Biography
Dr. Calvin Miller is the newly appointed Professor of Communication and Ministry Studies and Writer-in-Residence at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. He has spent the last twenty-five years dividing his time between writing and pastoring. From 1966 until just recently, he was pastor of a Southern Baptist church in Omaha, Nebraska. He went there when the congregation numbered 10, and led them to a growth in membership of more than 2,500. Dr. Miller has written twenty-three books of popular theology and inspiration. His first book, The Singer, was a narrative in the tradition of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, and was followed by two sequels, The Song and The Finale. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted above.]

"The Mind of the Servant" 
This is an important day and age, because we hear time and time again about the battle for the American mind. I am not sure if, when we hear about the battle for the American mind, we may really be talking about the battle for the American brain.

I would like to read you just two or three verses that St. Paul wrote two thousand years ago in
Philippians 2:3:
 

Do nothing out of selfish ambition and empty conceit, but in lowliness of mind, let each of you consider the other better than themselves. Your attitude, or your mind, should be that of Jesus Christ, who, being in very nature God, did not think equality with God something to be grasped, but Jesus made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, and was made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death -- even death on a cross!

When St. Paul encourages us in Philippians 2:5 to have the mind of Christ, I think a very important distinction is being made here between the idea of a mind and the idea of a brain. A brain and a mind are certainly not the same thing. For instance, all of us know people who have the former who don't have the latter at all.

The brain, however, is a rather remarkable organ. It operates at various levels and speeds. When the brain operates between zero and three cycles per second, it is operating at what is called a "fade-away condition," which is a condition common to comas and near death. If the brain speeds up to a beta-wave condition, somewhere between seventeen and thirteen cycles per second, it is in a deep-sleep condition. I like to say this is a condition of the mind like listening to a sermon from Leviticus. If we speed it up to between fourteen and twenty-one cycles per second, we are in the alpha-wave condition, a rather doing-business-as-normal sort of condition.

What amazes me about the brain is that it always weighs about three pounds. All human brains are just about the same size. It is really remarkable if you think, for instance, that Madame Curie and Tina Turner have just about the same size mind, or Werner Von Braun and Chevy Chase, or Einstein and Danny Devito.

The brain weighs about three pounds; it perches like a flower on top of a slender stalk, the spinal cord. There it operates in most unusual ways. To talk about the brain being astronomical in size -- there are thirteen billion cells in everybody's brain -- is not really not fair, because in truth there are more cells in the human brain than there are stars in all the solar systems we know about.

It is amazing to me that in the skin alone there are four thousand structures sensitive to pain; five hundred thousand which keep track of touch; two hundred thousand brain cells keep track of temperature alone. If you begin adding all the other cells, like the eyes, ears and the nose, you begin to get an idea of the immense complexity of the human brain. The only way to really visualize its size is to imagine telephone switchboards, each one big enough for cities like London or New York, and many of these throughout the human mind system. Then you begin to get a picture of the important work of the human brain. But it is not really the brain itself. The brain is the vehicle; the mind is the driver. It is this which St. Paul is making the plea to become inhabited by the mind of Christ.

There has been such a human outcry in the United States lately about education and cultural literacy. The recent remarks of the Japanese about the American worker being lazy or dimwitted certainly sets us all back a bit.

The Bible itself has very little to say about the brain. It always speaks to us about the mind, the place where we encounter life and the place where we use wisdom to chart our own direction. The Bible uses the word "mind" to infer that if we ever somehow get our minds right, maybe the issue of our brains would take care of themselves.

What Paul says in this passage is that the mind operates in three different ways. First of all, the Bible wants our minds to always be in the process of growth. I have always loved the eighth verse of Philippians 2, because it seems to say that Jesus had a mind that was growing. The verse really says that Jesus became obedient. There is something about the idea that stops us. It does not imply that Jesus was ever disobedient to his Father, but rather that the emphasis is on the word "become."

Jesus was in the process of becoming, like we all are. Most of us do not believe He just sort of sprung sweet, generous, intelligent as a baby on up. Some of the old saints had it that way. St. Alphonsus said that when Jesus was born he sat up in the manger, umbilical still wet, and said to His mother, "Hi, Mary. I'm the Son of God." We find that a little preposterous. Jesus was Himself in the process of growing.

I will never forget my first day at school. Mrs. Dirksen, my wonderful teacher, asked me what my name was. I worked on that all the way to school and I knew it. When she said, "What is your name and what is your mother's name?", it was a little more difficult.

I said, "Mama. My mother's name is Mama."

She said, "No. Mama is not your mother's name. Mama is what she is. Mama is what she does, but Mama is not her name."

"You are wrong about that, Mrs. Dirksen. We all call her Mama."

She said, "No. You ask her tonight."

I came home from school. Mom got in a little bit later and I said to her, "Mama, do you have another name? Mrs. Dirksen wants to know."

I remember my mother saying, "Well, sure, son. Everybody has got a name." She said, "My name is Ethel."

In my whole six years of existence, I had never heard that her name was Ethel. It sounded funny to me, like she should have a twin sister named Regular or Unleaded.

She said, "Not only that, but my middle name is Faye and my last name is Miller."

I understood this, because Miller was my last name, too. You see, I wasn't really learning anything about my world; I was simply growing in understanding the immensity of it and the largeness of it.

To be in the mind of Christ means that we are always growing. We cannot grow, however, unless we overcome this inordinate loyalty to ourselves. I am always amazed at how simple people like St. Francis can kiss a leper and from that moment of counting his life as lost, become such a servant that he could write things and say prayers like, "Lord, make me an instrument of your peace."

I love Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who in the beautiful way of life that she lives, can be granted the Nobel Prize. Yet, this wonderful, wonderful honor does not spoil her, nor keep her from returning to the streets of Calcutta where she plays out again the wonderful role of servanthood in people's lives.

To understand that we ourselves must break this narcissistic loyalty to ourselves and be free of that, to win the admiration of Christ, means that our minds must have this central focus on Jesus. It is rather like having Christ's mind live in us. He occupies our minds and looks out through our eyes to see a hurting world.

I will never forget passing through the hospital in Omaha one day. As I walked the corridors, I passed through the children's wing. There in the children's wing I saw a tiny baby, perhaps a year-and-a-half old. His little body was flat on a bed with tubes running into it and the oscilloscopes were blinking his life signals from the wall behind him.

Touched by his condition, I asked the nurse about him. She said, "I'm glad that you asked. The truth is hardly anybody ever does ask. His mother died when he was born. His father is in prison. He has no relatives who ever come to see him. No one ever asks, except for you. Thanks for asking."

I left the hospital that day and I was touched by the fact that my children were whole. I even remember saying something like, "God, I thank you that my kids are well and strong." Then it seemed that almost out of the atmosphere, I heard God say, "Ah, but this is your child. If you have seen him with your eyes, he belongs to you."

This must be the idea that Jesus Christ had as He looked with His eyes into a hurting world.

The poet, T. E. Brown, walked along the shore one day. Perhaps he saw the whole issue of how we get this wonderful mind of Christ. He looked down in the sand and he saw a conch. He put the shell to his ear to listen to the sea roar. As he moved the shell past his face to his ear, some spidery legs of a crab came out and almost nipped his cheek as he moved the old empty shell to his ear to listen to the sea.

That night when he got home, he thought about how the old shell had died and how this wise little crab had moved into this empty shell to take up a place of strong, firm residence. He thought about human life. If only we could empty it, Christ would fill it with Himself. He wrote of that old shell in perhaps what is one of the greatest sets of lines in the human language when he says:

If thou could'st empty all thyself of self, Like to a shell dishabited, Then might He find thee on the ocean shelf and say, This is not dead, and fill you with himself instead. But thou art so filled up with very thou And hast such shrewd activity, that when he comes He says, This is enough unto itself, 'Twere better let it be. It is so small and full, there is no room for me.

To have the mind of Christ, then, must mean that we'll be servants, empty out our own busy schedules -- make place for Him Who made place for everyone -- that Jesus Christ's mind might occupy our mind; that we walk this world seeing as He saw it, living out our lives as servants in this selfish world. We will have gotten in touch with God to the point where we can say, "We have broken our stranglehold on ourselves."

Now there is real room. He may walk and talk and live within the center of our lives. This it is, I believe, to have the mind of Jesus Christ.

Interview with Orley Herron
Interviewed by Calvin Miller

Orley Herron: Calvin, I certainly enjoyed the message that you brought to us today.

Calvin Miller: Thank you, Orley.

Herron: You have written in a very impressive fashion and as university president, I really pay respect to you for your significant writings. I know you probably had a message and focus for each writing, but is there an overall spiritual focus that you are trying to do with all of your writing?

Miller: I think, Orley, if I have a central focus, it is that I would like to try to show how Jesus Christ is a reasonable proposition for everybody in the world who can touch and whom He might touch. I think even a book like The Singer, which has enjoyed some secular success as well, still has for an underlying purpose the ideal of saying to our world, "Jesus is a reasonable proposition for your lives." Most everything I have written is to confirm the idea that Christ ought to have a place in people's lives and schedules.

Herron: What haven't you written? What are the things that you would have written if you would have had time?

Miller: I think I am about to sign a new contract with MacMillan on a book that would deal with a look at the pastoral ministry over several decades -- more of an autobiographical thing. We're looking at the writings of James Herriott, the Yorkshire veterinarian, as a model of catching Americana over several decades while the gospel is preached to a particular local congregation.

Herron: Calvin, a couple weeks ago I attended my high school reunion. I won't tell you how many years it was. We had a motto that said, "Three things come not back -- time past, the spoken word, the neglected opportunity."

You have as a primary rule for life the phrase, "Time is a gift." Just four words. Why is that your motto?

Miller: I don't know. I really feel that we are on a linear time thing. Time is going by. We don't get a second shot at it. There is a verse in Psalm 90:12 that says, "Lord teach us to number our days, when we apply our hearts to wisdom."

I love the scene in "Dead Poet's Society" where the wonderful school teacher uses the phrase "Carpi diem" -- in Latin "Seize the day." I think the idea is always the same, Orley, that since you don't get a second chance to repeat a single minute of it, then you ought to live the first minute of it as well and as content-filled as may be done.

Herron: How does it feel to be out of the pastorate? Now you are a professor at a university.

Miller: It certainly feels different, but I like it. After pastoring for thirty-five years, I found our church got bigger and bigger. Finally, attendance was up sometimes near two thousand on Sunday. The demands of that job often obliterated some other things that I always enjoy like writing and reading. Frankly, I am looking forward to a chance to minister to students, to communicate a new vision of Jesus Christ in the classroom and at the same time, to continue writing which I hope will be blessed.

Herron: We're looking forward to hearing from you again. Thank you, Calvin.