Being “double-minded”

St. Paul describes this double-mindedness in Romans. We can live “according to the Spirit,” having our mind “set on what the Spirit desires.” Or we can be “governed by the flesh,” by a mind that is “hostile to God” (NIV Rom. 8:4-7).The brain is indeed “governed by the flesh.” In fact, it is flesh. That’s why it is not capable of abandoning the self-centered, survival instincts that have evolved over millennia.

But the image of Himself that God created us to be does not originate in brain waves. It lives in higher consciousness, in “the mind governed by the Spirit” (NIV Rom. 8:6). As Lewis described it in Miracles, this higher, human capacity to reason or make inferences in our “own thinking” is not a “natural event” but a God-created gift, a “daily and hourly experience, as intimate as breathing” (65). Here’s how this double-mindedness might work: http://yieldingtochristianity.com/?attachment_id=548