The Mind Lock

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Then he went home; and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, “He has gone out of his mind.”

Today’s passage is only two verses long, but is packed with enough questions to reflect upon for an entire week — or an entire lifetime. In this passage we find people thronging to see Jesus. However, the things he is saying are so far beyond their scope of understanding they believe he is out of his mind. If Jesus were to be with us today, and say the same things that he said to the people two thousand years ago, would we think any differently? Wouldn’t we, too, believe that he was out of his mind? How often do we believe that what Jesus asks us to do is not just impractical in today’s world, but impossible too? 

Let us, for instance, consider this instruction that Jesus gives, “If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also” (Luke 6:29). How many of us would actually do this? If someone hurts us, we want to immediately lash out and hurt the other person back, don’t we? Sometimes we want to hurt people, even without being hurt by them! So what is the conclusion? That the advice to turn the other cheek is absurd; it is unsound advice. Consequently, the adviser must be unsound too. It is the only logical conclusion, no? 

But we know that Jesus is not of unsound mind. We know that his words are words of life. Therefore, if we find his words unrealistic and impractical to follow, then the fault lies with us, not with him. What is the fault? The fault is mental conditioning. Although we may have been born into Christian families, most of us have been raised in the ways of the world. Consequently, bigotry, prejudice, hooliganism, vindictiveness, hatred, unforgiveness, and such worldly traits have become embedded in our consciousness and locked up. 

What is the solution? Well, we have to open the mind-lock. The key is understanding we are born again to a new life in Christ and therefore cannot live as the world does. We are no longer people of the world but citizens of the kingdom of heaven and have to live accordingly. We cannot do this unless we change the way we think. Paul tells us: “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is —his good, pleasing and perfect will” (Romans 12:2). Then we will be able to understand what he says too. 

And actually do what he asks us to do. Including turn the other cheek when one is struck.

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