The action film Inception uses a science fiction idea to tell the story of an amazing heist. A corporate spy and thief has developed a unique capability to enter the subconscious of victims while they are in a chemically induced deep dream state, then insert characters and situations into the dream, leading ultimately to uncovering valuable corporate information. The main point of the story turns out to be the unintended consequences of planting ideas in people’s minds. When the main character places one idea in his own wife’s mind—that maybe the world we live in is just an illusion—the idea takes root, becomes all-absorbing, and ultimately leads to ruin.
Think of the powerful forces in history that were simply ideas before they entered into human experience. Until the moment the detonator was tripped in a metal sphere on a hundred-foot-high platform in the desert of New Mexico on July 16, 1945, the atom bomb was a theory. Just an idea. But in a split second of blinding light and concussion the idea became a force that would make nations cower and change geopolitical realities irrevocably. Democracy was a theory that was debated in the cities of ancient Greece before anybody thought to see if it could work. Long before the Wright brothers flew the first manned airplane at Kitty Hawk, someone had the idea of the airfoil—a wing that would create suction on the topside, making it possible to lift a heavier-than-air machine into the sky. In 1982 a worldwide network of interconnected networks was standardized—the internet—but only on the basis of the idea of “packet-switched networks,” which came out of the 1960s.
Then there are the great social ideas: marriage as a union between a man and a woman; freedom and equality; justice and law; economic opportunity and higher education. Any real-life experience of such things has been possible only because of the ideas behind them. Such ideas do not hang in the air and drop on unsuspecting individuals—people take the good ideas (and bad ones too) and become champions of those ideas. That is powerful influence.
Various biblical authors make clear that our lives must be governed by higher principles. Call them “truth” or “wisdom” or even “rightness” (justice), ideals matter because the best of life on earth is an impress of the God of heaven. Out of those ideals flow ideas. From the structure and substance of our ideas flow our priorities, decisions, and actions. And what we do in life then flows out and influences the people around us. Ideas matter. Great ideals propel us toward open highways; really bad ideas put us in the ditch.
Our minds being the incubators where ideas are birthed and nurtured then it is extremely important that we take Romans 12:1-2 with the seriousness it deserves….especially vs 2. (J.B. PHILLIPS-Romans 12:1-2) …”With eyes wide open to the mercies of God, I beg you, my brothers, as an act of intelligent worship, to give him your bodies, as a living sacrifice, consecrated to him and acceptable by him. Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God re-mould your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets all his demands and moves towards the goal of true maturity.”