Exercising Your “New Man” Nature
Ruth Ann Stites, Staff Writer
In 1999 V.H. Carr introduced the concept of 5 stages of technological adoption. From innovators who love trying the latest new gadget to the laggards who resist new technology until it is inevitable, we find a classic bell curve from the few, to the many, and back to the few. There are many factors involved in determining where someone falls in these 5 stages as this quote tells us:
Technology adoption is how people or organizations accept and use new technologies. It involves learning and adapting to new technologies. Technology adoption is affected by performance expectancy, effort expectancy, facilitating conditions, and social influence.1
All that to say, buying a new cell phone is either something you long for or dread or something in between those extremes.
Yet that new cell phone or computer or computer program has unexpected benefits in helping to keep your brain healthy. Dr. Andrew Weil pointed out that the best brain exercise is complex, hard, and rewarding.2 He mentions learning either a foreign language or a new computer program as prime ways to keep your brain functioning at its best.
How does all this relate to exercising your brain through forming the mind of Christ? Cross Discipleship thinking is hard, complex, and rewarding. It requires learning a whole new “operating system” very different from the one we came equipped with at birth—our old sin nature. Consider what Paul says in Ephesians 4:22-24:
You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.
And again, in Colossians 3:9-10:
Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.
Clearly the Great Apostle considered it work well worth doing.
The Beatitudes in Matthew 5:1-12 provide an excellent example of the different way of thinking our new creation nature demands. In general, experiences like poverty, mourning, hunger, and persecution are, to the “old man,” things to be avoided. But Jesus says all these things are blessings, make us happy, in the “new man” nature He offers us. Now, if working through those big, counter-intuitive, challenging expectations isn’t complex, hard, and rewarding exercise, I don’t know what is.
(1) Quoted from Technology Adoption Curve: 5 Stages of Adoption | Whatfix
(2) Andrew Weil, M.D., Healthy Aging: A Lifelong Guide to Your Well-Being.
(Photo credit: RA Stites, Shilo Museum, Springdale, July 2024)
