Introduction

Looking at the universe filled with interdependent creations and life-sustaining galaxy like ours, it is self explanatory that the Creator had thought strategically and planned it well. “God is a thinking God, and as such must be coming up with new ideas constantly”[i]. In Genesis 1: 26, this thinking God created man after his own image.  Therefore, mankind should also be skillful in thinking and planning as like begets like.

There seems a direct correlation between thinking and success in life. The works of authors like Napoleon Hill[ii] and Joey Reiman[iii] show that people who think critically accumulate wealth. However, not only to prosper, the uncertain future- “that is riddled with change, challenges, and risk”[iv], demands everyone to think. Even if everyone should think critically in this ever changing world, the task becomes more daunting for leaders. “Leaders today must learn to apply their full range of strategic thinking competencies to the complex challenges their organizations are facing”[v].

Strategic thinking “has two major components: insight about the present and foresight about the future”[vi]. The challenge is how leaders spend time to foresight about the future while the pressure from present time mounts high and while survival is at stake. Canton underscored, “While many might seem focused on the present, the most successful leaders- be they business executives or politicians or social leaders- have a keen sense of the future and a sharp ability to see what’s next”[vii].

Unfortunately and on top of the above challenge, there are many cultural and religious beliefs that negate the importance of strategic thinking that involves the mind and the future. There has been always a tendency from religious people to undermine the roles of science and mind, and consider them against God and their spiritual life. For that matter, I have spent lots of time to research the very reasons why this attitude has been developed more among evangelicals since I didn’t notice such bitter attitude while I was an Orthodox Christian. For the purpose of this particular paper and also avoid biases from scholars who aren’t evangelical, I preferred to review the works of two evangelical scholars- Os Guinness and Mark Noll.

Both authors pointed out that evangelicals are undermining the mind and in turn don’t think. Though they are addressing the same issue, their approaches differ. Os Guinness pointed out, "Evangelical anti-intellectualism is both a scandal and a sin”[viii]. He underlined, “It is a scandal in the sense of being an offense and a stumbling block that needlessly hinders serious people from considering the Christian faith and coming to Christ. It is a sin because it is a refusal, contrary to the first of Jesus' two great commandments, to love the Lord our God with our minds”[ix].

On the other hand, Mark Noll’s main quest was to show why this scandal and sin emerged. He wanted to know the historic reasons why “does the characteristic respect for the mind seen both in the sixteenth-century Reformers and in the seventeenth-century Puritans no longer prevail widely among modern evangelicals?”[x] He showed that series of revivals since the beginning of the 18th C, which brought millions into evangelism, were with prices. He laments that since then evangelicals abandoned universities, arts, science, and replaced study with activism, wisdom that lasted for centuries with populism, and time-tried beliefs with pragmatism.