August 20, 2013
Captive
In our family we may start to speak our mind and either we will catch
ourselves, or someone will jokingly remind us to, ‘take that thought captive’.
Of course we have to give the Apostle Paul the credit for the illustration,
which he used in defense of his ministry, “We
demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the
knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to
Christ.” (2 Cor 10:5 NIV) I’m not being boastful, but I do a fairly good
job of taking thoughts captive and keeping them from escaping out of my mouth.
I can put them in solitary confinement, but rehabilitating them and making them
obedient to Christ sometimes seems to be beyond my ability.
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----I came to think of thoughts like they were bricks. Each has its own substance formed by previous thought. Each brings its own meaning to the bigger structure of which it will become a part. The meaning of each is then augmented or trimmed or modified, slightly or more, by settling into its fit with the bricks around it. Like bricks, they must be laid true and with appropriate overlaps for the structure to be sound. Like words, they deliver different meanings in different contexts, and participate in countless structures.
-----Taking a thought captive and making it obedient to Christ isn’t that it must somehow be put in chains and only used in structures directly about Jesus, or that if it’s very substance does not primarily relate to Jesus in some obvious way it must be twisted or puffed up until it does, or discarded if it doesn‘t. The poor thought is just a brick. It is what it is.
-----I think maybe my favorite description of Jesus is His being the way, the truth, and the life. I see it being fundamental to the point that it touches upon everything of existence. Nothing does not relate to Christ in one way or another, either positively or negatively. Even “secular”, that figment of man’s imagination, is relative to Christ.
-----Then, in my way of thinking, to take a thought captive and make it obedient is to find its proper relationship to Christ. It might be with Him or against Him, but it will relate, for He is the epitome of every created thing’s existence, while His Father is the epitome of existence itself, “I AM THAT I AM,” as He put it. A thought’s obedience is its fit.
-----One last thing of interest, at least to me, and especially of importance to me, is that before finding a thought’s way in Him, you must find its truth. Not all thoughts are true just because they are thoughts. In fact, just because we are man, most all our thoughts are fallacious to one degree or another, if no more than by the limitation of our knowledge and prowess. I spent half the Summer of 1967 in Boulder with my mom’s family. One of my uncles was an excavator. He had recently demolished a brick building and taken all its bricks as partial payment, for they had value in their reusability. But before their value could be realized, the mortar of the old building had to be scraped off them. Likewise, each thought must be scraped clean of the fallacious attachments, ideological inconsistencies, and heuristic patinas aggregated upon it from previous uses and abuses. Every thought must be corrected to true before it will bear its value.
-----Realizing that Christ is the truth, each thought being scraped to its truth ties more of your mind into His. All your bricks, each trued in itself and in the way it is laid with the rest, together express new life into the transformation of your mind. That is how I see taking every thought captive to make it obedient to Him.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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