Day 15: What Hollows the Mind

We all go a little crazy when someone takes too long to respond to a text, email or phone call, don't we? Or is that just me? We send a message and we have an unspoken expectation about how long it should take someone to respond, and when they don't, our minds start filling in the blanks. Did I offend them? Are they ignoring me? Why aren't they responding? Did they not get the text? Should I follow-up? Or if you're like my mom, you're wondering if your daughter is dead on the side of the road and you should start planning her funeral. (PS: I love you, Mom, and I know it's because you care.) Our insecurities rise with each passing moment and our minds scramble to fill the unknown with the known, making assumptions about why this person is not responding.

My very wise friend, Tim, once told me, "Assumptions are the lowest form of intelligence." 

Don't we do the same with God? When we believe God is a long time in coming - longer than we expected or hoped - in answering our prayers or bringing to pass something specific in our lives, we take matters into our own hands. As humans we do not dwell well in ambiguity and uncertainty, and so we take steps to give definition and shape to that ambiguity, to turn it into something we can touch and feel and know. The unknown is scary, the known is safe. While waiting for the truth to reveal itself, for the facts to be made known as to why the delay, the insecurities, questions, and doubt take root. We begin to second-guess the very nature and character of God. Wait, maybe he can't be trusted like I thought. Maybe his word can't be trusted. Maybe his ways can't be trusted, we think to ourselves. 

The ancient Israelites had the act of making assumptions down to an art form, quite literally giving shape their assumptions. Exodus 32 tells the tale of the golden calf, when the Israelites fashion an idol and bow down to worship it. But prior to that, their leader, Moses, had ascended Mount Sinai to meet with God, and it was there on the mountain that God would deliver the Ten Commandments. For forty days and forty nights, Moses met with God and for all those days and nights, "the cloud covered it, and the glory of the LORD settled on Mount Sinai...To the Israelites the glory of the LORD looked like a consuming fire on top of the mountain" (Exodus 24:15, 16a, 17). 

But down at the foot of the mountain? Assumptions were flooding the minds of the people. Take note of what the opening of chapter 32 conveys:

When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered Aaron and said, 'Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don't know what has happened to him (Exodus 32:1).

As for this fellow Moses, we don't know what's happened to him.

Ambiguity. 

Uncertainty.

Doubt.

Assumptions.

So, what do the people do? They start filling in the blank. Well, we can't see this Moses fellow, so let's make something we can see. We can't see this God he proclaims or really see how he's working, so let's make a god we can hold in our hands. Let's make the unknown, known. So, they give up all their gold earrings, and Moses' brother, Aaron, fashions a golden calf, to which the people offer sacrifices to, indulging in revelry and general shenanigans to boot.

In the new Amazon TV series (which is amazing, by the way), The Rings of Power, Galadriel, one of the main characters, said in the wake of an unexpected turn from the enemy, when all the people were scattered and they weren't sure who was dead or alive, "What cannot be known hollows the mind. Fill it not with guesswork."  

What cannot be known hollows the mind. 

Fill it not with guesswork.

When we start making assumptions about God's or other people's motives, behaviors, or reasonings, which is to say the "unknown," it hollows our minds. And filling it with guesswork doesn't help. It starts to carve out spaces in our brain filled with doubt, fear, worry, and unbelief.  

Ultimately, hollowed minds lead to hollowed hearts.

"Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done" (Romans 1:28).

To avoid hollowed minds, we have to fill them with truth, with what is known, chiefly "the knowledge of God," as Paul wrote in Romans. Minds filled with the weight of who he is are far less likely to be hollowed out, to be filled with guesswork. A.W. Tozer said in his masterful work, Knowledge of the Holy, "The man who comes to a right belief about God is relieved of ten thousand temporal problems at once..." 

To come to a right belief about God - a belief free of assumptions and guesswork - is to come to a mind that is full rather than hollow, and a heart that is likewise. 

But how do we discover what is known about God, to come to a right belief about him? 

Look to his Word and no other source.

Look to his Word, "like gold refined seven times" (Psalm 12:6), gold far superior to that of the golden calf.

While the Israelites danced and sang around the golden calf, they did so with hollow minds. Little did they know, God had come to fill their hollowed minds - and their hollowed hearts. 

"This is the covenant I will establish with the people of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people" (Hebrews 8:10). 

Hollowed minds hollow no more, filled with the truth of God rather than guesswork.