Do you know what weighs most heavily on my heart these days?
It’s thinking. How can we think more carefully, more thoughtfully? How can we learn not to let our brains be yanked around by people who raise their voices, on radio, on TV, in print, in real or artificial sincerity?
In short, how can we develop stronger think-for-yourself muscles?
I’d like to ruminate about this in these pastoral blogs for the next little bit. So check back every once in awhile. I promise I’ll be more regular with them! For now, let me quote part of a ballad poem which appeared in the magazine Adventist Today a few years ago. (It’s written ironically, as you’ll see.)
I’ve always figured I could think
As well as other folk.
But all the screams of partisans
Make reasoning a joke.
So more and more I worry that
My brain’s gone down the sink.
Should I depend on someone else
To tell me how to think?
CHORUS:
Tell me what to think, boys,
Tell me what to think!
Life’s so complicated that
My brain is on the brink
Of going pure bananas!
So, before I take to drink,
Just tell me what to think, boys,
Tell me what to think!
No, that’s not me talking, and no, I’m not taking to drink to stave off going bananas.
And no, I don’t want the “boys” to tell me what to think. But isn’t that what a lot of “boys” and “girls” seem to be doing these days? Don’t people seem to be letting others think for them?
Anyway, check back to this blog soon for more thoughts on thinking. — Maylan Schurch