The apostle Paul told the Colossians, “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things” (Col. 3:2), an evergreen command for all Christians in all generations. There’s an echo there of Jesus’s rebuke to Peter, when he told him he was setting his mind not on the things of God but on the things of man (Mark 8:33; Matt. 16:23).
Set your minds, Paul says. In other words, be intentional. Seek first Christ and his kingdom.
But why is it so hard to do this?
Looking over the landscape of the church, and looking into my own heart, I can point to three reasons we’re prone to set our minds on earthly things rather than look to God, with each reason adding a layer of complexity.
1. We’re drowning in digital distraction.
This is the easiest one to spot. Everyone is addicted to their phone, it seems. More addicted than we even realize. Myself included.
As a result, we’re drowning in distraction. These technological tools trivialize our lives and make it hard to keep our minds and hearts open to the transcendent, to what God is doing in the world. Digital diversions keep us perpetually restless.
This isn’t a new problem, of course. In the 17th century, Pascal wrote, “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone”—and that was well before the constant clamor of a busy world of smartphones and their ceaseless notifications and incoming messages. If it was difficult then to avoid distraction and trivialities, how much harder is the task today.
Without serious intentionality and better habits, we’ll continue to use the phone in ways that make it harder to set our minds on anything substantive at all, much less on things above. The phone will remain a convenient mechanism that conceals and drowns out the quiet, insistent voice of God. We’ll drink from a never-ending stream of trivialities, scrolling from one item to the next, while slowly losing our capacity to feel the weightier matters of life and know the deep things of God.
Distraction, in part due to our phones—that’s the most obvious obstacle to setting our minds on things above right now. But let’s go a level deeper.
2. Our imaginations are captive to a lesser story.
Our minds are meant to be set on something, and one reason it’s hard to keep looking north is that our compass is broken. The magnets don’t work right, and instead of pointing true north, the compass is often pointing northwest or northeast—to some kind of story that isn’t the main story of our world.
We all live out of a story. We make choices informed by whatever narrative gives shape and significance to our lives. When our compass fails to point true north, we wander around, showing the world through our attitudes and actions that our attention is directed toward some other story, a narrative less important than the scriptural storyline.
For some, it’s the story of a successful career. For others, it’s the accumulation of wealth. Many live as if the most important story is political, as if we could pinpoint the center of world history in Washington, DC. More than a few live for leisure and entertainment. We want to seek first the kingdom, but it’s the American Dream that gets most of our attention. I feel the pull of all these lesser stories on a regular basis. They’re lesser because they fade in comparison to the central story of God’s redemptive plan for the world.
Whenever we live according to lesser stories, we’re likely to focus more on what’s happening nationally than globally or more on what’s happening individually than in our community. We interpret events and moments and movements from the standpoint of whatever lesser story has seized our imagination: politics, technology, personal comfort, or professional ambition. We’re less likely to view current events from the perspective of what’s happening to the church worldwide. We don’t see milestones in life from the perspective of our growth in holiness. We don’t look at cultural developments from the perspective of how they may aid or hinder Christians in our mission.
To seek what is above requires a change of attention and affection, whereby we share God’s heart for the nations and God’s love for the church. We love our neighbors best not when we live according to the lesser stories but when we stand out.
That’s why it’s essential to examine our hearts and assess the primacy of the stories that shape our lives. We should look at what dominates our thoughts when we wake up and when we go to bed, where our minds wander in moments of quiet, and how our daily actions align or don’t align with our professed beliefs.
There’s one more reason it’s hard to set our minds on things above, and this is the toughest one of all.
3. We focus our faith primarily on ‘what works.’
There’s a pragmatic impulse in society today that judges religion by the standard of “whatever works,” and no one is immune to this temptation—not even those of us who go to church. This may be the toughest obstacle we face. It’s certainly the hardest to discern.
In a society where most people assume religion exists to help you “be true to yourself” or “chase your dreams,” we can easily fall for a pseudoversion of seeking whatever is above but only insofar as the heavenly stuff helps us with the earthly. It may look like we’re seeking what’s above when we’re actually using our faith as a means to get what we want here below. Christianity becomes a means to some other end. We harness the heavens for earthly aims.
How can church leaders identify this pragmatic impulse and counter it? Some pastors believe the answer is “God-centered preaching.” That’s certainly part of the solution. But in too many cases, those who want to be God-centered don’t do enough to show how God’s Word connects with daily concerns and pressing issues.
It’s possible for our preaching to sound like it’s from another planet—a 40-minute stream of gibberish that fails to connect with questions from below in a way that might reset the compass and reorient our lives. It’s not a question of “God-centeredness” versus “practicality.” That’s a false dichotomy. What we need is the relentless pursuit of both: God-centered application to all of life.
If we’re to truly seek what’s above, we must bust through the immanent frame that holds us only to earthly horizons, and truly encounter God. To know the God of the Bible, to truly experience him, means having a relationship with Someone whose Word will impinge upon our daily thoughts and activities. We need God’s Word and God’s people to help us set our minds on things above. Our desire is not to use God for our personal agenda but to worship the God who sets us on the path of his kingdom purposes.
I’m sure there are other obstacles to setting our minds on things above. But at a minimum, it’ll require resisting digital distractions, examining ourselves to make sure we’re not held captive by lesser stories, and encountering the God whose power overcomes our pragmatism.
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