The mind: a battlefield

Posted

thinkstockphotos.com thinkstockphotos.com

I am convinced the mind is the major battlefield in life. Whatever gets your mind gets you. Therefore, we need to guard, discipline, and renew our minds, because the battle for sin always starts in the mind.

The Apostle Paul declares: “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds; Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (II Corinthians 10:4-5).

The Greek word for “captivity” means “to control, conquer, to bring into submission.” We are to take control every thought and make it obedient to Christ. That is not easy, because our minds are often disobedient and rebellious. When I want to think a certain way, my mind wants to go in a different direction.

Of course, our greatest asset is our minds and so Satan wants to captivate our minds, our thought processes. The battle for sin always starts in the mind, so Lucifer launches his most artful attacks against our minds. He will use any means available to impair our thought processes – to lead us into sin or to get us to believe a lie.

The battle for sin always starts in the mind, so Lucifer launches his most artful attacks against our minds.

Years ago I read Allan Bloom’s book The Closing of the American Mind, in which he contends that the higher education of the 60s and 70s “failed democracy and impoverished the souls of today’s students.” In those days students’ minds were indoctrinated with relativism, the philosophy that denigrates absolute truth. I was exposed to the concepts of relativism, neo-orthodoxy and situational ethics. My mind was under assault with spurious philosophies on a daily basis.

Interestingly, as a college student I was also required to read George Orwell’s book 1984. I actually find the novel more fascinating today than I did 50 years ago. In Orwell’s futuristic work he deals with government corruption and mind control.

The novel is about a society (Oceania) divided into three classes of people: the inner party members, the outer party members, and the probes. The inner party members control the information the other classes receive and live in luxury while the rest of the population lives a miserable life.

The inner party of Oceania has so much power over the minds of the people that they are able to convince them that their memories are false. The inner party is constantly changing documents and history to satisfy their needs and the great mass of people blindly acquiesces to the propaganda they are fed by the inner party.

It appears to me that the Common Core Standards in Advanced Placement United States History (APUSH) is designed to do just that. Common Core is the government’s plan to nationalize public school education and is written to significantly alter the students understanding of U.S. History.

This new curriculum essentially revises our history and does not mention the sacrifices U.S. civilians and armed forces made to defeat fascism, but it does recommend teachers focus on wartime experiences, such as the internment of Japanese Americans, challenges to civil liberties, debates over race and segregation, and the decision to drop the atomic bomb, which raised questions about American values.

The human brain is an amazing mechanism, but it is also extremely susceptible and vulnerable to all kinds of ideas and philosophies. Our minds, amazingly, have the capacity to comprehend both the noble characteristics of divinity and the dark side of evil. It is incredible that someone’s brain will respond favorably to a social media requests to join ISIS. It is also astonishing that some are so gullible they will embrace the indefensible tenets of some bizarre cult.

I do not know how a thinking person can be a socialist and believe the distribution of wealth does not destroy initiative. I cannot grasp how giving Iran, the heart of radical Islam, $150 billion contributes to our wellbeing or the wellbeing of the world in general. I cannot comprehend how a person can treat another person as chattel or a second-class citizen regardless of his/her race or ethnicity. I have always had a problem with intelligent people who cannot accept that a child in the womb is a living person. I also have difficulty understanding how anyone can think of the union of two homosexuals as a marriage.

Arthur Milikh, assistant director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics at the Heritage Institute, asserts, “Despots of the past tyrannized through blood and iron. But the new breed of democratic despotism does not proceed in this way; it leaves the body and goes straight for the soul (mind).”

Through the biased reporting of the mainstream media the “inner party” seeks to reach into our minds and hearts. It seeks to break our will to resist, to quell any interest in questioning its authority, and to eliminate any propensity to think for ourselves. The inner circle’s doctrine of tolerance and barrage of leftist propaganda is designed to intimidate and dare us to contradict them, essentially trying to silence us and ultimately this silencing could potentially culminate in a cessation of thinking.

We see this happening today as Christians are marginalized, threatened, and as their convictions are treated with scorn and derision. Conservative Christians are even ridiculed by other Christian churches for their adherence to biblical principles.

“Despots of the past tyrannized through blood and iron. But the new breed of democratic despotism … leaves the body and goes straight for the soul (mind)."

Arthur Milikh, assistant director

B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics Heritage Institute

One church purchased a billboard strategically located alongside Billy Graham Parkway in Charlotte that said, “Missiongathering Christian Church IS SORRY for the narrow-minded, judgmental, deceptive, manipulative actions of THOSE WHO DENIED RIGHTS AND EQUALITY TO SO MANY IN THE NAME OF GOD.”

Missiongathering describes itself as an “emerging” church. One has to wonder what they are emerging from and what they are emerging into.

David Brody, writing for CBN News, exclaims, “When it comes to the issue of same-sex marriage, are evangelical Christians actually the ones more ridiculed than homosexuals? In the media’s narrative, you would think that homosexuals are the poor souls who have been banished by society like ugly stepchildren and are now rising to overcome incredible odds.

“The tables have been turned. Evangelicals are now the ugly stepchildren. In our American culture today, you can easily make the argument that it is harder to stand for biblical truth than to be a supporter of gay marriage in our society.”

In 1835 Alexis de Tocqueville wrote his two-volume work entitled: Of Democracy in America. He foresaw an “immense tutelary power” – the modern state – which would degrade men rather than destroy their bodies. Over time, he feared, the state would take away citizens’ free will, their capacity to think and act, reducing them to “a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd.” Is it possible that we are on the brink of that becoming reality?

We must pray that God will give us a sound mind according to II Timothy 1:7.

Common Core, edcation, Editorial, media, mind, thinking