If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. --Colossians 3:1-2 (ESV)
Paul does not say "try to think about heaven sometimes." He says *set* your minds -- a decisive, continuous orientation. The resurrection is not merely a past event you believe in; it is a relocation of your entire center of gravity. You have been *raised with Christ*. That is your status. The question is whether your daily mental life matches your actual position. A man who has been raised with Christ but lives with his head pointed down is living a contradiction. The discipline of the Christian mind is simply this: keep aiming where you already are.
The whole point of the Gospel is that it gives us the power to attend to things. Not simply the power to attend to God, but the power to attend to our neighbor, to our work, to the beauty of creation, and to the small voice of conscience. A man whose mind is set on things above is not a dreamer floating through life; he is the only man who is truly awake and able to see the world as it actually is. --G.K. Chesterton, *Orthodoxy*
Chesterton understood what the world gets wrong about the "spiritual" man. He is not less present than others -- he is *more* present. The man with his mind set on heaven does not miss the details of earth; he finally sees them clearly, because he sees them in relation to their Maker. When you know where everything is going, you can attend to where it is now without panic or grasping.
The Christian faith is not a retreat from the intellect but its liberation. God did not reveal Himself to save us from thinking but to save our thinking from futility. "Set your minds on things above" is not a command to abandon reason but to aim it at its proper object. The mind was made for truth, and the highest truth is the reality of God in Christ. --Dorothy Sayers, *The Mind of the Maker*
Sayers, a novelist and theologian, refused the lie that the Christian life is anti-intellectual. Paul's command to set the mind above does not mean setting the mind aside. It means letting the mind finally work on the scale it was designed for -- not squabbling over trifles but contemplating the true, the good, and the beautiful as they exist in God. Your thoughts matter. They are not driftwood on the current of your day; they are the tiller.
There are two ways, one of life and one of death, and there is a great difference between the two ways. The Way of Life is this: first, you shall love God who made you; second, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. And whatever you would not have done to you, do not do to another. The teaching of these words is this: bless those who curse you, and pray for your enemies, and fast for those who persecute you. For what credit is it if you love those who love you? Do not the Gentiles do the same? But love those who hate you, and you will have no enemy. --*The Didache* (Teaching of the Twelve Apostles), chapters 1-2, circa late 1st / early 2nd century AD
The Didache is one of the earliest Christian writings outside the New Testament -- a manual for new believers written while some of the apostles were still alive. It begins not with doctrine but with a choice: two ways, life and death. The Way of Life is defined entirely by love -- love for God, love for neighbor, love for enemy. This is what a mind "set on things above" looks like in practice. It is not abstract contemplation. It is a concrete way of walking through a world that returns blessing for cursing, not cursing for cursing. The early church understood that the proof of resurrection was not in what you believed but in how you treated the people who hated you.
The greatest hazard of all, losing the self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss is so unnoticed -- any other loss, a leg, a dollar, a wife, is sure to be noticed. But the loss of the self is not noticed. And a man can lose his self without realizing it. To will one thing, to be a single self oriented toward God -- this requires a daily, hourly discipline of the will, because the world is constantly offering you cheaper versions of yourself. --Søren Kierkegaard, *Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing*
Application:: Kierkegaard saw it clearly -- the self is not something you *have*, it is something you *become* by what you love. A mind set on things above is not a luxury for the spiritually advanced. It is the daily work of refusing to let the world hand you a smaller version of yourself.
If your mind were truly set on things above, what would be different about how you walk into the next conversation, the next decision, the next frustration?
The soul is like a bowl of water, and our impressions are like the light striking the water. When the water is agitated, the light seems agitated too, but it is not. As soon as the water is still, the light is clearly seen. In the same way, when the soul is calm, the truth is plainly visible. --Epictetus, *Discourses*, Book 3
This aligns with Paul's call to set the mind above: stillness precedes clarity, and clarity precedes right action. Epictetus understood that peace is not found by rearranging the world but by settling the soul. But Christianity goes deeper -- it recognizes that our souls are not calm because the water is broken, and we cannot still ourselves. We need the Spirit to quiet the surface before we can see anything clearly. Stoicism tells you to still the water by force of will. The gospel tells you that Christ has already calmed the sea, and you are invited to rest in that calm.
St Clair, Michigan -- Partly cloudy, 59°F, Humidity: 72%, Wind: 6 mph ↘