"Thinking Christianly" What is this?

Much is sure being said about it in cyberspace, but exactly what does it mean? Is there just one way of 'thinking Christianly?' One might say.. it means to only think on Scripture-- Sola Scriptura--- and to let the words of Christ richly dwell in one's heart and mind, and to dwell only on the pure, the beautiful, the lovely, and the good. Or possibly it means taking Paul's injunction on "having the mind of Christ" to indicate.. an attitude of the heart. Thats been a popular take in the past. Surely, in Scripture we see a Christ that has 'a heart', a person of feeling and compassion more than we see a Christ who has unlimited knowledge and intelligence about all sorts of things and disciplines. It is quite easy to know and see Him having a heart of humility and servanthood; Jesus is seen as a be'er and do'er and not a 'thinker'. In spite of His omniscience, we don't see Him as having a Phd or spreading knowledge around.

Surely.. 'thinking Christianly ' can't mean thinking exactly like the people who coined the phrase: Chuck Colsen- et al. Yet it feels that way when one reads all the blogs; thinking Christianly is thinking in the same way as those who talk about it- " worldview issues, global and not sequential, big picture and not little picture, philosohical and intellectual ideas and not pragmatic concerns.

Who wants to get on this bandwagon and claim to have finally arrived?


So no, this is no claim to 'thinking Christianly'- tracking and tracing ideas down through history, even though transcending time and space in that pursuit is an element of the divine nature of Christ. I suspect the concern that coined the phrase, however, had more to understand the need to ensure that total truth takes dominion in the beliefs of the culture. So... unlike the modern era in which Billy Graham preached the Gospel, the new concern in these times is to enure that Biblical ideas take up dominion in the culture:


The 'cultural mandate' has scared off far too many of us- because of the fear of some messy political entanglement when actually the mandate is much larger than that. It is has broad, varied and diverse as the giftings, interest and concerns of each of the tens of thousands of us. Each in our own little, or big unique way... we can do our part to inform, to make aware, to teach, to persuade people about the reasonableness of Biblical ideas taking up dominion on this earth.

The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio

The Decameron Why do so few of us know about it?

If Geoffrey Chaucer and Giovanni Boccaccio were not familiar contemporaries, something must have been in that early Renaissance water that made them turn out similar pieces of literary work. Bawdy and tawdry, ribald and risque-, for years amused readers simply haven't expected this kind of explicit literature from a string of tales from medieval folk. But why should we be surprised?
Of course, Boccaccio knew his tales would be offensive to some, or he wouldn't have written an entire litany of justifications on his decision to write out 100 tales for a group of modest and virtuous young women. He analogizes that fire has its good uses and shouldn't be hated because of its capacity to destroy homes, so are his tales. He continues: weapons are useful when they defend people while at the same time they can kill men, and even Scriptures, which are generally good for the many, can at times be wrongly interpreted and have sent people to 'perdition'. ?? " So are my tales".

"" No corrupt mind ever understands words healthily, and just as such people do not enjoy virtuous words, so the well-disposed person cannot be harmed by words which are somewhat less than virtuous. Can mud sully sunlight or can filthy earth mud the beauty of the skies?""

Does his claim hold to reality? Are we contaminated by the stuff we read, or is Jesus right, that the heart defiles a man?
Either way, Boccaccio challenges the church, to whom he was satirizing, to use his tales for whatever purposes- for good or ill.