J.P. Moreland - Smart Faith: Loving Your God with All Your Mind

"Smart Faith will help you grow spiritually and live logically in an experience-driven culture. Read it if you're serious about your relationship with God!"

-STEVE Russo, international communicator; best-selling author; cohost of Life on the Edge Live! radio show

"With razor-sharp clarity, Moreland and Matlock point out the serious lack of intellectual substance that characterizes the faith of most evangelicals. Readers will gain confidence for more effective evangelistic disciplemaking and be motivated to pursue the development of their minds for God's glory."

-JAY L. SEDWICK, PHD, associate professor of Christian education, Dallas Theological Seminary

G o A head

T H 1 N K: about God

about life

about others

Faith isn't just an act; it's something you live-something huge and sometimes unimaginable. By getting into the real issues in your life, THINK books open opportunities to talk honestly about your faith, your relationship with God and others, as well as all the things life throws at you.

Don't let other people th I nk for you ...

TH 1 NK for yourself.

J.P. MORELAND & MARK MATLOCK

PART I: GETTING SMART

PART II: APPLYING OUR SMARTS

I (J. P.) would like to acknowledge two groups of people who have helped make this book possible. First, the board of trustees and donors of Eidos Christian Center. Your support has been invaluable. Second, my church family at the Anaheim Vineyard, who combine the life of the mind with the power of the Spirit, especially Ken Slezak, Brian and Krista Slezak, Nigel Morris, Don Shortino, Lance Pittluck, Paul Frayla, and Dave and Geneva LeBates.

I (Mark) would like to acknowledge my church family at Irving Bible Church for continuing to love God with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength. Laura Wright provided amazing editorial assistance. Nicci Jordan, Terry Behimer, Gabe Filkey, Mike Kennedy, Cara Iverson, and everyone on "lhlnk Avenue" at NavPress that have a vision for creating high quality books for this generation, I applaud you all. Most of all, I thank my family, who lost me for a few weeks while I finished this book. Dad is done!

efore you read this book, you should know a little bit about the people who wrote it and why they did. I'll start with J. P. Moreland, a philosopher and scholar who is the exact opposite of the personality type that just popped into your head. While J. P. is respected as a great Christian thinker, he is a real person. In fact, when we first visited about this book at his home in California, he made me a turkey sandwich, knowing I'd just come in from a long flight. In his sandals and untucked California beach shirt, he plopped on the sofa and told me about his wife and about his daughters, who were now out of college.

Having read several books and articles by J. P. (many of which were quite academic in nature), I knew that this man was capable of speaking way over my head, but he never did. What I saw was a man who had a wild passion for Jesus Christ that I imagine John the Baptist or Paul would have if they were living in our world today. J. P. is a real person who loves God not only with his mind but also with every part of himself While we focus on the "mind" aspect in this book, please remember that we do because we feel it is the most neglected and misunderstood aspect of spiritual development in the church of America today. Our desire is that you would love God with your whole self and not just your intellect.

Now a little bit about me. I have worked with teenagers for more than fifteen years. I produce and teach at weekend conferences called PlanetWisdom and work one-on-one with students through our website and in my local church. I have been married for twelve years and have two young children (right now they are six and eight). Although I am an ordained minister, I am not a scholar or an academic. In fact, a good chunk of my life and ministry has been as a professional magician (or illusionist) -something I seldom do anymore. As for school, I attended Biola University (where I first learned of J. P.) and left California to live in Texas in 1991. While I'm not what you would call the "best student," I have always believed that learning and good thinking are essential to being a disciple of Christ.

In working with students, I have found that many struggle in their life because they have not learned to develop an intellect that loves God. This generation needs this book, and I'm so thankful to have been a part of it.

Bottom line: J. P. and I are real people just like you. We aren't super-Christians or eggheads sitting in an office poring over textbooks. We want to love and serve God with every part of who we are. We wrote Smart Faith hoping it would help you discover this, too. Whether you are an intellectual giant or a person of average intelligence like myself, we all need to love God with our minds. I hope Smart Faith helps you to do just that.

Smart Faith may be one of the more challenging books you've chosen to read. While we've tried to make everything as easy to grasp as possible, there are some spots that may get a little thick. I want to encourage you to stick with it and move through the book to the end; you won't regret it, and the reward will be well worth it. As you seek to love God with all your mind, you will be shocked at how many new discoveries can be made as your relationship with the one true living God deepens. At the end of each chapter, we've included a section to help you go deeper into reflection about what it is you have read and how it applies to the real world you live in. You can read this book alone, but if you're like me, learning with others is much more fun. So buy a friend or two a copy (or make them buy their own!) and work through it together. May God lead you as you seek to increase your faith and to love God with all your mind.

Mark Matlock

We live in what may be the most anti-intellectual period in the history of Western civilization.... We must have passion - indeed hearts on fire for the things of God. But that passion must resist with intensity the anti-intellectual spirit of the world.

R. C. SPROUL

-mail. We love it. We hate it. We love e-mail because it has _, increased the personal and meaningful contact that we can have with people. We hate it because we get way too much we don't want to respond to. That said, I (Mark) love getting e-mail from students. Many times I never know their names or where they are from. I'm sure that's the main reason they write me. They write with the hope that I have an answer to their questions or some advice to help them in their Christian walks. And they are brutally honest with me, I think, because they can remain anonymous. I don't know who they are, so they are guaranteed that any secrets are safe with me. Whether the writer is HugsforJesus or Coolio67, the names can't easily be traced back to an individual.