“All the problems of the world could be settled easily if men were only willing to think.”
–Nicholas Murray Butler
Thinking is like breathing. We must all do it for ourselves. God gave each of us a brain and the capacity to think for ourselves, and I believe it is God’s will that we use that brain for original thought. Yet, many people–perhaps even most people–avoid thinking like the plague. In the words of Thomas Edison, “Thinking is hard work,” and some of us will do almost anything to avoid hard work. Intellectual laziness is probably even more prevalent than physical laziness. In addition, too many of us think with our emotions instead of with our minds.
We tend to want others to do the thinking and then tell us what to do. We want clear cut answers to life’s problems and clear rules to follow as we travel life’s journey. There is no shortage of individuals and organizations who are willing and eager to provide us with a set of rules to live by. But no individual or organization has all the answers to life’s complex questions, and we should be suspicious of anyone who claims such knowledge.
There are so many differing views on religion and politics that they can’t possibly all be right. We must get as much information as possible, analyze it and then use our own brainpower to search for what seems most likely to be the truth based on our own thinking.
We should always be seeking the truth. People who seek the truth throughout their lifetime will never find the whole truth, no matter how long they live, but they will know a great deal more than those who blindly accept whatever they are told and never do any original thinking.
Being an independent thinker does not enhance our popularity. It is more comfortable to follow the pack and conform to the conventional wisdom, whatever that may be at any given point in time. But the pack mentality may be wrong, as it has proven to be so many times before throughout history. We should always be willing to consider new ideas, but whether we accept them should be determined by our own thinking and by what we think God would want us to do. My mother lived her entire life based on the philosophy of trying to do what she thought God would want her to do. This approach to life worked well for her throughout her 94 years on this earth.
Think about it.
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Copyright 2024
Allen W. Smith
