One of the things we do a lot of everyday, and we probably don't acknowledge it much, is thinking. Excuse my pun, but we don't think about the act or fact of thinking. Well, not very often, and usually only in passing.
Most times it happens when someone asks "What do you think about that?" or "What are your thoughts on this?"
A thought it seems is indeed one of those little pole vaulting zaps of electro-chemical energy, hopping from synapse to synapse. Just as your heart beats and you lungs breath your brain thinks. That's what it's made to do.
100 billion nerve cells. All working towards the functioning of your body, and the 80,000 thoughts you have each and every day.
I'm not sure I'm conscious of having that many, I mean, 80,000 is a lot (and who figures this stuff out? How on earth do you put a figure on that? Or is it one of those informed guestimates you are often given when researching these things? They can't really pin it down definitively so they give it their best guess and that'll be rough enough? To my mind that's hardly honest but there you have it, that's the way it plays out sometimes. To give them the benefit of the doubt they most likely find a candidate, hook them up to a whole bunch of electrodes and stuff and then turn some machine on that is sensitive enough to read each and every ping the brain sends out. The pings it detects that is. Hey, maybe 80,000 is a conservative number? Who's to know? It's no wonder I'm exhausted at the end of day when my brain is doing that much thinking!!!)
Sorry, where was I?
Thoughts, now some flit by and you recognise them as being good thoughts, and if you are like me you say to yourself, "Hey, that wasn't bad, I should write that down," and by the time you get pen and paper to hand, the thought you had has gone!
Dr. Karen Lawson from the University of Minnesota suggests that "thoughts are mental cognitions - our ideas, opinions, and beliefs about ourselves and the world around us." It sounds a lot to me like this concept of worldview I was talking about earlier. She goes on to say that "They include the perspectives we bring to any situation or experience that colour our point of view (for better, worse or neutral)."
Now on that point I must disagree, because all my reading and thinking on this topic suggests that there is no such thing as a neutral perspective. How we see the world is coloured by our emotional reactions, our opinions and attitudes, our life experience, our likes and our dislikes - these things that we can bundle together and call presuppositions - these are all brought to bear on how we think about stuff. If there is such a thing as a neutral position it means it's not something we have given any thought to, and if we suddenly did think about it, then it would automatically, by default be coloured by our worldview lenses!
There is a Buddhist saying, "With our thoughts we make the world." I used to think that was total rubbish. But recently it occurred to me I was looking at it the wrong way. We make the world in terms of how we perceive it. What we are doing is letting our thoughts shape it; these ideas, opinions and beliefs, the perspectives we bring to bear in any and every given life situation.
Lawson suggests that a "long lived" thought becomes an "attitude."
I find this interesting, because I wondered what makes a thought "long lived?" This seems to suggest that some thoughts are different to other thoughts? That's fascinating, but following that would take us down a different rabbit hole, and I want to try and stay on topic.
Dr Lawson goes on to suggest that "while thoughts are shaped by life experiences, genetics, and education, they are generally under conscious control. In other words," she says, "if you are aware of your thoughts and attitudes, you can chose to change them." I want to unpack that one for a sec, because it seems to me a bit contradictory. If all thoughts are "generally" under conscious control, then surely we are aware of all our thoughts and attitudes all the time? I don't think that's the case. At least not in my experience. There's lots of stuff that goes on in the background, a bit like a Cirque de Soleil performance. You tend to focus on what's happening right in front of you and not pay close attention to all the amazing things going on behind the main act.
If we are aware of the thoughts and attitudes we have, we can choose to change them. This is where it becomes interesting. Let me try to pin this down. I think that what's being suggested here is that if we perceive a thought or attitude then we can gauge it's correctness? Is this thought or attitude correct or incorrect? Sure, but on what grounds? What are we to use as a benchmark? How do I know that my thought or attitude is wrong or right if I have nothing independent and impartial to judge it against? I can't judge it against my own thoughts and attitudes because sure they are flavoured by the spices of my presuppositions?
Ah, now we're getting somewhere.
This would mean that in some way, shape or form there is an external, objective truth against which these things can be measured? Yeah?
If my thoughts indeed make the world, then the world I have made may not in actual fact be real or true? If I look at the example of someone else's life, and reality, how do I know that's better than mine? After all, they are impacted and influence by their life experiences, genetics and education. We are same same, but different.
It all starts to get a bit messy.
I need to find that objective truth against which I can weigh up the thoughts and attitudes I have.
I need some Aldi theology happening here, I need that kind of "good, different," to look at, examine, and see that where I'm at in my thought-scapes are off the mark.
If I can return to Dr Lawson for a sec. She states that "It may be useful to think of emotions as the flow and experience of feelings." Yep, I'll go along with that. "Emotions can be triggered by something external," she says, "from seeing a friend suffer or watching a movie, or something internal, an upsetting memory." Interesting here that she locks onto the negative emotions. I guess the assumption is that we don't want to reign in the positive happy emotions, they are the ones that we want to cultivate. And yet, the negative ones are just as necessary aren't they? They help make us the people we are?'
Lawson goes on to quote these other researchers - Christakis and Fowler - who reckon that "People the world over have different ideas, beliefs, and opinions - different thoughts," and I'll go along with that,"but they have similar, if not identical feelings."
I think this brings us back to the idea of benchmark. If I experience the same emotions, both positive and negative, as you do, given the same set of triggers, doesn't that mean there is a common cause for these emotions?
I feel sadness, you feel sadness, sadness is given to us to experience from something or someone external to us. I'm not talking about the stimulus here, I'm talking about this actual thing called sadness, and how did we get it? How is it we are programmed for it? Or for any emotion for that matter? Doesn't that suggest that there is a "programmer" somewhere? And if so, where, and the bigger question - who?
Enter our friend Faith. And grab your Bible and turn with me to Paul's Epistle to the Romans, chapter 12 and verse 2. I'm sure you know it.
"Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is - his good, pleasing and perfect will."
That really is one humdinger of a verse, isn't it? If we spend a couple of minutes unpacking this, I think this whole thought business will gain a bit of a different mantle, maybe.
Before we get stuck into verse 2, glance back at the amazing doxology that ends chapter 11. "Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!" and a couple of verses later we read "For from him and through him and to him are all things."
This from the NIV translation. God's wisdom and knowledge are deep and rich, so much more and beyond what we can hope to grasp. If everything we see and by inference think and experience is from him, through him, and to him then we enter into that faith transaction, believing in those things we hope for, that are not ours just yet, and the evidence of things that we can't see, things that we suspect are real, and yet are beyond the push and shove of pure so called reason.
What happens if there is a God, and He is the one who made us, gave us our unique mind, and the thoughts we have? Psalm 139 gives us a clear indication that this is true. "O Lord, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar." Indeed, at the end of chapter 2 of the Gospel of John, we read that Jesus knew human nature to the point that he knew what was in each person's heart, and that he did not trust them!
They were thinking wrong thoughts, they were conforming to the patterns of this world against which Paul warns us; do not conform.
Here then, I suggest, is our benchmark. If we are to look outside ourselves for the right way to think, then surely we should look at the truth? Only with the ongoing renewal of our minds, bringing all thought captive to Jesus, then we will have the ability to test and approve what God's will is.
Knowing God's will and being able to recognise God's will and then doing God's will because it makes the best sense, because as Paul says we are able to see it and think of it as good and pleasing and perfect.
Our benchmark.
If we recognise that we need change to our negative thoughts that our friend Dr. Karen Lawson tells us is within our capability, then wouldn't we want to look at and grasp and take onboard, the game plan that is given to us, a game plan that is open, accessible, indeed is in full view to those who want and indeed choose to see it, the game plan that our creator God has written specifically for us, and for our 80,000 thoughts a day?
If we suspect we aren't thinking right, then it's a fair bet we probably aren't. If we agree that we need to change the patterns of our thoughts, then we need to decide what to change them to. And if conforming to the way the world around us leads us to doing things and thinking things that really aren't the best, and make us feel decidedly uncomfortable, then finding the best, and then starting to think about that is, surely, something that we need to give some serious time and space to.
Friends, until we meet again, I pray that you are blessed by deeper wisdom as you open and read God's word.