Flourishing Life

In The Matrix, Morpheus offers Neo the blue pill or the red pill — comfortable illusion or uncomfortable truth. It’s dramatic, but the point is simple: most people don’t realize their mindset is being shaped. They just absorb what’s around them and call it reality.

That’s how brainwashing works. It’s passive. Quiet. Undetected. You don’t choose it; you drift into it.

This series, Brainwashed or Believing, is about refusing to drift. Instead of letting the culture disciple our thinking, we’re bringing our thoughts under the loving leadership of Christ.

The real question isn’t whether your mind is being shaped. It’s who is shaping it.

This series builds on an earlier post, “When Your Mindset Misguides You.” At the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry he said “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news” (Mark 1:15 NIV). Repent means to “change your mindset” or “change your way of thinking.” He calls us to rethink everything according to his life and ministry and the coming Kingdom of God. Let the rulership of God shape your way of thinking instead of the culture in which we’re surrounded.

It seems to me that much of the accelerating decline in mental health over the past decade — especially among adolescents and young adults — is not random. It is connected to ways of thinking that are fractured at their foundation.

We’ve watched social isolation increase. We have handed ourselves over to digital life. And in doing so, we have opened our minds to an unfiltered stream of distortion — misinformation, disinformation, curated realities, endless comparison. It forms us more than we realize.

What we are witnessing is not merely a behavioral crisis. It is a crisis of thought.

There is a battle underway, and it is a battle of the mind. We’re being quietly discipled into a radically individualistic, godless vision of what it means to be human — autonomous, self-defining, accountable to no authority beyond the self. And we’re paying a high price.

Jesus says “repent and believe,” change your mind, trust your life and your way of life to me. The Kingdom of God is not an accessory to your life, it’s a rescue mission, an invasion into enemy territory. A new King has arrived, your way of thinking must change.

When the Apostle Paul was writing to the churches in Corinth, he was dealing with opponents who contrasted their strength with Paul’s weakness, their eloquence with Paul’s fumbling, their coercive power with Paul’s servant attitude. His opponents were playing the world’s game. Ancient Roman society valued rhetorical sophistication, public dominance, social honor, and visible strength. But Paul was following a different King. He wrote: 

“For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:3-5 ESV).

The battle’s not so much about behavior, but interpretation. It’s about who defines reality. We often think sin begins with action. Scripture says it begins with imagination and reasoning: a thought forms, a belief settles, a life follows.

Paul call us to a discipleship of the intellect.

This phrase may seem unfamiliar. We disciple habits, behaviors, and emotions. Yet many of us never disciple our thinking. Instead we let the world’s way of thinking, the world’s outlook and perspective brainwash us, and we don’t even realize it’s happening. 

Undisciplined, worldly thinking, leads us to resist God’s loving leadership.

When a thought says: 

“You are your own authority.”

“You alone know your truth”

“Desire determines identity.”

“Freedom means no restraint.”

“Success is everything.”

These aren’t harmless slogans, they’re theological claims. They preach a “gospel.” They declare a king.

They shape how you interpret your experiences, your body, your purpose, your pain. They tell you what to worship and what to reject. And because they’re repeated constantly–in media, education, entertainment, and politics–they begin to feel obvious, self-evident, beyond question. 

But, they’re not neutral. They’re competing allegiances. They train the mind to live as if Christ has no authority and no claim over reality. Once that mindset settles in, obedience to Christ feels foreign.

That’s how strongholds form. Not with dramatic rebellion, but with absorbed assumptions.

Spiritual warfare is intellectual before it’s behavioral. Paul targets ideas, arguments, and mental frameworks. Sin begins in distorted knowledge about God. The standard is not what carries the day in popular culture. The plumb line is true knowledge of God in Christ. Christian discipleship includes discipled thinking.

To “take every thought captive to obey Christ” is not about mental suppression, it’s about ordering the mind under a better King. It means actively training thinking to move in the direction of the character of Christ. Paul calls us to a mindset, a mental framework, or worldview that is increasingly shaped by Christ.

A thought captive to Christ is not diminished. It is clarified. Anxiety becomes prayerful dependence. Comparison becomes gratitude. Bitterness becomes forgiveness. Self-exaltation becomes humility. Despair becomes hope grounded in resurrection. Captivity to Christ liberates thought from distortion.

Paul doesn’t say, “stop thinking.” He’s says redirect your thinking towards obedience to the one who gave himself up for you and who calls you to an abundant, flourishing life of grace. Replace lies with God’s Word. Replace cultural narratives with the Kingdom narrative.

The word that keeps coming to mind for me is “intentional.”

To repent is an act of the will, inspired and guided by the Holy Spirit. I must make a decision, like Neo choosing the red pill. The struggle is real but so is God’s power and love. And, over time, the mind surrendered to Christ becomes refreshed, renewed, steady, clear, and free.

Next week we’re going to consider the fact that this battle for the mind is a real battle and we have a real Enemy who is behind the brainwashing. He doesn’t fight fair, but our God is greater!

Check out the Video Version