Let’s Kill “So Heavenly Minded, No Earthly Good”

I first heard the expression that people could be so heavenly minded that they were no earthly good while I was in high school, and I’ve heard it many times since. But, I can say, without exaggeration, that I have never met such a person in my 40 years of being a Christian. Not even once.

And I never will.

The reason I’ll never meet a Christian so heavenly minded as to be of no earthly good is heavenly minded people are always those who do the most earthly good.

Always.

C. S. Lewis was absolutely right in Mere Christianity:

If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.

Yes.

So where did this idea come from?

Well, Satan of course! He doubtless was first to articulate the notion and he spread it to his minions who have been using it as a major talking point ever since.

Almost every time I teach on eternity (my favorite topic), someone drags out that old canard. This proves Lewis right on another point: we always run to the side of the boat that is already nearly gunwale under the waves. The problem with most of the Christians in the Western world today isn’t being too heavenly minded. Just the opposite: most Christians are so worldly minded they are of little heavenly good.

So my brothers and sisters in Christ, let us gleefully drive a wooden stake through the heart of this silliness because worldliness is sucking the lifeblood out of many Christians, and let us set our hope fully on the grace to be given us when Jesus Christ is revealed (1 Pet. 1:13).

Col. 3:1-4: “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.”

Amen.