(81) Critical Thinking

    (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for Critical Thinking, originally shared on January 14, 2021. It was the eighty-first video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   How is your life influencing the global pandemic and the future of our nation? How are you being influenced by it? What is critical thinking, and why is it critical that we be thinking during these tumultuous times.

   We are now at a point in our pandemic where our hospitals are being overwhelmed. One local hospital is now operating at 320% of capacity. Nationally, there were 4,300 confirmed Covid-19 deaths the day before yesterday with an average of 3,300 for the week. More than 23 million people have been infected, 1-million more than just four days ago. The State of California announced yesterday that everyone 65 and older could get the vaccine; the County of Los Angeles said not so fast, where’s the vaccine?

   Nationally, the president has now been impeached by the House twice, but it is unclear whether there will be one trial in the Senate. 10,000 national guard troops were going to be sent to the Capitol to provide security for the inauguration next week, then 15,000, and now 20,000, more than were stationed after 9-11. Every state capitol has been warned to be on alert for political violence.

   How do we sort out the truth about what is going on? Do we accept the word of those in authority? Which authorities do we listen to? That is the role of critical thinking, and there have been few times in our history when it has been more important than today.

   What is Critical Thinking. Well, first of all, it’s not being disposed to think critical thoughts.

   I think that the absence of critical thinking is one of the chief reasons we are in such a mess with both the surge of the coronavirus and our current national crisis.

   You can find lots of definitions online. This is the first paragraph of the definition given by the Foundation For Critical Thinking, which sounds like a very formidable organization, indeed:

Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness.

   That definition sounds to me, like a very stiff one, easily manipulated toward one’s own ends, which is exactly not what critical thinking is supposed to do.

   I’d like to propose some elements of what I think critical thinking is for those who want to search for truth with the prior belief that truth exists and can be known.

   Critical thinking is, as I conceive it, the first mark of an educated person. Not an indoctrinated one but an educated man of woman.

   It is critical to the understanding of the Bible, God, and the work of the Church.

   I’m going to list items that I think are the chief components of critical thinking, and how these elements are central to what it means to be a Christian.

1.    Humility: the ability to know that, as Paul says, we now see through a mirror darkly; we don’t and can’t know everything

2.    Even handedness: Can you see both sides of an issue? Debate students are required to be able to argue both sides of an issue.

3.    Independence: Do you wait to see what your group says, or your go-to person on the radio or on cable has to say before you form an opinion; did you receive a liberal arts education, and do you continue to consume media on both sides of an issue

4.    Fairness: being concerned that everyone gets a fair hearing of their ideas

5.    Responsibility: Taking responsibility for one’s own education. I didn’t realize this until seminary.

6.    Character: Not being influenced by factors external to he issue. To determine this, follow the money, also follow the popularity, the acceptance, the rewards, the promotions, the tenure. Ask who benefits and why, and how might that influence what they are, or I am, saying?

7.    Fearlessness: Another lesson I learned is to be fearless because you will always come back to God even if your thinking takes you down the rabbit hole for awhile; ask is it true and don’t be afraid. Trust the Truth.

8.    Openness: to avoid bias confirmation, looking only for arguments that support what you already believe. Don’t read any source as the gospel; let it tell you something is going on, but read widely, and trust your own education and who you are to put it into its appropriate context, both in history, and with you.

9.    Closed mindedness. The purpose of an open mind is to close it again. To look around and then to say, OK, this is what I’ll take responsibility for. Otherwise, you are just being irresponsible. Sorry California.

10.  Skepticism; Don’t just doubt everything to look cool, but doubt your doubts.

11.  Integrity: Be anti-parochial: to what extent are my opinions the result of never having been exposed to other ideas, of my hometown influences or my neighborhood, my college or university or high school, my friends;  to what extent did I come to believe these things for acceptance, or to preserve my livelihood. Do I go along to get along without even realizing it, or not wanting to think about it for fear of the consequences. Always ask yourself why, why do I think that?

12.  The ability to handle Paradox; Answers are not always either or: we are saints and sinners, Jesus is human and divine; the more we give the more we have. And, it means the ability to see connections where others see conflicts.

13.  Responsibility: Grow up: James Fowlers “States of Faith” indicates that many people have a middle school faith: tell me what everyone else believes and that’s what I’ll believe. That’s just conformity. Faith is a relationship that we accept, we can’t join it or inherit it.

14.  Discernment: The most important. The ability to strip away everything and allow God to speak, whatever the voice is. Be vulnerable, and let the ideas come. Use reason as a back-up check: What does the Bible say? What is the tradition of the Church? Discernment is less prone to manipulation than self-centered methods because it seeks influences outside ourselves, influences that don’t always confirm our biases, but sometimes convict us. It means listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit, the personal presence of God for good. Living Water. It’s getting out of the way to let God form us to make the right decisions and guide us to that end. If someone can talk you into believing something, someone else can talk you out of it. There must be something more. That something more is the transcendent living God. Who do you trust? It’s been said that seeing is believing, but believing is also the filter through which we see. We don’t just see things as they are, we see things as we are.

   Look to who you are, first. And look to who you are by realizing whose you are. Be formed by the living water that is the Holy Spirit.

   Critical thinking means being the fully human persons we were created to be, and finding our true and trustworthy influences revealed by the person of the Holy Spirit in a living relationship with the living God.

   Jesus speaks about the Holy Spirit, in two sections of John, Chapter 14,

*John 14:15-17, 25-27