When we bring our thinking into line, our loving can also be brought into line. (Read Mark 12:29-31.) In our relationships with people, how we think about them determines how well we love them.
We can dwell on people’s offences, or injustices that have been done to us or the nastiness of their attitude or their nature of their faults, and all we are doing is feeding our resentment and lessening our ability to love.
When we love with all our minds we refuse to think unloving thoughts and concentrate on using our thinking to try to understand other people’s needs so that we can love them better.
It is possible for us to let our thinking get out of line so that doubts and questions and even suspicions about God slip into our subconscious. We must discipline our grey matter so we think creatively and positively about God. When we do this, our love for him will grow stronger.
The scribe who asked Jesus the question about the greatest commandment (Mark 12:29-31) seemed to combine both the soul and mind in the one word: ‘understanding’. Genuine, thoughtful love is a love that is full of understanding.
It is worth thinking about.
To read more on this topic see Living in the Image of God, Barry Chant (Miranda: Tabor, 2012 available in eBook and Paperback) from which this edited extract is taken.