Ben Williams
As I’ve grown up and started my career, I’ve watched a lot of my friends do the same. I’ve watched them start jobs, move to new places, start families, and try to determine the direction of their lives. However, I have noticed that – in their lives and mine – we often make inconsistent decisions based on the goals that we are pursuing at the time. Maybe we want to start a family, but we also want to travel. We want to settle down in one place, but we also want to push our careers. We want to grow up and be responsible, but we also want the ability to drop everything and do whatever we want to do at any given time. I oftentimes see people as well that want to be religious and join a church but are unwilling to compromise on any of their current habits. Sometimes, when observing the decisions of people I know, it strikes me how inconsistent they are with what I thought were their goals. This highlights a talent of humanity: double-mindedness.
Double mindedness is mentioned throughout the Bible, but I don’t hear it talked about very often. James has a strong emphasis on the double-minded. In James 1:5-8, he says, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.” Unstable is a good way to describe this person. It is impossible to know what to expect from one who is double-minded, because it is so dependent on the goal that is in their minds at that time. Jesus puts it in different terms in the Sermon on the Mount, but I think the idea is the same. Matthew 6:22-24 says, “The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness! No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” These verses are separated into two separate sections in my bible, but they go together. The double-minded will be drawn in whichever direction their eye is looking, whether towards God or mammon. However, the issue is that we cannot serve God if we are not wholly committed to Him. He is not pleased by “partial devotion” (if that even makes sense as an idea).
The issue of double-mindedness is explored by C.S. Lewis in The Screwtape Letters. If you are unfamiliar with this book, it is written as a series of letters from Screwtape (a senior tempter) to his nephew, Wormwood (a tempter in training). In Chapter 10, the subject is faced with new friends with new ideas in opposition to his faith. In light of this, Screwtape advises two different approaches: one if the man is a fool and the other if he is intelligent. If he is a fool, Screwtape writes, “… you can get him to realize the character of the friends only while they are absent; their presence can be made to sweep away all criticism. If this succeeds, he can be induced to live, as I have known many humans live, for quite long periods, two parallel lives; he will not only appear to be, but actually be, a different man in each of the circles he frequents.” In the case of an intelligent man, Screwtape advises a different approach, writing, “He can be made to take a positive pleasure in the perception that the two sides of his life are inconsistent. This is done by exploiting his vanity. He can be taught to enjoy kneeling beside the grocer on Sunday just because he remembers that the grocer could not possibly understand the urbane and mocking world which he inhabited on Saturday evening; and contrariwise, to enjoy the bawdy and blasphemy over the coffee with these admirable friends all the more because he is aware of a ‘deeper,’ ‘spiritual’ world within him which they cannot understand.” Beyond the inherent sinfulness of either one of these traps, they can also inhibit our large-scale decision making, since we are pulled between two (or more) frames of thinking.
What can be done to prevent double-mindedness? One of the biggest is to align our goals. If we have decided to follow God, we need to analyze this goal alongside every other goal that we have in this life. We need to be aware of and realistic about any conflicts between our social goals, familial goals, career goals, and our faith. In addition to our goals, we also need to be aware of the desires of our heart. Our minds must be trained to recognize when any of our daily wants conflict with our service to God. This can only be done if we make a deliberate effort to keep our faith at the front of our minds. All of our decisions are made based on the goals of our mind and the desires of our heart. If we can align each of these with our faith, we can have the oneness of mind, heart, and soul that God desires from those who serve Him.
