LUKE 2:41–49
Remember when only people contracted viruses? Remember when terms like parasite and worm were applied to living organisms and little brothers? Remember when viral infections were treated by doctors and quarantine meant the isolation of diseased people and pets?
No longer. Nowadays computers get sick. Preparation of this chapter would have begun several hours earlier had not a bio-hazardous, chemical-warfare-type warning put a freeze on my keyboard. “Open nothing! Your computer may have a virus!” I half expected Centers for Disease Control agents wearing radio-active gear to rush in, cover me, and run out with my laptop.
They didn’t, but a computer doctor did. He installed an antivirus program that protects the machine against 60,959 viruses.
I started to ask if Ebola was one, but I didn’t. I did learn that hundreds of thousands of viruses have been created, I’m assuming by the same folks who spray graffiti on buildings and loosen salt shakers at restaurants. Troublemakers who Trojan horse their way into your computer and gobble your data like a Pac-Man. I told the computer guy I’d never seen anything like it.
Later I realized I had. Indeed, a computer virus is a common cold compared to the Chernobyl-level attack you and I must face. Think of your mind as a computer made to store and process massive amounts of data (no comments about your neighbor’s hard-drive capacity, please). Think of your strengths as software. Pianists are loaded with music programs. Accountants seem to be born with spreadsheet capacity. Fun lovers come with games installed. We are different, but we each have a computer and software, and, sadly, we have viruses. You and I are infected by destructive thoughts.
Computer viruses have names like Klez, Anna Kournikova, and ILOVEYOU. Mental viruses are known as anxiety, bitterness, anger, guilt, shame, greed, and insecurity. They worm their way into your system and diminish, even disable, your mind. We call these DTPs: destructive thought patterns. (Actually, I’m the only one to call them DTPs.)
Do you have any DTPs?
When you see the successful, are you jealous?
When you see the struggler, are you pompous?
If someone gets on your bad side, is that person as likely to get on your good side as I am to win the Tour de France?
Ever argue with someone in your mind? Rehash or rehearse your hurts? Do you assume the worst about the future?
If so, you suffer from DTPs.
What would your world be like without them? Had no dark or destructive thought ever entered your mind, how would you be different? Suppose you could relive your life sans any guilt, lust, vengeance, insecurity, or fear. Never wasting mental energy on gossip or scheming. Would you be different?
What would you have that you don’t have? (Suggested answers are found on page 101.)
What would you have done that you haven’t done? (Suggested answers are found on page 101.)
Oh, to be DTP-free. No energy lost, no time wasted. Wouldn’t such a person be energetic and wise? A lifetime of healthy and holy thoughts would render anyone a joyful genius.
But where would you find such an individual? An uninfected computer can be bought—but an uninfected person? Impossible. Trace a computer virus back to a hacker. Trace our mental viruses back to the fall of the first man, Adam. Because of sin, our minds are full of dark thoughts. “Although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools” (Rom. 1:21–22 NIV).
Blame DTPs on sin. Sin messes with the mind. But what if the virus never entered? Suppose a person never opened Satan’s e-mails? What would that person be like?
A lot like the twelve-year-old boy seated in the temple of Jerusalem. Though he was beardless and unadorned, this boy’s thoughts were profound. Just ask the theologians with whom he conversed. Luke gives this account:
[His parents] found Him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, both listening to them and asking them questions.
And all who heard Him were amazed at His understanding and His answers. (Luke 2:46–47)
For three days Joseph and Mary were separated from Jesus. The temple was the last place they thought to search. But it was the first place Jesus went. He didn’t go to a cousin’s house or a buddy’s playground. Jesus sought the place of godly thinking and, in doing so, inspires us to do the same. By the time Joseph and Mary located their son, he had confounded the most learned men in the temple. This boy did not think like a boy.
Why? What made Jesus different? The Bible is silent about his IQ. When it comes to the RAM size of his mental computer, we are told nothing. But when it comes to his purity of mind, we are given this astounding claim: Christ “knew no sin” (2 Cor. 5:21). Peter says Jesus “did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth” (1 Pet. 2:22 KJV). John lived next to him for three years and concluded, “In Him there is no sin” (1 John 3:5).
Spotless was his soul, and striking was the witness of those who knew him. His fleshly brother James called Christ “the righteous man” (James 5:6). Pilate could find no fault in him (John 18:38). Judas confessed that he, in betraying Christ, betrayed innocent blood (Matt. 27:4). Even the demons declared his unique status: “I know who you are—the Holy One of God!” (Luke 4:34 NIV).
The loudest testimony to his perfection was the silence that followed this question. When his accusers called him a servant of Satan, Jesus demanded to see their evidence. “Which one of you convicts Me of sin?” he dared (John 8:46). Ask my circle of friends to point out my sin, and watch the hands shoot up. When those who knew Jesus were asked this same question, no one spoke. Christ was followed by disciples, analyzed by crowds, criticized by family, and scrutinized by enemies, yet not one person would remember him committing even one sin. He was never found in the wrong place. Never said the wrong word. Never acted the wrong way. He never sinned. Not that he wasn’t tempted, mind you. He was “tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15).
Lust wooed him. Greed lured him. Power called him. Jesus—the human—was tempted. But Jesus—the holy God—resisted. Contaminated e-mail came his way, but he resisted the urge to open it.
The word sinless has never survived cohabitation with another person. Those who knew Christ best, however, spoke of his purity in unison and with conviction. And because he was sinless, his mind was stainless. DTP-less. No wonder people were “amazed at his teaching” (Mark 1:22 NCV). His mind was virus-free.
But does this matter? Does the perfection of Christ affect me? If he were a distant Creator, the answer would be no. But since he is a next door Savior, the reply is a supersized yes!
Remember the twelve-year-old boy in the temple? The one with sterling thoughts and a Teflon mind? Guess what. That is God’s goal for you! You are made to be like Christ! God’s priority is that you be “transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Rom. 12:2 NIV). You may have been born virus-prone, but you don’t have to live that way. There is hope for your head! Are you a worrywart? Don’t have to be one forever. Guilt plagued and shame stained? Prone to anger? Jealousy? God can take care of that. God can change your mind.
If ever there was a DTP candidate, it was George. Abandoned by his father, orphaned by his mother, the little boy was shuffled from foster parent to homelessness and back several times. A sitting duck for bitterness and anger, George could have spent his life getting even. But he didn’t. He didn’t because Mariah Watkins taught him to think good thoughts.
The needs of each attracted the other—Mariah, a childless washerwoman, and George, a homeless orphan. When Mariah discovered the young boy sleeping in her barn, she took him in. Not only that, she took care of him, took him to church, and helped him find his way to God. When George left Mariah’s home, among his few possessions was a Bible she’d given him. By the time he left her home, she had left her mark.1
And by the time George left this world, he had left his.
George—George Washington Carver—is a father of modern agriculture. History credits him with more than three hundred products extracted from peanuts alone. The once-orphaned houseguest of Mariah Watkins became the friend of Henry Ford, Mahatma Gandhi, and three presidents. He entered his laboratory every morning with the prayer “Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.”2
God answers such prayers. He changes the man by changing the mind. And how does it happen? By doing what you are doing right now. Considering the glory of Christ. “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18).
To behold him is to become like him. As Christ dominates your thoughts, he changes you from one degree of glory to another until—hang on!—you are ready to live with him.
Heaven is the land of sinless minds. Virus-free thinking. Absolute trust. No fear or anger. Shame and second-guessing are practices of a prior life. Heaven will be wonderful, not because the streets are gold, but because our thoughts will be pure.
So what are you waiting on? Apply God’s antivirus. “Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth” (Col. 3:2). Give him your best thoughts, and see if he doesn’t change your mind.
ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS ON PAGE 97:
More sleep, joy, and peace
Hugged kids more, loved spouse better, invented computer-virus killer, and traveled to Paris to watch Max win the Tour de France