If I could have a discussion with Charlotte Mason, I would gently challenge her on some passages in Ourselves where she brushes across the topic of our thoughts. Before I go further, I will make the disclaimer that I have not yet read this book entirely; I am merely stating my personal thoughts on a part that I recently read.
I believe that I have earned some authority to speak to the renewing of the mind, as well as torment by the enemy with thoughts that are neither desirable nor instigated by me. The Father of Lies knows which buttons to push; he recalls every horrible news story I've heard, or image I've seen. He knows the details of trashy movies and books I once had no problem with; he's the one responsible for my once lackadaisical attitude toward them. I agree with Charlotte when she advises, "...it is unwise for anyone to read newspaper accounts of those sorts of things, for even if you are not tempted to do the wickedness, the horrid picture of it remains, once you have allowed your Imagination to paint it for you" (p. 52). No question there.
I am intentional now about what I watch and read; however, in this day and age, no one has the power to stop every pop-up ad, and who knows what will come up next on the news? Before I know it, the "images" are formed in my mind, like it or not, and as I've written before, the enemy uses this greatly against me. Unimaginable horrors threaten to take over my sanity before I know what has happened. This plus all the mind-junk from the past make for a nasty combination.
Where I take some issue with Charlotte is in the way she tells us to not listen to people who are discussing such "sins," and in how to handle our thoughts. I'd like to think she refers to the actual horrors, but her tone leads me to think that we shouldn't even talk about the fact that "normal" people deal with this daily, even minute-by-minute. I confess I'm bothered by Charlotte's wording that those of us who are tormented by certain thoughts "allow" ourselves "...to think such thoughts" without simply "shutting the eyes" of our imaginations.
In defense of Miss Mason, I will say that I agree with her more often than not. She has felt like a wise mentor, one who guides me through homeschooling as well as life. Perhaps my admiration for her is what disappoints me to have a slight bone to pick. I feel like a troublemaker within the CM community, none of whom I've ever heard "call out" Charlotte on anything. But there is much more involved here, and obviously Charlotte had a rare type of mind-protecting discernment. I would wager that most of us have extreme difficulty simply "hurrying away from the thought to think of something else" (p.53).
John Piper's sermon "The Renewed Mind and How to Have It" offers excellent insight for those of us who struggle with this issue. Many have been through trauma that requires much more than just thinking about something else. Piper explains our problem this way:
"The mind suppresses the truth because the heart continues to feed it with hardness and won't let us submit to the supremacy of Christ."
Matters of the mind are matters of the heart. They are not flies that go away when we swat at them. My mind and heart are connected; the heart feeds the mind with lies that it has believed, and these manifest themselves all sorts of ways. According to Piper, this keeps us from submitting to Christ's omnipotence and majesty.
There is so much more to this than replacing a negative thought with a pleasant one as if it were all up to me. It is counterproductive to interfere with the Spirit's work. Piper points out that the same "renewing" used when Paul talks about "being transformed by the renewing of the mind" is used only one other time as a noun in the New Testament, in Titus 3:5:
"...according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us abundantly through Christ Jesus our Savior."
Those who unwillingly suffer from, as Charlotte calls it, "unclean imaginings," feel unclean enough by these abominations without being made to feel as though the individual is somehow causing them. Piper says that we have a "mindset" that must be renewed. Trying to think good thoughts is not a bad idea, but the issue is much bigger. Lies we believe can come from anywhere: liberties taken as children, the death of a parent, having witnessed a traumatic event, having been neglected, and on the list can go. As commendable as Charlotte's methods are, I admit there is disappointment that more grace can't be given to believers who find it difficult to endure the enemy's torment.
As believers, let's not forget that every aspect of healing and change in our lives requires the work of the Holy Spirit. It can be hard to know what that looks like. When one is in bondage to lies for so long, we almost feel as though we're doomed to that fate forever. Not only must we soak in truth from the outside in the form of verses, sermons, etc., but we must pray like crazy for heart-repair on the inside. No amount of happy-thought band-aids will accomplish this. It involves begging God to let us know Him, and for ourselves to be known.
In my healing from wounds and lies, a tactic of the enemy has been to put repulsive images in my mind in order to make me feel dirty, incurable, and far from Christ. My reaction still changes moment by moment, depending on my turning it over to the Lord. My prayer is that soon, I will have completely given it over to the Holy Spirit. Even in good times, my cracked heart goes back to the lie that soon the other shoe will fall. When we are so bent on not thinking about certain things, we are bound to think them. I ask the Spirit daily to get me to the point that I don't think about thinking about it!
Healing a broken, warped heart is a marathon. We want to believe that once a person walks an aisle or prays a prayer for Christ...bam!...none of my old ways of thinking will affect me. The devil has done a crafty job of selling us this bill of goods. I am in this for real, continuing to ask the Spirit to heal me slowly, and make me be able to say with authority and no platitudes that I know for sure that my heart has been healed. I have to be prepared for suffering and purging in the meantime.
"Now, the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord." (2 Corinthians 3:17-18).
I remain faithful to the Charlotte Mason method. She feels like a friend, and I'm allowed to not see eye-to-eye with the way a friend conveys an idea. I encourage the CM community to remember that although we are presenting our children and ourselves with living, wholesome ideas, all of us have hurts that have brought about wounds that need healing. The "unclean imaginings" of others are not to be dismissed, but treated seriously, taken to the Lord in prayer, with compassion and grace. They are unwanted darts thrown at those who love the Lord.
"Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day." (2 Corinthians 4:16)
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