To mind the things of the Spirit (Romans 8:5) and to possess the mind of Christ (Philippians 2:5), we must be vigilant about what enters our minds, absorbs our thoughts, and dominates our conversation. How can Christians set their minds on the things of the Spirit if we are always setting our minds on the things of the flesh? 

It’s astonishing what we often find ourselves thinking and talking about these days. Informal conversations at work, chatter in church hallways, and discussions around the dinner table explore subjects that, in former days, made people blush with embarrassment or recoil with shock. The moral revolution in the West, coupled with the modern media’s publication of one salacious headline after another, has profoundly affected our dialogue. It doesn’t help that many are addicted to twenty-four-hour news outlets, entertainment channels, and social media apps. The result is a growing desensitization to the degeneracy of our culture. Moreover, minds and conversations are cluttered with endless news stories of the wickedness and perversion of our time; what the Apostle Paul calls “the things of the flesh” (Rom. 8:5).
The latest headlines portray the essence of human depravity. News stories from this week include the grizzly murder of four University of Idaho students, Balenciaga’s deviant ad campaign exploiting small children, a gender-fluid (male) Biden Cabinet Member charged with a felony for stealing a woman’s suitcase, mass protests in China over oppressive totalitarian laws, seven thousand convicted sex offenders set free from prison in California, two children and three adults found dead in their home in an affluent Chicago suburb, and an NCAA division one college quarterback arrested for child porn.
These distressing headlines are just the tip of the iceberg. There are dozens of stories posted and discussed daily (ad nauseam) on endless platforms. The news articles (which very often don’t qualify as real news!) range from repulsive to agonizing to ridiculous, and yet we continue to give them our undivided attention. We continue to take the clickbait. We continue to make the world’s deeds of darkness the center of our thoughts and conversation. Why is that?
Could it be that many of us have unwittingly allowed the outrageous headlines of the world to capture our primary focus and attention? Could it be that the glow of our screens and the news from our feeds have diverted us from things above, where Christ is, and drawn our hearts to the things of the earth (Col. 3:1-2)?
Shouldn’t We Stay Informed?
At this point, someone might ask: “But isn’t it important for Christians to stay informed?” The answer is a resounding YES. This isn’t a veiled appeal for a new monastic movement. We mustn’t bury our heads in the sand or ignore the moral drift of our culture. Loving one’s neighbor does not mean retreating from the world, but being salt and light in the world. Like the Sons of Issachar, it’s vital that we “understand the times” so that we can boldly and accurately apply God’s Word to our generation, not least to our covenant children (I Chron. 12:32).
Even so, being informed doesn’t require us to be news junkies who are forever refreshing our browsers for the next hit of salacious headlines. When we give ourselves primarily to the “news” of the world, we will inevitably give scant attention to the “things of the Spirit” (Rom. 8:1-11). And we must admit, it’s easy to fall into this trap. We want to stay informed, but not foolishly or obsessively so. Most of us know when we’ve crossed that line, and when it has negatively impacted our walk with God and our witness. We will be chiefly shaped by that which we give our attention to the most.
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Sometimes we Christians can buy into the idea that the Bible only has so much to say to us about any given matter it addresses. That with enough time, we’ll have it all figured out. But that’s not what God wants for us. Yes, we are to know the truth and to know it to the best of our ability. But we won’t ever come to the end of what we can learn. It is too inexhaustibly interesting for that. 

Before I was a Christian, I didn’t really know much about the Bible. Which makes sense, since I didn’t read it. But I had a lot of assumptions about it, the same assumptions many non-Christians have about it. I assumed it was endlessly contradictory, outdated, and irrelevant. That nothing it said really mattered to life in the modern world. Most importantly, because I saw the few people I knew whose parents made them go to some kind of class at their church were bored to tears, I assumed the Bible was boring.
Then I read it, and I discovered a book that fascinated me. One that made me ask questions, and has kept me asking questions for nearly 19 years. A book that challenges me to dig a little deeper every time I think I’ve got something figured out.
There is always more to say (and to learn).
While working on a still-semi-secret project, I’ve been revisiting topics that I’ve written about in the past. The nature and trustworthiness of Scripture. The Trinity and the nature of God. What it means to be human. And the problem I find isn’t that I don’t have enough “new” to say, or that I’m repeating myself.
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What caused Dickens and Spurgeon to have opposite attitudes on the Sabbath? Spurgeon believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, and Dickens did not. For a person to love the Sabbath, he must love the Lord of the Sabbath. If God sets aside every Sunday for worship, a believer is “glad when the Sabbath arrives,” because he “look[s] forward to it with delight.”[12] When the services end, the believer would “wish that Sabbaths were never over” and would “look forward to the next occasion when we should meet the saints of God.”[13]

Charles Dickens utilized his pen to influence his readers’ opinions. In a Christmas Carol, he strikes out against the ill-treatment of the poor through stinginess. He prescribed for Scrooge’s spirit to be replaced with the love for the common man. In another work, Little Dorrit, Dickens turned threatening eyes upon a practice that stifles man’s freedom to live and enjoy life. What has enchained man to a life of bondage? The answer is the Victorian Sabbath.
The narrator in his story described “a Sunday evening in London, gloomy, close, and stale.… Melancholy streets in a penitential garb of soot, steeped the souls of the people who were condemned to look at them out of windows, in dire despondency.”[1] Dickens considered the Victorian Sabbath to be punishment for the laborer who toiled the previous six days. “Nothing for the spent toiler to do,” lamented the narrator, “but to compare the monotony of the seventh day with the monotony of his six days.”[2]
To replace the Victorian Sabbath, Dickens advocated for Sunday societies along with other intellectuals in Britian.[3] These groups began meeting in the 1860s and replaced the traditional Christian sermon with a lecture on science or another subject. Thus, the common man, on his only day off a week, would have another option of inquiry than attending a depressing church service. For Dickens, the Victorian Sabbath produced misery and not joy.
Charles Spurgeon, however, came to the opposite conclusion. God gave humanity the Christian Sabbath as a day of joy. “Time is the ring,” he preached, “and these Sabbaths are the diamonds set in it.… The Sabbaths are the beds full of rich choice flowers.”[4] Elsewhere, he called the Sabbath “the pearl of the week”[5] and “a day to feast yourselves in God.”[6] Moreover, “they are full of brightness, and joy, and delight.”[7]
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