I recommend to all the brief but helpful work by John Piper, Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God. As a lifelong student, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking but not much time thinking about thinking. This book is easily accessible and should be read by many, including all college students. I include here for your stimulation eight quotations (from a total of forty) that I copied down in my notes.
“Learning the skill and practicing it was not fun. The joy is on the other side of the hard work. This is basic to all growing up. Part of maturity is the principle of deferred gratification. If you cannot embrace the pain of learning but must have instant gratification, you forfeit the greatest rewards of life” (Piper 2010: 47).
“Such a “receiving” of Christ is the kind of receiving an unregenerate, “natural” person can do. This is a “receiving” of Christ that requires no change in human nature. You don’t have to be born again to love being guilt-free and pain-free and disease-free and safe and wealthy. All natural men without any spiritual life love these things. But to embrace Jesus as your supreme treasure requires a new nature. No one does this naturally. You must be born again (John 3:3). You must be a new creation in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 6:15). You must be made spiritually alive (Ephesians 2:1-4). ‘No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord ‘ [and mean it!] except in the Holy Spirit ‘ (1 Corinthians 12:3)” (Piper 2010: 72).
“Every businessman knows that philosophical relativists park their relativism at the door when they go into the bank and read the language of the contract they are about to sign. People don’t embrace relativism because it is philosophically satisfying. They embrace it because it is physically and emotionally gratifying. It provides the cover they need at key moments in their lives to do what they want without intrusion from absolutes” (Piper 2010: 102).
“The wisdom of’the wise and understanding ‘ has produced remarkable scientific advances. But it leaves out the most important reality, namely, God. From one side it is stunning for its achievements, and from another side it is stunning for its stupidity in missing the main thing. The wisdom of’the wise and understanding ‘ does not begin with God; it is not conscious of being sustained by God, and it rejects God’s purpose for the universe, which is to display the glory of God chiefly through Christ crucified for sinners” (Piper 2010: 151).
“It is an abdication of scholarship when Christians do academic work with little reference to God. If all the universe and everything in it exist by the design of an infinite, personal God, to make his manifold glory known and loved, then to treat any subject without reference to God’s glory is not scholarship but insurrection” (Piper 2010: 168).
Quoting Douglas Wilson: “The ache that some conservatives have to be taken seriously in the unbelieving academy is a pitiful thing indeed, and so I would like to take this opportunity to give the whole thing the universal raspberry. What Princeton, Harvard, Duke, and all the theological schools in Germany really need to hear is the horse-laugh of all Christendom. I mentioned earlier that proud flesh bonds to many strange things indeed, and I forgot to mention scholarship and footnotes. To steal a thought from Kierkegaard, ‘Many scholars line their britches with journal articles festooned with footnotes in order to Keep the Scriptures from spanking their academically-respectable pink, little bottoms ‘” (Piper 2010: 171n6).
“For example, if you are listening to a preacher and he says something like, “God can’t be completely sovereign and yet humans still be responsible for their choices,” don’t suddenly jump on that misguided intellectual train. Instead say to him, “Sure he can; both are in the Bible.” Then go on about your work” (Piper 2010: 181).
Of Bethlehem College and Seminary: “We do not assume that the process of deciding what is true and valuable starts over with every generation of students. And it didn’t start with us. Therefore, we are a confessional institution” (Piper 2010: 199).
There is so much more in this book that is challenging and helpful. $11-13 at Amazon, $7 for Kindle, or free at your library.