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 is not God making my mind behave exactly like everyone else's.

Maybe it is Christ entering the places of my mind that other people cannot follow.

The thoughts that frighten me.

The connections I cannot always explain.

The questions that refuse to stay quiet.

The strange places where sorrow, Scripture, memory, fear and wonder become tangled together.

And perhaps the mystery is this:

The mind that sometimes makes me feel furthest from everyone else may also become a place where I learn how desperately I need the mind of Christ.

That doesn't mean every thought I have is from God.

It isn't.

Some thoughts are simply thoughts.

Some are confusion.

Some are fear.

Some are illness.

Some are imagination.

And some make me stop and stare at a verse for an hour because I cannot understand why those particular words seem to be staring back at me.

But perhaps faith isn't learning to trust every thought that enters my mind.

Perhaps faith is learning which thoughts deserve to be trusted.

That is a harder truth.

Because my mind can build connections faster than I can explain them.

Sometimes I see ten doors where another person sees one.

Sometimes I hear a sentence and wonder what is hiding behind the sentence.

Sometimes I find myself reaching for meaning where everyone else has already moved on.

And maybe that is why I read Scripture differently.

Not necessarily because I see things nobody else can see.

But because I know what it is like to live inside a mind where seeing too much can be just as frightening as seeing too little.

So when I read,

“We have the mind of Christ,”

I don't hear permission to believe every thought that comes into my head.

I hear something much more humbling:

I don't have to make my mind my god.

Christ can be Lord over the thoughts I understand...

and the thoughts I don't.

Maybe that is the hidden freedom.

I don't have to prove that every strange connection I make is divine.

I don't have to be ashamed because my mind takes a road nobody else understands.

I can simply bring the whole complicated thing to Christ.

Even the thoughts I cannot explain.

Especially those.

Because perhaps the deepest mystery isn't that I sometimes think differently.

Perhaps it is that Christ can meet a mind He did not make ordinary.

And maybe that is something worth pondering.