Philippians 4:1-9

Everyone needs encouragement, if only because the occasions of discouragement (loss of heart, loss of confidence, loss of conviction) are endless. It seems that anything we undertake for Christ and his kingdom is frontally assaulted or gradually falls prey to the inertia that overtakes those who lose heart for a project dear to them but less dear to others. We no longer have the resources to make the effort to maintain ardor amid setbacks and betrayals. For instance, those among us concerned with environmental pollution begin to feel that what is hugely important to them, other people find insignificant. Only fresh heart, encouragement, can keep our zeal aflame, our spirits from bitterness, and our patience resilient as we continue to pursue what we know God has given us to do.

Paul encourages his readers in Philippi on many fronts; not least, he encourages them to resist mind-pollution, and therefore to resist heartpollution. “Whatever is true,” he says, “whatever is honorable . . . just . . . pure . . . pleasing . . . commendable . . . think about these things” (Philippians 4:8). When Paul writes “Think about these things,” he doesn’t mean ponder them now and then; reflect on them once in a while; mull them over when nothing else is occupying your mind.

“Think about these things” means hold them up; hold them up in your mind; soak your imagination in them. “Whatever is true . . . honorable . . . just . . .pure . . . lovely . . . gracious” (4:8 RSV); steep yourselves in all this until it’s fixed in your mind and heart and bloodstream. Whatever is fixed in our minds and hearts and bloodstreams will effervesce through us for the rest of our lives. When we wake up, when we fall asleep, whenour minds are relaxed and unguarded, when we “let down” at the end of the day or haven’t yet “geared up” at the start of the day, when we are all alone, even when we lie in bed week after week as we wait to die; what’s going to flood into our minds and soak our hearts? Precisely what we’ve held up in our minds for years.

Everyone agrees that reason is part of the definition of humanity. In other words, reason is essential to being human. Where we are frequently one-sided, however, is our restricting reason to reasoning. We assume that reasoning is thinking deductively or inductively. One instance of deductive thinking is: “All humans are mortal; Socrates is human; therefore, Socrates is mortal.” Inductive thinking is what we do when we experiment scientifically. Having performed many experiments and made many observations, we conclude that water consists of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen.

The mistake we make is assuming that deductive and inductive thinking are all there is to reason. We forget that there’s yet another kind of thinking: pictorial thinking, imagistic thinking, everything that fills up our imaginations. At the level of scientific thinking, a child opens an encyclopedia and reads, “Horse: an herbivorous quadruped that runs on one toe.” Perfectly true. But at the level of the imagination (where children live) the child thinks black stallion. Then there swims into the child’s mind a wonderful assortment of images around the black stallion: adventure, danger, affection, strength, loyalty.

Years later, the child, now an adult, hears at one level of reason such expressions as “immigrant,” “New American,” “refugee.” At another level of reason, this time the level of imagination, he or she is flooded with negative images that foster contempt and hatred; these images are purely destructive.

Let’s be honest: we adults live in our imaginations far more than we live in purely deductive or inductive reasoning. So, what are the images that swim through our heads night and day? What are the images that we foster in one another and nourish in ourselves? Paul knows that we live chiefly in our imaginations. For this reason he urges us to hold up that which is true (always a good place to start), just, honorable, pure, kind, gracious, lovely, and commendable. Soak your imagination in things with these qualities because these images are going to effervesce night and day, bubbling up from your unconscious mind to your conscious and then back down to your unconscious where they shape you when you aren’t even aware of it. The apostle is profound here: abstract reasoning doesn’t govern our minds; concrete images—pictures—govern our minds.

When we hear the word true, I wonder what concrete images come instantly to mind? When I hear the word godly, the image that comes to me automatically is sitting with a certain man in his living room. The fellow I speak of was a former professor of New Testament at a major North American seminary. He was the most transparently godly, unaffectedly godly, compellingly godly person I have ever met. I think of the man every day. In his natural, credible, transparent, uncontrived manner, he said to me (among many other things), “Victor, if we genuinely fear God, we shall never have to be afraid of him.” (Think about that; think about that every day.)

“Whatever is just, whatever is fair—think about it,” writes the apostle. Fair? One day when I was in my last year of undergraduate studies I was discussing World War II with my father. I began to speak disdainfully of German history, German people, and German military personnel. My father didn’t rebuke me or argue with me. Instead he told me a story about Winston Churchill. When General Erwin Rommel’s forces were hammering the British Eighth Army in North Africa, hammering the Brits so badly that the Brits were on the point of going under, a British member of Parliament rose in the House of Commons and spoke contemptuously of the German general.

Churchill took it for as long as he could, then he leaped to his feet and shouted, “I will not permit you to speak such villainies about so fine a soldier.” That’s all my father said. He had hung up in my mind, in my imagination, a picture I shall never be without—“whatever is fair.”

Whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is commendable, Paul says, “Think on it.” He means “Catch the vision of it.” Corrie ten Boom, the Dutch woman who survived Ravensbruck, the forced labor camp (and death camp), years afterward told a story about her sister, Betsie, who didn’t survive. One day the two sisters were unloading boxcars when a guard, angry at Betsie’s low productivity (she was very ill), cut her with his whip. Corrie was enraged at seeing her sister struck and bleeding, but Betsie put her hand over the wound and cried, “Don’t look at it, Corrie; don’t look at it. Look at Jesus.”

“Whatever is . . .” You fill it in. Think about it. Catch the vision of it. Fill your imagination with it. Because as it is with our imaginations, so it is with us.