Demolish Strongholds, Take Every Thought Captive

What does and doesn’t it mean to talk about everything?

For starters, it doesn’t mean I’m an expert on everything. It’s good to have experts, but we should be careful in trusting so-called experts too far. The global response to COVID should have proved that to all of us, but you can consider me at least persuaded. 

We shouldn’t need to be experts to think meaningfully about important subjects. Only God knows everything about everything, or really anything. However expert someone is in their field, we all need to be loving the Lord our God with all our own heart, soul, strength, and mind, not just subcontracting our responsibility in one of these spheres, especially one so decisive as the life of the mind. 

That said, we can’t talk about everything all the time. We have to focus and prioritize. So I’m not going to talk about everything in every episode, and I’m not going to talk about everything equally as much. That isn’t feasible, nor is it necessary.

Furthermore, it’s not enough to talk about everything. The way in which we talk about everything is critically important. This is because the way we think and feel about everything is important, and “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.”

Honesty is good, and even critically important. But saying “I’m just being honest” isn’t a good excuse for bad attitudes or erroneous opinions. It is possible to be both honest and wrong. What is far better is to be honest and right – thinking rightly, feeling rightly, acting rightly, and speaking rightly. But this requires intentionality.

Speaking personally, some areas I’ve identified, with helpful feedback from listeners in the past week, where there is room for improvement, include how I talk about negative situations, conversations, and conflicts, especially of the interpersonal nature. 

Mockery, irritableness, truthfulness – all need a more careful handling. And that holds not just for podcasting, but insofar as my podcasting is a reflection of how I engage people IRL – “in real life” – it holds true for my heart generally.

The goals of this podcast are:

– To love God with all my heart, soul, strength, and mind, and to love my neighbor as I love myself

– To take every thought captive for Christ, and be intentional in the formation of my Christian worldview 

– To show my work like we’re doing advanced math

– To talk about everything in a way that honors God

– To be honest not only to a fault, but also about faults

That last piece includes perhaps especially my own faults. Hopefully that does not mean being foolish or wicked. But where Paul says our goal is to demolish strongholds and every lofty argument raised against the knowledge of God, the end-goal of taking every thought captive to obey Christ must necessarily mean talking about said strongholds in us. 

For that matter, the fact that strongholds and lofty arguments need demolishing, when placed in the context of loving God with all our being and loving one another as ourselves, is a profound assertion implying a necessity for activity rather than passivity. We have to be active agents in this endeavor – first in ourselves, then externally. 

So then if I am to serve you well, and to serve our Maker well, I have to be honest for the sake of it. When a position or approach needs defending, it should be defended so long as it can be. When it becomes untenable and all those needing served are served better by abandoning it, however, then so also the same must be true that I would be honest to a fault about my own faulty positions or methods.

Someone might say to that, then, perhaps it is better to keep it all private. But then where would the profit be? We are called to let our lights so shine, and to not bury talents in fields. So also, I press on that I might attain to the high calling, and be commended by God thereby.

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