“Be Transformed by Making Your Mind Over”

GOD, in creating man, endowed him with the faculty of consciousness known as “mind”.* It is where thought originates and with it we gather information, reason things out and reach certain conclusions. It operates according to a certain law or rule of action. It follows, therefore, that if the mind is turned toward evil, it will move ever farther in that direction.

Today the continued bent of men’s minds is toward evil, a continual bent of thinking contrary to the will of the Creator. (Isa. 55:8-11, AS) It is even as it was before the flood of Noah’s day when Jehovah “saw that the wickedness of man on the earth was great, and that the whole bent of his thinking was never anything but evil”.—Gen. 6:5, AT.

How did man’s mind get this bent? One thing we may be sure of, Adam did not have such a bent of mind when he was created, for all God’s work is perfect. (Deut. 32:4) But after he willfully and selfishly bent his mind away from God and toward evil he stamped the same inclination upon his offspring. And the one instrumental in man’s inclining his mind in the wrong direction in the first place, Satan the Devil, has bent down ever harder on men to make them lean ever farther away from God.

The present system of things is based on such wrong thinking and therefore is doomed. If we do not want to be destroyed with it we must change our bent of mind. We may not flatter ourselves with the thought that we can change this world. It is under the full control of Satan the Devil and to change it we would therefore have to change him. Can we do that? Of course not!

How can we change our bent of mind? Not by means of psychology, for it also is bent according to this world. We must go to God’s Word, the Bible. As the apostle Paul instructs us: “Quit being fashioned after this system of things, but be transformed by making your mind over, that you may prove to yourselves the good and acceptable and complete will of God.” (Rom. 12:2, NW) And we must approach that Word with unprejudiced and honest hearts, earnestly and prayerfully studying it to learn its enlightening truth.

Nor may we leave out the power of God’s spirit in this matter of transforming our minds. Only by means of it does the information in God’s Word really become understandable to us. (1 Cor. 2:10, 12) Additionally, we need the help of God’s visible organization even as the Israelites needed the temple arrangement with its priesthood and even as the early Christian congregation looked to the governing body at Jerusalem for help.—Mal. 2:7; Acts 15:1-31.

With God’s Word in our minds and hearts we really have a new powerful force working within us helping us to correct our thinking and to change our lives; thus putting away the old personality and putting on the new personality which is renewed through accurate knowledge. (Eph. 4:22-24; Col. 3:9-11, NW) The Bible reveals God to us and shows us how he acts, what he thinks and what his principles or rules of conduct are. By looking at him through our accurate knowledge of his Word we can be transformed and can become an image of him by reflecting what he is, imitating him in conduct and thought, by expressing ourselves like him and by meeting his requirements of us. Then, regardless of external differences of language or race we will be Christians united in love for the carrying out of God’s will.

[Footnotes]