Humans are complex. The mind is a warzone. There are competing ideologies, divergent agendas, and flawed participants.  And many of us Christians minimize the intellect required to live authentically, and do not recognize how sin impacts our thinking.  Simply put, many of us have not learned how to love God with our mind.  Instead we think like consumers shopping for knowledge, following formats, and seeking instructors that conform to established buying preferences. Call it junk food for the mind. Resulting in intellectual simplicity, private religiosity, and subjective spirituality. But there is hope, there is so much room for growth if we embrace it!  By comprehensively examining Old Testament teachings concerning the mind, this book promotes a spirituality that puts thinking in its proper place.   It explains what God requires intellectually of us. It shows that our world is a labyrinth, but that God's revelation is our reliable guide. Let this be your motivation to strive for mental piety, wisdom, and intellectual development, for the glory of God and the fulfillment of our mandate on earth! *Dr. Smith addresses the role of thinking in the Christian life. His book excellently builds a case for why thinking is just as important as other spiritual disciplines and how it is an intended design by God for believers to engage in. In this book, Dr. Smith takes on the task of tackling a biblical-theological approach to thinking as found in the Old Testament. He spends much time working through the high points within the Torah, prophets, and writings in order to support his claim that thinking rightly is integral to the life of faith. This book is both edifying and challenging. So, I recommend this book to anyone who wants a deeper understanding of thinking and the role of thinking in the life of the believer. Take up the challenge and think about your thinking and it should be integrated with your faith. *Jesus commands us to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind. The first two instruments for loving God may seem obvious. But how do we love God with our mind? We cannot love what we do not know, and we cannot know something without thinking about it--a lot. Our thinking concerning God must be correct if our love is to be of the real person and not a figment of our imagination (which is idolatry). Richard Smith guides us clearly and rationally (!), as well as imaginatively, on the challenging--and eternally rewarding--path of discovering how to think about God, and thus love him truly. Both scholars and intellectually curious laypersons will find this work well worth the effort to explore. *Scholars have long noted the demise of the Western, Christian mind. It takes only a few conversations with most American believers to realize that thinking falls low on their list of priorities, if even on the list at all. Enter Richard Smith's Such a Mind as This. Smith takes his reader on a tour of the Old Testament's teaching on thinking, how important it is, and the dire consequences of ignoring it. My only prayer is that people will read and apply Such a Mind as This. The health of Christianity depends on it! *It is refreshing to read the writings of a scholarly Christian who believes deeply in his soul that the Garden of Eden existed. He explains in detail how Man's thinking changed after the fall of Adam. This is NOT light reading! It takes time to absorb this information, but it is a very worthwhile supplement when reading the books of the Old Testament. I could not find fault with any part of the author's reasoning. Parts of the book were tedious because reading it is like taking a college course. The difference is that the reader is studying the Bible, The Word of God, and not a subject of lesser importance. This is NOT entertainment! It contains no junk food for the soul. This book will challenge you to pay attention to your daily thinking because all sin begins by first engaging in wrong thinking. *I had the pleasure of copyediting this book. It didn't need much editing. Richard Smith writes with a straightforward, clear, unrelenting style, backed by some of the most exhaustive OT exegesis I have ever seen. Richard's overall message on the need for Christians to devote our minds intently but submissively to God's perfect wisdom comes through on every page—sometimes to the point of overkill. But many of his chapters present innovative, credible interpretations of OT books, from Genesis to Daniel. It's a big book, but plan on working through one chapter every two days and you'll have three weeks of meaty devotionals that will inspire you to serving God more fully and to higher-quality Bible studies. Why did you write this book? I realized that the root of anti-intellectualism and biblical ignorance among many Christians is due to a lack of theological thinking about thinking. Therefore, I wanted to cull as much as I could from the Old Testament about the mind to begin a discussion. I discovered that