Four years ago, I met with a pastor who talked about problems in his church. I asked him what he thought he should do. He said, “Watch it! ‘Thinking’ puts you into the devil’s territory.” (He really said that; I kid you not.) His answer hinted at one of his church’s problems.
I figured he was an anomaly, like when you phone Comcast, and a real person answers the phone. But a few months later I attended a retreat and the speaker said, “Before I was a Christian I used to think. Now I realize that the life of the Spirit rejects the limits of the mind.” He continued, “Love is like an hourglass, with the heart filling up as the brain empties.”
Then I read a book on connecting with God, and the author said the first step towards hearing God is to shut down our analytical thinking and lean into our unconscious intuition. He said, “Connecting with God requires our right brain; it only works when we turn off our left brain.”
This modern spiritual thinking (oops, I mean “feeling”) is completely contrary to Scripture where: repentance means to “change our minds,” and Mary “ponders these things in her heart,” and Jesus commands us to “consider the lilies.”
Yet scores of Christians today claim that thinking is spiritual kryptonite.
Is Thinking So Bad?
Let’s not base intimacy with God on the popularization of a decades old, unscientific theory. The right-brain/left-brain idea came from Roger Sperry, who studied epileptic patients whose brain hemispheres had been surgically split to reduce seizures. Sperry himself claimed the idea had no broader value beyond those unique patients.
Numerous studies disprove the modern right-brain/left-brain myth. Research shows that the analytical (left-brained) person analyzes better when also using the right brain, and the creative (right-brained) artist creates better when also using the left brain. God wants our whole being: feeling, sensing, talking, stillness, creativity, intuition; and thinking.
Besides, if bad thinking can deceive us, can’t we be just as deceived by bad intuition?
Why Are We Suspicious?
Ancient Greeks highly valued reason. Plato, Aristotle, and hundreds of philosophers (“lovers of wisdom”), taught the worth of thinking to search for truth. Yet, over time, orators began to use this “logic” to manipulate people, replacing “love of truth” for love of personal gain.
The scheming of rhetoricians corrupted the idea of thinking, and by the time of Christ, “logic” was mere hair-splitting. That is why Pilate infamously and cynically scoffs, “What is truth?”
The Enlightenment (late 1600’s to 1800) rekindled a love for reason, but its version of thinking divorced the head from the heart. Descartes famously declared, “I think therefore I am,” but later that day he lit a candle to the Virgin Mary at a local church. His action famously split the intellect from anything to do with spiritual life.
Over time, the cold, abstract, impersonal intellectualism of the Enlightenment failed to satisfy the human heart, and the Romantic era was born, which mistrusted reason in favor of feeling.
Buddhism doubted thinking from its birth. The way to its own Enlightenment was to empty the mind. While Buddhists had Scriptures, they were not interested in the wisdom contained in those books. They sought “salvation by rotation of sacred writings” because they did not believe in words. Their goal was to reach silence through sound-without-sense (or mantras).
Friendship
My friendship with my wife is based on mutual understanding, which comes from sharing, which involves talking, which needs words, which requires thinking. Thinking!
If Christianity is about a relationship with God, it too rests on talking, words, and thinking. We reject the European Enlightenment’s ivory-tower, impersonal thinking, but we also reject the Eastern Enlightenment’s mindless mindfulness, feeling-without-thinking.
Those Enlightenments may have divorced us from our hearts, but this feeling-oriented culture wants to chop off our heads. Both approaches undermine our ability to function. Dismissing the heart doesn’t help us think better, and a spiritual lobotomy doesn’t help us hear God better.
God wants whole people, neither heart-deprived Tin Men nor a lobotomized tomatoes.
Sam
Trusting Doubt
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Spot on! I totally agree. There is nothing in the Bible that says “do not think”, rather it encourages us to ponder. What Bible does not encourage, is to overthink- it encourages to give everything over when we have done our part. Could it be that not thinking about things is a way of escape for some? – escape from going through problems. When you have a problem and you don’t think, you deny it. At first this may save you some nerve cells, but at the end it does not allow us to do our best, and leave everything else up to God. It kind of stops the process…
I like your observation: we are to think but not overthink (or, another word, not to obsess).
And yes, not thinking is just a way of escaping, of denying. (Which God is not in favor of!!)
I think I feel good about this blog!
And now I feel good.
I think.
I like how you think!
Your post in fact tripped one of my hot buttons: the mantra that we’re supposed to “live from our heart, not our head.” Who first thought of that, me wonders. I never could figure out how to do the one but not the other.
And I like how YOU think.
For everyone else: Bob (above) is my book editor, and terrific! He too wrote an article about thinking. You can read it here:https://thecopyfox.com/2014/12/why-living-from-your-heart-requires-using-your-head/
Why would God give us the ability to think and then expect that we wouldn’t. It’s part of being a child of the Father. Without thinking, this world would be impossible – the lions would have had us for lunch, if we hadn’t starved before not figuring out the seed/soil/water/sun equation. We err when we ignore our limitations, or assume that we have none.
I really do wonder how so many of us want to divorce part of us when we come to God. Some get rid of the head and are only sentimental; and some get rid of the heart, and are ivory tower thinkers, out of touch with themselves.
God wants the whole enchilada.
Oh my goodness! I have been with a Christian therapist for several years because childhood trauma over-sensitized my feelings about anything relational. I struggle to believe God loves me unconditionally because I feel like I am unworthy.
Feelings can be the worst liars in the world!!
I love your line, “Feelings can be the worst liars in the world!!”
Of course they can, and we need our minds to examine the lies for what they are.
I genuinely feel for you in your trauma, but God has a plan! I feel, I think, and I know.
So glad you haven’t given up thinking! Otherwise, these missives would be rather dull. I think ; -)
Part of the problem with the world today is that people do not ponder things the way great writers used to do. Hollywood is forced to reinvent and serialize the same old same old, because entertainment isn’t synonymous with education or experience based learning. Common sense is vanishing, probably, because folks are more afraid to challenge socially accepted “norms”.
Jesus repeatedly directed His words to people with ears that would hear and signs for those who could see. Either function is worthless unless it is interpreted by the mind.
Stephen,
GREAT connection with Jesus telling us to hear with our ears, but then go deeper; which is to seek him with meditation (thinking in his presence) and prayer.
Being afraid to “think” is fear-based. Great article, Sam. I’ve shared it on my FB page. Blessings!
Thanks!! And I know you HATE the fear that drives people, and you write about how to help.
So thanks back at you.
What a welcome post, Sam! Thinking is hard work–and bold thinking Christianity harder yet. But worth every bit of the effort! George MacDonald, C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, Hannah Smith, William Barclay, Michael Phillips… these are but a few of the men and women whose diligence in pondering the Scriptures has challenged the thinking of us all, helping us to better apprehend God’s character and purposes for our lives and the universe he created. (Not to mention the contributions of yourself and Gary Barkalow which have been a personal benefit to me as well.) THINKING is exactly what we must use our minds to do, guided by the Spirit and yielded to our Father’s will.
Hi Michael,
Great list. Who would “think” that Lewis, Chesterton, etc., would be so wrong! Or is it our culture that is mistaken.
I think maybe some people’s “thinkers” are broken.
Well done, Sam. God invites us into the joint venture of mental renewal (Romans 12:2). Why would He engage in the process if He intended us to then allow the renewed mind to atrophy? Come to think of it, if the mind is unrenewed and unused, is transformation possible? Will we know that which is good, acceptable, and perfect by emotion and intuition alone?
Right! I score an INTJ (on the Meyers Briggs), which means I’m “intuitive.” But based on years of experience, I know that intuition is wrong all the time. I may be inclined that way, but I need a spiritual mind to short-circuit my intuition when it is heading down the wrong path.
Besides, God says to love him with our heart, soul, strength, AND MIND.
Thinking from the perspective of the old man in me is very dangerous. Thinking from the perspective of the new man, the follower of Christ, is essential in my growth and in fulfilling my purpose in life. My $.02