Well, how do we avoid overthinking or under thinking the Christian life? It's a relevant question for a podcast that spends a lot of its time talking about the Christian life. And the question today comes from a listener named Ronnie. Hello, Pastor Jon, thank you for the podcast. I've been richly blessed by this podcast over the years.

So thank you. I know you are a great nuts guy. I am too. So I chuckled when I read this in GK Chesterton's book, heretics, where he says this, there is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse. Then in the man who eats grape nuts on principle, the chief error of these people is to be found in the very phrase to which they are most attached.

Plain living and high thinking. These people do not stand in need of, will not be improved by plain living and high thinking. They stand in need of the contrary. They would be improved by high living and plain thinking. So do you ever wonder or harbor a concern over, and in this podcast, I think maybe an expression of, an overthinking of all the details and options in the Christian life at the expense of simply living our lives with the joy of impulse?

In other words, Pastor Jon, can we overthink the Christian life? Well, a complex mental tortured eating of great nuts is probably inferior to a spontaneous, happy, simple eating of caviar. But I wonder about a spontaneous, simple eating of grape nuts. Here's my answer to whether you can overthink things.

The answer is yes. We can overthink our lives. And if Ronnie were to ask me if we can underthink our lives, I would say yes. We can underthink our lives. And the problem is not just quantity over and under thinking. The problem is quality as well, like thinking carefully and thinking sloppy or thinking truly and thinking falsely.

Now, whether this podcast is guilty of overthink or underthink and sloppy think and false think, others will have to judge. But yes, I'm aware of the danger. Just this morning, just to give you some examples of how aware I tend to be, just this morning, I was listening to an audio version of C.S.

Lewis' essay on subjectivism. Excellent essay. Everybody, I wish, would read it. He was talking about the dangers of turning away from the real world and thinking about the world outside to an excessive introspection where we try to discern the true and the beautiful and the criterion for the true and the beautiful and the absolute inside.

And in a typical genius for comparisons, Lewis compared turning inside for the sight of the absolute and the true and the beautiful. He compared it to taking your eyeballs out to look at them. I was getting dressed and I just thought, that is just helpful. We become blind in the very act of analysis as we try to see.

It's what Wordsworth, I suppose, is getting at. We murder to dissect. So that's what Ronnie is waving a big yellow flag in front of Piper and saying, "You sure you want to do this podcast?" Now, of course, Chesterton and Lewis are two happy peas in a pod when it comes to helping us not overthink or underthink or badly think.

But they also offer a warning because no Christian in the 20th century applied the razor of the law of non-contradiction to all the follies of the world the way C.S. Lewis did. I think I can say that without exception. No Christian in the 20th century applied the razor of the law of non-contradiction to all the follies of the world the way C.S.

Lewis did. And Chesterton did the same thing in his own way. Chesterton wasn't nearly as given, I think, to a direct analysis as Lewis was. But, oh my, behind all those paradoxes, there was a razor sharp mind who did his fair analysis of the world. Both would agree that logicians go crazy.

That would be my danger, right? Logicians, you know, excessively picking apart and analyzing and being logical. Logicians go crazy because they try to get the heavens into their head. But poets are mentally healthy because they try to get their heads into the heavens. That's what Chesterton said, and they would both agree on that.

But both would also agree that one should use his head to avoid putting it in a meat grinder. Does the Bible give us help in not falling off cliffs of over and under thinking? And I think the Bible does help us, and I'm going to give three kinds of help real quickly.

First, it celebrates thinking. You cannot blow off thinking if you want to be a Bible person. Second Timothy 2.7, "Think over what I say, and the Lord will give you understanding in everything." So thinking is valuable as a prelude to receiving divine illumination. Second, I've got three texts. Second, "Brothers, do not be children in your thinking.

Be infants in evil, but in your thinking, be mature." So thinking is a mark of being a grown-up. A third text, Romans 12.2, "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." So thinking is part of Christian newness in Christ. So that's the first thing that the Bible does to help us not fall off the cliff of over or under thinking.

It celebrates the importance, like, be a grown-up. Think clearly. The second thing it does, or the second thing the Bible does, is show us that thinking is not an end in itself. Thinking exists to serve love, 1 Timothy 1.5. Thinking exists to serve joy, 1 Peter 1.8. Joy inexpressible and glorified.

Thinking exists to serve peace of heart and mind. That passes thinking, Philippians 4.8. So you think your way up, and then God, the Holy Spirit, zooms you on beyond what you can compute. Thinking in the Bible is never the final goal of life. I wrote a whole book called "Think." That was my main point, I think, that the Bible never makes thinking the final goal of life.

The head, where the thinking is, the head must do its supporting work so that the heart can do its main work and not be deceived. So that's the second way the Bible helps us not fall off the cliff of over or under thinking. And here's the last, the third and last thing the Bible does.

The Bible encourages us, and I think at this point Chesterton and Lewis would be jumping up and down with happiness. The Bible directs our thoughts outward, outward, away from subjectivism, away from introspection, to the right comprehension of great, glorious things. I mean, Philippians 4.8 and 9 are simply amazing for their simplicity.

"Finally, brothers, whatever's true, whatever's honorable, whatever's just, whatever's pure, whatever's lovely, whatever's commendable, if there's any excellence, if there's anything worthy of praise, think, think about these things." In other words, stop standing in front of the mirror and worrying about your hair and your whatever, you're all worked up about, but get over to the window, go to the window and look out.

"What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things and the God of peace will be with you." So think about the right things and practice the right things, and the God of peace gets very close and precious. "Set your thinking not only on what is true, etc., but what is above." Colossians 3.2, "Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on the earth, for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God." When Christ, who is your life, appears, you will appear with him in glory.

So be about the business of taking your minds and all your thinking and make heaven and all the realities of God in Christ the focus of your thinking. And then one more, Hebrews 12.3, "Look to Jesus, look to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of your faith. Consider him," that word "consider," think about him, "who endured from sinners such hostility." So you want to do something right with your mind and your thinking, put it on things that are true, put it on things that are above, put it on things that are Christ-ward, put it on Christ himself.

So my three suggestions for how the Bible helps us to be summed up like this, helps us not be overthinking, underthinking, badly thinking, falsely thinking. Number one, the Bible commends thinking as part of being mature. Number two, it keeps thinking in its place and makes joy, peace, and love the touchstone of whether it's doing its work.

If it's not producing joy, peace, and love, it's not doing its work. We're thinking badly. And thirdly, it points us away from excessive introspection and subjectivism and says, "Send your thinking again and again to truth and to Christ." So good. Yeah, not overthinking, not underthinking, and not badly thinking, and not falsely thinking.

Thank you, Pastor John. And Ronnie, thank you for the very good question. And thanks for the quote from Chesterton. And thank you for listening and supporting this podcast. You can stay current with the Ask Pastor John podcast episodes on your phone or device by subscribing through your favorite podcast catcher.

And if you'd like to search our past episodes in our archive or send us an email of your own, even questions about the Christian life, as we soberly seek to honor God in our attitudes, words, and actions, you can do all that through our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. Well, how has God at work in our most unproductive days when it feels as though we've accomplished nothing and we fall far short of our own planning, when everything we set out to do has collapsed into nothing but inefficiency and unproductivity?

Those frustrating days are not outside of God's sovereign power. And when we return on Monday, we're going to talk about what God is doing in our lives in the days when everything seems to fall apart. Until then, I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you on Monday. God bless.

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