Philippians 4:8-9 (NLT)
8 And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing.
Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and
lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of
praise. 9 Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from
me—everything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be
with you.
The apostle implores us to fix our thoughts on those
things which are true, honorable, right, pure, lovely and admirable. We are to
put aside negative and unrighteous thoughts and instead think about what is
worthy of praise. We are to put these good thoughts into practice that we may
always be at peace with God.
The movie A Beautiful Mind traces the life of genius
mathematician and Nobel Prize winner John Forbes Nash, Jr. (played by Russell
Crowe), who is tortured by paranoid schizophrenia.
Nash was a genius mathematician studying at Princeton,
seeking to discover a truly original idea. He explained his concept of
equilibrium in his 1950 dissertation, Noncooperative Games, which eventually
earned him the 1994 Nobel Prize in Economics. Long before this, while a student
at Princeton, Nash began to experience paranoid schizophrenia. Several
delusional characters left him unable to discern reality from hallucination.
His paranoia climaxed while Nash worked as a professor in
the early 1950s at M.I.T.'s Wheeler Defense Labs. Nash was recruited to
decipher Soviet codes for the U.S. government, but following his initial
experiences with code breaking, he descended into a delusional world where he
continued to work for government agent William Parcher (Ed Harris).
During this time, Nash's wife, Alicia (played by Jennifer
Connelly), admitted him to an institution that diagnosed and treated his
disease. After shock therapy and medications left him unable to think through
math problems, care for his young son, or be intimate with his wife, Nash
determined to get off the medications and reason his way through his severe
mental illness. His determination to overcome his illness led him to
re-establish his relationship with Princeton and eventually to resume teaching.
In 1994 Thomas King (Austin Pendleton) from the Nobel
Committee met with Nash to assess his mental state and determine if he would be
a suitable Nobel laureate. In their conversation, Nash says to King tongue in
cheek, "I am crazy." Then more soberly, "I take the newer
medications, but I still see things that are not here. I just choose not to
acknowledge them. Like a diet of the mind, I just choose not to indulge certain
appetites." [A Beautiful Mind (Dreamworks, 2001), rated PG-13, directed by
Ron Howard, written by Akiva Goldsman; submitted by Todd Dugard, Ontario,
Canada]
I love the words Nash used, “I still see things that are
not here. I just choose not to acknowledge them. Like a diet of the mind, I
just choose not to indulge certain appetites.” As Christians our minds are
flooded by many thoughts from the world. Some are healthy for us, while others
are intent on destroying us. Like Nash we must choose what to indulge in and
what to avoid. We should keep our thoughts on what the apostle describes above
as true, right, pure, love and admirable and avoid the evil thoughts that
attempt to cloud our minds.
No comments:
Post a Comment