Mindfulness

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. We are coming to the end of a sermon series called Jesus, I Have My Doubts, and we've looked at a number of aspects of this so far today. The thought is, behind this series, is that Sunday morning, often in Christianity here in America right now, the whole setup is to whip up kind of the sentiment and motivate you to believe and believe and believe and never really have to doubt anything. But it also tends to not allow you the questions that you have, or the doubts that you might be struggling with. We don't bring those things up. It's kind of a don't ask, don't tell policy. And we don't ask really what you're thinking or feeling or how you're doing, and we don't tell you about ourselves and how we're dealing with it. But we all struggle with doubts. We all struggle with anxiety. We all struggle with worry. Believism seems to be preached more than actual faith. And today, often when I hear across the United States, and the readings that I've done, and it's kind of where the culture is and where a lot of Christianity is these days, it's the don't think, just believe kind of sentimentality. So the great thing about that is it's created a very popular version of Christianity in the country, but at the same time a very anti-intellectual version of Christianity across the country, whether you realize it or not. Sometimes you get the aw shucks kind of preacher. Do you know what I mean by that? Aw shucks, I really don't know that much. But you know, one thing I do know, we just need to trust Jesus more. And so the sermon just doesn't really have much content other than just asking you to trust Jesus more. Or there is the fear-mongering minister. Do you know what I mean by that? That is, you know, don't think too much, because you know, that university, that is a hotbed of demonic activity where if you think too much about things, they're going to change, you know, have you ever heard that? Yeah. Or you get kind of the mystic preacher. Do you know what I mean by that, the mystic? That is where there's a total dichotomy between reason and faith. That if you think about things, you can't really believe. If you believe, you don't need to think. Now, as a result of all of this, here in the United States, over the last, I'd say, a hundred years. Yes, it's been a hundred years of this from what I've read in history. We have really sold Christianity as an easygoing, enjoyable time, comfortable, easy in, easy out, access kind of fast food version. And Mark Noll at Wheaton College wrote a book. He called it The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. And this is what he says. The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind. We just don't think. So today, it's not really, Jesus, I have my doubts. But Jesus, I have a lot of questions. Jesus, I really have thought a lot. Jesus, I have my learning. I have my brain. I have who I am. What am I supposed to do with that? And how does that fit in with faith? As McDonald's is to the restaurant industry, I think some of the big box, feel-good, hyped-up concert, charisma-filled preacher church is to Christianity. It can be shallow. It doesn't have to be. But it's become an easy in, easy out, quick, fun, comfortable, and mindless at the same time. And that might sound good. But here are some issues with it. First of all, it leads to an intellectually oriented people to dismiss the faith altogether. In other words, people who pursue academia, so here at the university, for example, at FGCU, or people who are just trying to learn a lot about the world, they come into a church, and they've got deep questions, and we're not addressing any of them. We just tell them, just drop your brain off at the door. When you come in, just feel. Just believe. Don't worry about anything. We keep it simple. It feels to them like they cannot think and be a Christian at the same time, which is totally opposite of what we find out throughout history. Some of the greatest thinkers this world has ever seen have been within the Christian faith. So we're losing people simply because we're not really deeply thinking about how our faith, how the truth of the gospel does fit into this world, and how God made this world, that everything in this world is his, and everything that we learn about this world and how it interacts from biology to chemistry to law to physics to sociology, all of it is part of God's creation. And this kind of anti-intellectualism also fosters what I'd say is ill-equipped Christians today. Because in times of ease and comfort, when the culture is kind of flowing in your direction in terms of Christianity, which I think it was up through somewhere in the 50s to early 60s, more or less, to be Christian and to be American was almost the same. Having kind of an amusement park style of Christianity? Sure, no problem. But now that...