Biblical counselors rightly talk a great deal about “renewing our minds.” But what exactly is included in mind renewal?
In today’s post we answer that question by exploring a rich biblical view of the mind—of the imagination.
We Are Rational Beings
Created in the image of our all-knowing, wise God, we are rational beings. We think in words (beliefs) and pictures (images).
This is what Adam did when he gave each animal a creative name that expressed and portrayed that animal’s unique nature (Genesis 2:18-20).
God designed us with minds that can perceive His world and advance His kingdom. In that original design, God empowered us to think wisely—to think God’s thoughts after Him, to understand life from His perspective.
Mindsets
We can summarize our rational capacity with the concept of mindsets. In counseling, we don’t simply help people to change one thought; we help people to understand the pattern of their thinking—their mindsets.
This is what Paul emphasizes in Romans 12:1-2 when he commands us to renew our minds—our deeply held and characteristic ways of thinking about God, self, and others.
Spiritual Eyes and Taking Our Thoughts Captive
“Spiritual eyes” is an image we can use to capture our original rational nature. We are not to look at life with “eyeballs only,” but with 20/20 spiritual vision (2 Corinthians 10:3-7). God designed us to use our imagination (Isaiah 26:3), our spiritual vision to see our world, our relationships, our situations, our past, present, and future from God’s perspective (2 Corinthians 4:16-18). We are to be visionaries dreaming big dreams for God’s kingdom and God’s people (Ephesians 3:20-21).
Our goal as counselors and counselees is to interpret life through eternal lenses with spiritual eyes. We pursue and target wisdom: rational maturity which God defines as being transformed by the renewing of our minds as we look at life from an eternal perspective (Psalm 1).
Rational Direction
The Puritans understood how the soul operates.
“The choice of the mind never departs from that which, at the time appears most agreeable and pleasing.[i]”
“The will never desires evil as evil, but as seeming good.”[ii]
Eve had God, she had Adam, and she had a pleasing and good earth. Yet, she still sinned. Why?
“When the woman saw (rational direction) that the fruit of the tree was good (relational motivation) for food and pleasing (relational motivation) to the eye, and also desirable (relational motivation) for gaining wisdom, she took (volitional action) some and ate (volitional action). She also gave (volitional action) some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate (volitional action) it” (Gen. 3:6, emphasis and parenthesis added).
Eve chose what she concluded was good, pleasing, and desirable.
We can outline how our complex heart capacities work together.
- I pursue (volitional action) what I perceive (rational direction) to be pleasing (relational motivation).
- What I believe (rational direction) about what satisfies my longings for relationship (relational motivation) provides the direction that I choose to pursue (volitional action) and determines my response (emotional reaction) to my inner and outer world.
- I do (volitional) what I determine/decide (rational) I delight in (relational).
Our Relational Imagination: Pictures of Reality—Our Yēser
We are captured by what captures our imagination.
“And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination (yēser—to fashion, form, and frame) of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5).
Notice that it is not simply the heart, nor even the thoughts of the heart, but the imagination of the thoughts of the heart that God identifies as the root source of wickedness and, therefore, the root source of righteous, wise thinking.
What is this mysterious imagination? (The Hebrew word behind “imagination” is yēser.)
- In a concrete sense, the Hebrew word pictures the potter fashioning and shaping clay.
- In an abstract sense, the word depicts how we fashion, frame, devise, and purpose in our minds; how we form a summary picture of reality as we perceive it.
- The Bible employs imagination for our mind’s ability to fashion idols of the heart.
- The Bible can also use imagination in a very positive sense. “You will keep in perfect peace (shalom, shalom) him whose mind (yēser) is steadfast (focused), because he trusts in you” (Isaiah 26:3).
- With our imagination, we can form mental pictures of life where Yahweh is our Tower of Power, or where pieces of wood and stone are our place of safety.
- Our imagination consists of summarizing pictures, images, stories, and narratives that control our convictions.
Mike’s Imagination
Think about Mike who is struggling with anxiety. Mike might be captured by an image such as:
“Life is filled with giants and I’m a loser with no sling shot and no smooth stones. I’ll do what I always do—run away with my tail tucked between my legs.”
Or, Mike might be captivated by an image like:
“While I don’t have a single rock in my quiver, Christ is my Rock of Ages! I’ll guard the garden because Christ guards my soul.”
Simply telling Mike, “Be anxious for nothing,” is correct, but insufficient.
We want to help him decipher which image controls his affections, beliefs, motivations, actions, and reactions.
The Puritans’ Biblical Psychology
The Puritans developed an entire biblical psychology based upon the imagination. Consider Timothy Keller’s summary of their psychology of the imagination.
One of the earliest Puritans to define the “imagination” was Richard Sibbes (1577-1635). He wrote that imagination was a “power of the soul” which is “bordering between our senses on the one side and our understanding on the other.” The office of imagination “is to minister matter to our understanding to work upon.” However, sinful imagination usurps and misleads the understanding.
Charnock is more specific for in a sermon he states that the imagination is the place of the “first motion or formation of thoughts.” The imagination was not a power designed for thinking, but only to receive the images impressed upon the sense, and concoct them, that they might be fit matter for thoughts; and so it is the exchequer (bank account) wherein all the acquisitions of sense are deposited, and from thence received by the intellective faculty. Thought engenders opinion in the mind; thought spurs the will to consent or dissent; it is thought also which spirits the affections.
Let us pause for a moment to summarize what is being said. Modern cognitive therapists see “thinking” as fundamental to behavior and feeling. If we change the thinking, we can change the feelings and thus behavior, so goes this approach.
However, the Puritans considered imagination, even more fundamentally than thinking, as the control of the behavior. Imagine two thoughts sitting on the intellect:
“This sin will feel good if I do it.”
“This sin will displease God if I do it.”
Both are facts in the mind. You believe both to be true. But which one will control your heart? That is, which one will capture your thinking, your will, and your emotions?[iii]
The Puritans answered: the one that possesses the imagination will control the soul, mind, will, and emotions.
The imagination makes a thought real or vivid. It is the faculty for appreciation and value. It conjures up pictures which create thoughts that direct our longings, illuminate our minds, move our wills to choose, and stir our emotions.
The Show & Tell of the Mind
The imagination is more basic, base, and rudimentary than language. Our imagination is our ability to think in pictures—pictures that summarize our basic view of life.
Originally used of the cast, mold, or form used for shaping or framing something, the imagination relates to the framing of thoughts ingrained in the heart.[iv] It is thinking in parables—representative, symbolic thinking, thinking that makes comparisons (co-pare, co-parable, to make a corresponding picture of a verbal reality).
Remember elementary school Show & Tell? Wasn’t it one of your favorite times of the school week? You or a classmate could bring in some treasured possession, show it, describe it, touch it, feel it, and see it. You loved concrete, pictorial thinking. The imagination is the Show & Tell of our minds.
We Are Story Tellers & Story Believers
Our minds do not simply react to sensory input instinctively like animals. We don’t simply store input like computer chips.
We story input. We do something with it; we have a say in forming, shaping, molding, and organizing input.
More than that, we must do something with input. We are meaning makers. To survive, we organize. We pattern truth. We “theme” our perceptions. In this, we are like God—in His imagining image (Psalm 139:15-18; Isaiah 46:10-11; Jeremiah 18:11-12).
- The imagination is God’s gift of the capacity to organize input into images that lead to interpretations and result in ideas (beliefs).
- We form the multitude of our life events into a comprehensive narrative by “storying” reality.
- We weave together a theme from the individual events of our lives in order to make sense of life and to have a sense of control/mastery over life.
We Are Story Editors
The imagination is like the editor of, say, a liberal news site. This editor edits in and out and constructs the final shape of the article of belief. This slant filters how I perceive reality. If it filters out God, grace, generosity, goodness, relationship, being my brother’s keeper, etc., then I am competitive rather than cooperative, a hoarder rather than a sharer, self-sufficient rather than dependent on God and interdependent with others.
The mind set on the flesh allows the fleshly brain to continue to edit my new perceptions so that they fit with the current mindset of the world, the flesh, and the Devil. The mind set on the Spirit/spirit rejects the lies of the world (Satan’s law meta-narrative, his diabolical imaginations) and is transformed by receiving the mind of Christ and the grace meta-narrative.
So What?
Biblical counseling is more than telling people to change behavior—“Stop it!”
Biblical counseling is more than just commanding people to change a belief—“Stop that stinking thinking!”
Biblical counseling involves helping people to identify and put off old sinful images and to put on renewed biblical images. Here are three practical ways:
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As a biblical counselor, how tuned in are you to your counselee’s view (image, picture) of God?
A.W. Tozer famously noted that the most important thing about us is what we think about God. Isaiah 26:3 concurs, saying that God’s peace derives from a mind/imagination (yēser) that is focused—like a camera—on biblical images of who God is. We will “cast our cares on Him” if/when we believe that “He cares for us” (1 Peter 5:7). We will find comfort in God if/when we image Him as “the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort” (2 Corinthians 1:3-4).
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As a biblical counselor, how tuned in are you to your counselee’s view of who they are in Christ?
Perhaps the second most important thing about us is our view of our identity in Christ. Are we listening to and looking for the words, pictures, stories, and images our counselees use to describe who they are?
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As a Christian, how tuned in are you to your view of God and your view of your identity in Christ?
These are the two most important facts about you—how you view God and how you view yourself in Christ.
A Word from Bob
If you’d like to learn more about biblical counseling, progressive sanctification, mind renewal, and the imagination, check out Gospel-Centered Counseling: How Christ Changes Lives.
I developed today’s blog post from a part of Chapter 6 of Gospel-Centered Counseling.
Notes
[i]Jonathan Edwards, Freedom of the Will (Philadelphia, Soli Deo Gloria, 1998), 13.
[ii]Richard Baxter, A Christian Directory (Philadelphia, Soli Deo Gloria, 1997), 85.
[iii]Timothy Keller, “Puritan Resources for Pastoral Counseling,” Journal of Pastoral Practice 9, no. 3 (1998), 11-44.
[iv]Thomas Boston, Human Nature in Its Four-Fold State (Carlise, PA: Banner of Truth Trust, 1997), 62.
