Half a Mind is Better Than None

Have you ever heard the expression, “I have half a mind to . . .” followed by some action the speaker is contemplating? An example might be, “I have half a mind to go to my boss and tell him/her off!” or “I have half a mind to tell that blogger he’s just plain nuts!” (For your sake, I hope the other half of your mind talked you out of blasting your boss; for my sake, I hope the second example has never occurred to you.)

Actually, I have come to suspect that the expression may be a description of me after all; that for all intents and purposes, I have only half a mind. Let me explain.

Half my mind is beautiful.

On the one hand, I have a marvelous mind (a “Beautiful Mind” as described in the 2001 movie by the same name, about a math genius named John Nash). Not that I’m a math genius, but my mind does come up with things that astound even me. For example, I can remember poetry my mother told me in grade school (Old Ironsides), the seven hills of Rome, Avogadro’s number (6.023 × 10²³), the words to German folk songs I learned in high school, and the name of the Zulu king at the 1879 battle of Isandlwana. I once devised a math formula on my napkin while eating at a restaurant, for the number of lines needed to connect any number of dots on my napkin: x=n(n-1)/2. Since retiring I have taken up doing the New York Times crossword puzzle, and have been surprised how many archaic words I never use that pop into my mind and are the correct answers to the given clues. I can memorize sermons and dramatic monologues. And, recently I stood behind a young man who was wearing a t-shirt written in Russian; though I’m not a Russian speaker, I realized that I could read it: it was Jesus’ statement in John 15:13, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (Нет больше той любви, как если кто положит душу свою за друзей своих.) Yes, I have a beautiful mind, matched only by my humility.

The other half, not so good.

But, like I said, it’s only half a mind. The other half, not so good. The other half is what happens when I walk into a room and forget why I went there. It’s what shows up when I think about someone I’ve known for twenty years and somehow can’t remember their name. It’s what takes over when I sit down to write a blog and end up distracted by everything else in the room instead. And unfortunately, it’s what takes over at night when I lie down to sleep. Instead of blissful peace and dreams of cuddly sheep jumping over a fence, my mind races with whatever I was doing in the hours before bedtime. I lie there with my (half) mind tied in knots, obsessed with solving the aforementioned crossword puzzles, moving colored blocks in a Tetris-like video game I was playing, replaying exciting scenes from an action drama I was watching, or imagining conversations in various situations that are unlikely to ever happen (such as what I would say from the gold medal podium at the next Olympics). Worst of all, I find my faulty half-mind thinking about things that are contrary to what God would have me think. Too many unpleasant, judgmental, prideful, or just plain sinful thoughts try to form and get my attention.

Recently, while I lay there contemplating sleep (Or as Edgar Allen Poe put it in his poem, The Raven, “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,”) I was struck by how much I was obsessing over trivial matters and letting those random thoughts control my mind. I thought to myself, “If I have a decent (half) mind, why can’t I just stop those other thoughts and fall asleep?” and “If I can’t keep my mind from dealing with all those fruitless thoughts. how can I apply it to fruitful pursuits, instead?” It was in the turmoil of that struggle that 2 Corinthians 10:5  popped into my mind: “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.”

It was one of those moments when something seems so obvious we wonder why we weren’t thinking it all along.

It was one of those moments when something seems so obvious we wonder why we weren’t thinking it all along. In my case, I knew that those random thoughts that were keeping me awake had taken me captive and that I had let them, for whatever reason. Maybe my mind was trying to hold onto the satisfaction that those thoughts had given while I was awake and doing them. But now, that it was time to sleep, I needed to take them captive so that they served me and not the other way around. The more I thought about the verse from Second Corinthians, the more I realized I had to deliberately control my thoughts and take them captive.

It’s amazing how many times the Bible talks about our minds. On the one hand, Scripture teaches us that our very thought processes and abilities are imperfect and flawed by sin. When God destroyed most of mankind by the Great Flood, it was because “every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5). Second Corinthians 4:4 says, “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers . . .” Romans 8:5-6 warns that “Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires;” and Jesus said in Matthew 15:19, “For out of the heart come evil thoughts.” Acts 17:19 tells us that idols are formed “by the art and imagination of man.” There is even one verse that describes me: “even at night their minds do not rest” (Ecclesiastes 2:23)!

Although our minds have tremendous abilities and can sometimes do wondrous things, they were affected by mankind’s fall into sin and God’s resultant curse on all creation. Just as our bodies eventually wear out and die, so also our minds depend on our flawed brains to function properly. When I applied for a graduate program in history in my 30s, I was accepted, but told that I would have been too old for a similar program in math – because by that age my brain would have already lost too many math abilities.

And even when our brains are “firing on all cylinders” we tend to use our mental faculties for selfish and sinful purposes. How many geniuses were involved in creating the atom bomb? How many brilliant chemists devised poison gas? How many crooks use their smarts to embezzle funds at work or con people out of their savings? Even though there are many videos out there showing dumb crooks doing stupid things (such as robbing a gun store), how many successful schemes never get detected?

Sin has affected every part of our being, including our minds. Luther called it the “bondage of the will,” arguing that we are unable to choose God or what is right on our own power.  Luther’s Small Catechism puts it this way: “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him. . . ” Likewise, Reformed theologians called our mental sinfulness part of the “total depravity” that sin has caused, in which every part of us, including our minds, is affected.

So then, what do we do? Do we give up and say, “Well, that’s just human nature. I might as well not try to do better”? The answer is, “No.” Even though Scripture recognizes our shortcomings in mental ability and sinfulness, it still commands us to look to the Lord and focus our mind on him and his will. Colossians 3:2 says, “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.” Philippians 4:8 reads, “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”  Paul warns in 1 Corinthians 14:20, “Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature.”

When I graduated from high school, my parents gave me a little book which bore a title taken from the King James Version of Proverbs 23:7, “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.” Their point was to encourage me to think right thoughts, so that I might have a better life and one more in keeping with God’s commandments. In other words, I could overcome my inherent limitations by focusing on the good and striving for it.

That was good advice, which I will strive to follow more now, and which I will commend to you as well. Let us follow the advice of the song, “Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face; and the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace.”*

And with that thought and song in my mind, good night!

Now may the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you, the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen.

Read: Philippians 4:4-8, Romans 7:21-25, Romans 8:5-6, Colossians 3

*from The Heavenly Vision, by Helen Howarth Lemmel