Those who follow Christ, who is the truth (John 4:16), must never take truth for granted, be satisfied with meager helping of it, refuse to test their truth claims against objective reality or fail to work out the implications of their beliefs in all of life. If we are to resist truth decay, the truth must be our most prized possession. As Proverbs says, “Buy the truth and do not sell it” (23:23). Sadly some Christians believe without being able or even willing to fathom the depths of their faith. But as Machen said:
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"The Christian religion flourished not in the darkness but in the light. Intellectual slothfulness is but a quick remedy for unbelief; the true remedy is consecration of intellectual power to the service of the Lord Jesus Christ."
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For many Christians this would mean a radical rearrangement of one’s priorities. Making the search for truth pivotal means cutting against the grain of postmodern culture as well as postmodernist philosophy. It entails being countercultural for Christ, who commanded us to love him with all of our minds (Matthew 22:37-39). J.P. Moreland’s excellent book Love Your God with All Your Mind (1997) addresses in depth the matter of developing one’s mind for God. It should be carefully studied by any Christian who wants to resist the postmodernist spirit of the age.
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Although he was an atheist who hated Christianity and a precursors of postmodernism, Friedrich Nietzsche’s life can be in some ways challenge or even shame intellectually slothful Christians. Bernard Ramm’s excellent chapter n Nietzsche concludes with his rousing (if somewhat hyperbolic) provocation, which I often read aloud to my philosophy students after discussing Nietzsche’s work.
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"What is the devil’s due Evangelicals can glean from Nietzsche? It is the willingness to be driven like Nietzsche It is the willingness to spare no pains in the search for truth. It is the willingness… to work into the late hours of the night or to start in the earliest hours of the day; to pick up a new project as soon as we have finished an older one; to grow weary and exhausted in our quest for truth; to have…our eyes watery form too much reading, and our bodies bent over from long, weary hours at the study desk.
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No Evangelical whose reading habits are a disgrace to the seriousness of the Christian ministry, or who spends more time before a television set than he does in serious reading in his study has the right to damn Nietzsche from the pulpit to some gruesome place in the Inferno. "
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Ramm grants that Nietzsche was “a devil’s hack” and a vicious and unfair critic of Christianity. But if this brilliant but deceived man could expend so much cognitive energy without God’s direction and power, what is possible—and necessary – for those who believe the truth of the gospel?
