Please Click Here for Sermon Video
The movie, “A Beautiful Mind”, told the story of Nobel Prize winning mathematician John Forbes Nash, Jr. of Bluefield, WV and his struggle with paranoid schizophrenia. It begins with his college struggle of being a genius but unable to come up with anything unique until the day when in a flash of insight, he produced ideas that revolutionized economic theory. He went on to become one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century. Unfortunately, genius has its cost. At age 31 he became delusional with paranoid schizophrenia and spent the next 20 or so years in and out of hospitals, but still functioning as a brilliant mathematician.
Nash's story is remarkable because he was able to use his rationality to work his way around his schizophrenia without medication. He came to see that his politically oriented delusions were hopeless wastes of intellectual effort and so he chose to come back to the rational world of scientific thinking where his efforts were genius level. He was eventually awarded a Nobel Prize in Economics in 1994 and an Abel Prize in 2015 (a Nobel-like prize specifically for mathematicians).
For Nash, the return to rationality was not a joyous thing or a feeling of being healed. His world of delusion was what felt like reality and that was where he found his strongest sense of purpose, where he was most alive. Unfortunately, he experienced rationality as a limitation he had to place upon himself that kept him from experiencing the fullness of reality as he knew it. Nash's case is an exception and his story is by no means meant to encourage people with mental illness to not take or to stop taking medications.
"A Beautiful Mind" did a lot to raise public awareness as to what paranoid schizophrenia is like from the viewpoint of the person suffering with it. It disorders the mind with a delusion which disorients a person. The delusion defines what a person sees as their purpose and what they devote their lives to. It’s more than just a cockamamie idea. Due to chemical imbalances in the brain schizophrenics become delusional, meaning they follow a wrong mind - a false belief based on incorrect assumptions about external reality and they stick to it despite what almost everybody else believes and the incontrovertible and obvious evidence to the contrary. A "normally" functioning mind would say, "I saw a red car, therefore there are red cars in the world. I like red cars. Maybe I’ll buy one." A paranoid schizophrenic’s mind functions more like: “I saw a red car, therefore my food is being poisoned.” They cannot help but believe the delusion is true reality because the chemical makeup of their brain is saying it's real. In response to this delusion the schizophrenic will enter into an unquestionable world of controlling what they eat and trying to determine who is doing the poisoning.
We tend to want to think of the mind as being that part of us that simply thinks. We go to school to train our minds to function in a world where everybody thinks alike and knows the same things – reading, writing, math, science, history, literature. Yet, the mind is much more than just our thinking mechanism, our ability to reason. But the mind is more. It's that part of us by which we understand and order our existence and it particularly involves what we believe about reality. Dr. Nash in his autobiography states that the way he keeps his existence orderly is to keep his delusions, his false beliefs about what is really going on, at bay by consciously choosing to live in a world that operates according to the beliefs of scientific rationality, logical thinking. He complained that rationality was a limitation placed upon the human mind, which in his case limited his relationship to reality as he knew it. His delusional world was apparently quite brilliant.
When we say we have a sound mind we mean that we function according to acceptable beliefs about reality. People who live functionally with schizophrenia must choose which mind they are going to live in if they can. That's what the medication helps with and again Dr. Nash's case is an exception if not an anomaly. He was able to keep his mind in check due to his genius level ability to choose to think like a scientist. He had to constantly tell himself that what he believed was real was not real and keep himself distracted with the world scientific endeavors limited him to.
Our text here speaks of the mind of Christ. In the biblical worldview, the mind is that part of the person by which we understand and order our existence. In particular, the mind determines what is the truth and how one lives accordingly. What our mind believes to be “the truth” is what we will order our lives around. Biblically speaking, sin is primarily a problem of the mind not of behaviour and morals. Sin is that our over-focus on “me, myself, and I" is a delusion around which we orient our lives. A healing of the mind is what we need, the healing of sin’s self-oriented delusion.
Actually, the New Testament Greek word for repentance is metanoia. Meta means with and noia means mind. Therefore, the root meaning of repentance in the Bible is “with mindedness”. The call to repentance is for us to become with-minded, of the same mind or mindedness, as Christ Jesus. Growing up in the Bible Belt in the Southern US I was cultured into thinking that repentance was behavioural which meant don’t smoke, cuss, or drink; don’t look at women; avoid being a jerk; and go to church. But to be with-minded with Jesus is to share in his sincere love for and fidelity to God the Father and that in turn affects our lives to the point of wanting nothing more than his will for our lives and to live accordingly with selfless compassion, kindness, patience, forgiveness, generosity, and hospitality.
Repentance comes to us as a gift from Jesus by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit who plants in us a new mindedness. By mindedness I mean what we believe is true and how we orient ourselves to pursue it and live accordingly. Unfortunately, our sin-deluded mind struggles against it. Jesus puts his mindedness in us, his understanding of reality and his love and drive to serve his Father, so that we can choose to understand and live in his reality known as the Kingdom of God. We have to daily, moment to moment, choose which reality we want to live - sin-deluded reality or the Kingdom of God.
Paul tells us, “If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind (Phil 2:1-2).” Most importantly, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death-- even death on a cross (Phil. 2:5-8).”
There are learned folks these days who would say that Paul is inviting us to enter into a world of delusional thinking, a world that does not jive with the reality to which most people seem to subscribe. It would be okay if Paul was just that the virtue of humility is good for humanity. But Paul here seems to be inviting us into a world these learned folk would call poor mental health. In this world where self-realization and being all you can be is considered the definitive healthy mindset, it would seem wrong to invite people to a world where you find yourself by dying to self, a world marked by the wisdom of the cross. There are those who would say that we are deluded to believe that Jesus' power to save us is found in putting one’s self aside in love for others.
Jesus’ beautiful mind apparently operated according to the unquestionable love of God, a love that led to a life lived in perfect conformity to the will of God the Father. He did not question his love for the Father nor his Father’s love for him despite the undeniable evidence against it…the way he was publicly scorned and his death on the cross. As he is the Beloved Son with whom the Father is well pleased, displeasing the Father was something he would not do because of love. In adoration of his Father, he continually offered his life as a living sacrifice to do his Father’s will, an act of offering that led to the cross. In the Holy Spirit Christ Jesus gives us to know and understand his beautiful mind that we might also love God the Father by offering ourselves as living sacrifices by loving each other unconditionally and selflessly. The only healing for us from sin’s delusional thinking is Jesus' gift of his beautiful mind to us and our humbly choosing to live according to it.
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus – his self-emptying humility, compassion, and mutual love - unity. Amen.
