Jesus – you shall love the Lord with all your mind – intellect
While Jesus is praised for acclaiming this it does not mean much.
The command came from the Torah which itself commanded much stupidity.
Ridiculous and irresponsible doctrines were offered and believed under the cover
of, “It is for an unseen purpose” or “God knows best.”
Buddhism preceded Jesus and also commanded careful use of the intellect as did
Jainism. Zoroastrianism also commanded the use of the right mind.
Christians sever intellect from its context. The vast majority of people at the
time thought the world was flat and maybe was laid out on the back of some
animal. And that the sky was a dish. Jesus himself would not have challenged
such terrible views so intellect means little coming from him. Interestingly the
Book of Revelation which partly claims to be dictated by the resurrected Jesus,
imagines that the stars can fall on the earth – reflecting the old notion that
the stars were merely lamps hanging in some ceiling.
And there are gross errors and there is sophistry in his teachings. Note how he
gives out the parable of the seed and thinks his disciples need a private
explanation of what it meant when that was pretty obvious anyway. And the
secrecy was stupid. We have got cleverer since his time. But unbelievably it is
not long since we discovered printing. A bit of intelligence should have figured
that out centuries before. We also took too long to figure out the wheel. My
point? Jesus did not know what smart meant. Like all religious leaders of that
time, he only meant smart as his culture understood it.
There is no warrant for thinking Jesus would be okay with the intellectual and
scientific progress we have made.
His reference to the intellect came from a quotation - it is mentioned in
passing as if there are other things more important. Too much is made of
this mention by the Church. It is no wonder Jesus made it without giving
direction or guidance as his respect for intellect, like everybody else of his
time, was shallow.