Daily Dose 6: Biblical Thinking

Thinking about time through the priority stewardship lens is not slapping a new term on top of an old idea, but realigned thinking. Accurate biblical thinking aligns our minds with God’s—something that is neither natural nor (often) welcome for most of us. While it may sound impressive (or boorishly superior) to declare, “My thoughts in this area of life reflect God’s thinking,” such words usually point to a motive or an attitude that is decidedly NOT aligned with God’s thoughts and character. So here is the first truth about biblical thinking: it is never just about the superficial words or surface responses, it is at least equal doses of motives, desires, drives, and thinking.

Reality God’s Way

Sorting out what we “really” think is very hard. Often we don’t realize what motives motivate us. Sometimes we deny deep seated drives instead of acknowledging them. While biblical thinking is always straightforward, it is also nuanced. God’s information about people often seems like a package of seemingly contradictory truths. A more helpful way to consider this package, however, is differing facets or vantage points of overarching truth.

For example, people are uniquely created and are precious to the Lord. However, this dearness of ourselves to Him does not result (as is so often the case in humandom) with Him muddling what is needed on all levels of being, with what is wanted and clamorous on certain levels. He never, for a second, is so entranced by our dearness that He forgets we are completely opposed to Him, and require the ultimate sacrifice of Christ to be realigned with Him, whether we appear docile or demented, pious or perverted, religious or renegade. He is never badgered, manipulated, bribed, or whined into giving in to a quick fix or a shortsighted splurge of enablement.

On a good day, when we think like God, the stream of consciousness is never self-congratulatory, self-defending, self-promoting, self-defeating, or self-destroying. Curiously, thinking like Him moves us past self into a realm where we can be a great deal more forthright and objective about ourselves. We can inch away from needing others to pump us up, and we can set aside the false humility (or worst, that pathetic state of self-depreciation). Years and years ago, when my husband and I were doing a study on meekness, our old Vine’s Expository Dictionary had this to say about meekness, “ Meekness is that quality of life that is neither cast down nor elated simply because it is not occupied with self.”

The world is full of people trying to make themselves important, popular, significant—either by promoting themselves or defacing themselves. Biblical thinking makes us neutral to ourselves: we know we are precious beyond words to Him, but such knowledge does not exalt us, it exalts Him for His creative, redemptive work in us. We know we are despicable beyond words and His greatest enemy, but such knowledge does not depress us; it too, exalts Him for His enduring love to win and reshape what we have ruined and deformed to His perfect conception.

Discerning and insightful handling of different facets of truth is a significant element of biblical thinking; we want to learn how to do be discerning and insightful about time. Our human responsibility is not to manage time; our place is to steward the time God has given us. Humans were not given authority over time. Instead, we were given desires, responsibilities, visions, missions, and callings to fulfill within the time He has allocated.

To hope to succeed in the task of thinking biblically about time we need to know and accept what God knows about time, we need to know what it means to be a steward, and we need to know what God wants from us. That much thinking is an overdose, not a daily dose! Let’s save some for tomorrow and ponder for today how clear my thinking is about myself: do I have a clear sense about my motives? Am I more of a self-promoter or a self-defeater? Have I invested time in learning what God thinks, or is my information a hash of other people’s ideas?