Listen to a couple of excerpts from Mark A. Knowles' book, Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind.

The Irish poet, Evangeline Patterson, expressed the same liberation found in acknowledging Christ as the creating

word when she wrote about her own experience. And now I'm quoting her. I was brought up in a

Christian movement where because God had to be given preeminence. Nothing else was allowed to be

important. I have broken through to the position that because God exists, everything else has significance.

And this, I'm quoting him here.

It says, the Jesus Christ who saves sinners is the same Christ who beckons his followers to serious use

of their minds for serious explorations of the world.

It is part of the deepest foundation of Christian reality. It is an important

part of understanding who Jesus is and what he accomplishes to study the world. The human

structures found in the world, the human experiences of the world, and the humans who experience

the world. Nothing intrinsic in that study should drive a person away from Jesus Christ.

Much that is intrinsic in Jesus Christ should drive a person to that study.

Do you see what it's saying?

That because of him, I want to know what's going on in the world.

Because of him, I want to know about famines happening on the other side of the world.

Because of Jesus and his gospel, I need to know what is going on in Syria.

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