The Thought Behind the Verse “For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.” — 1 Corinthians 2:16 There are verses in the Bible that I read differently than other people do. Not because I believe I have discovered some secret revelation that nobody else can see, but because my mind does not always travel the same road theirs does. A thought can begin with one word in a verse, split into another thought, collide with something I have experienced, and suddenly I am standing somewhere completely different from where the sentence seemed to begin. And sometimes, strangely enough, that is where I notice something. Take this verse: “But we have the mind of Christ.” Most people read that as a beautiful statement about having Christlike thoughts. I wonder if there is something deeper hiding in the wording. Paul did not say we understand the mind of Christ. He said we have the mind of Christ. There is a difference. Maybe the Christian life i...
There are thoughts that knock politely. This was not one of them. It came like something scratching from inside the walls—quiet at first, then persistent, until I could no longer pretend I had not heard it. My mind has always been an odd place to live. Schizophrenia has made some corridors darker than others, and there are days when even my own thoughts seem like strangers wandering through rooms I thought I knew. Yet sometimes, in that strange wilderness, a question appears that refuses to be dismissed. I was thinking about sinners. Not us. Them. That is how we usually think of it, isn't it? The sinner is always somewhere else. He is the addict. The prisoner. The man whose life has become a ruin. The woman whose past we whisper about. The one we hope Christ will save—provided their salvation does not require them to sit too close to us. And then the thought turned its pale face toward me: What if the worst sinner who ever lived is not someone history remembers, but the person st...