What is so bad about reality that so many people choose to distort their perception of it?
I have never taken mind-altering drugs. In fact, I have not even had as much as a drop of alcohol since my youth. But the mind is altered by more things than drugs. Our desires, coupled with the circumstances of life, sends the mind in all sorts of directions. We cannot act as if our minds are not being affected by what goes into them—deliberate, or otherwise.
The sound mind of a Christian is a ‘spiritually healthy mind.’ One free from sin’s sicknesses. This does not remove the desire to escape into the pleasures of sin—trials and temptations are the lot of us all. But what a sound mind has that an unsound mind doesn’t have is what is needed to resist sin, or in the case of being overcome, what is needed to repent and go on. We cannot have it both ways: The guilt of sin will drive you mad if you live an ungodly life while feigning righteousness.
Having our minds fixed on heaven, and knowing that Jesus can return any second, we take to heart Peter’s instruction to “be of sound judgment and sober spirit for the purpose of prayer” (1Pet.4:7).
Paul’s admonition to hold fast the faithful word (his apostolic teachings), so that the Elders “will be able both to exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict” (Titus 1:9), apply to you too.
How badly I treat my fellow man is a clear indicator as to how far I have journeyed into the cognitive abyss. My mind, ever elevating myself, is ever deaf to sound instruction:
“For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith” (Rom.12:3).
A Mind Health Check might be in order.
John Staiger
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