Heavenly Minded

Who said, “Some people are so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good.”?

a. Jesus

b. Paul

c. C. S. Lewis

d. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

a. Jesus – If you picked “a” I’m a bit embarrassed for you. Jesus didn’t say this or anything like it. You might want to pick up a red-letter bible and read the parts in red. I think you will conclude that Jesus wanted his followers to be a lot MORE heavenly minded. Our problem is usually that we are too distracted by the earthly things that surround us.

b. If you said “b” that’s not as bad as “a” but not really good. Paul said things like “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. (Colossians 3:2, ESV). Frankly that’s just the opposite of the familiar saying. Check out those letters Paul wrote. You will see what I mean.

c. C. S. Lewis is a better guess but not much better. He’s a theologian who wrote lots of things, but not this. In fact, he wrote: “A continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do. It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next.”  C. S. Lewis “Mere Christianity” The man did have a way with words.

d. If you picked “d” you are correct and are possibly a lawyer. How sad for you. Isn’t it strange that this oft quoted “Christian” saying was penned  by a lawyer? How embarrassing is that?  Holmes was a Supreme Court Justice but no theologian. Holmes brought himself into constant conflict with scholars who believed that legal duties rested upon “natural law,” a moral order of the kind invoked by Christian theologians. He believed instead “that men make their own laws; that these laws do not flow from some mysterious omnipresence in the sky, and that judges are not independent mouthpieces of the infinite….” “The common law is not a brooding omnipresence in the sky….” Rather than a set of abstract, rational, mathematical, or in any way unworldly set of principles. Sounds like our Justice was an atheist. Doesn’t that undermine the saying?

So being “heavenly minded” is a good thing for a follower of Jesus, let’s leave the earthly mindedness to unbelievers. Next time we will consider what that means.

Be blessed.