The Mind
by J. Ellsworth Kalas
Somewhere in the last century, when I was a student in seminary, one of my best classes was with an adjunct professor who was also a very effective pastor. A person of wide learning in art and literature, he stimulated thought.
One day he told us that he never used the hymn, “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing.” This hymn was a favorite of mine then, as it is today, so I asked why. He explained that no one in a twentieth century congregation knew what was meant by “Here I raise mine Ebenezer.”
I raised a second question: Why not teach them, so they would know the Bible story and thus have a greater capacity for life in general? He chose not to answer that question and moved on to another subject.
Now, half a century later, I find myself discussing the same basic issue, but on a different front. My students often note that it seems useless to quote a literary or historical figure, “because nowadays no one recognizes the name.”
My first answer is very pragmatic. If a sentence is worth quoting it ought to be worth quoting on its own merit, no matter what the source. If a quotation’s major merit is the person who said it, its worth will be lost as soon as that person is out of fashion.
My second answer is a quite Wesleyan one. If I were in an abrupt mood (which I try to avoid) I might answer, “If they don’t know the name, it’s time they learned.” To make the point more kindly, part of our job as preachers is to broaden and deepen human minds. If we believe that we should love the Lord our God with all our minds, we should do everything we can to make our minds as good and large as possible. We’re often told that a mind is a terrible thing to waste. It’s also wicked to waste it. One of Satan’s favorite tools is to fill the mind with so much garbage that anything sane, thoughtful, beautiful and redemptive is crowded out. In our contemporary culture, Satan has developed this practice to a corrupt art.
But I said a moment ago that my answer is a Wesleyan one. Let me explain. John Wesley said, famously, that he was a man of one book. I am passionately with Wesley in his commitment to the Bible as our key book, which means to make it the filter for all else we read and hear. But I’m also impressed that for Wesley (as a secular authority has put it), “conversion had as a sequel the overcoming of illiteracy in the individual.” Thus Wesley published his own Dictionary in 1753. It dealt with only 4,600 words, but they were the words he considered “those hard words which are found in the best English writers.” He compiled an anthology of poetry, in three volumes. In 1763 he published his own edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost. He also wrote A Concise History of England.
All of this, mind you, from the man who told his preachers, “You have nothing to do but to save souls.”
That’s because it’s quite strange to save a soul and leave the mind behind. How, exactly, does one do that? In a culture that is increasingly superficial, hurried, and dull, we preachers are compelled by conscience to learn as much as we can and then to tell it as clearly, succinctly, and directly as possible. Because it’s wicked to waste a mind.
