Thinking Came Late

I grew up, as you may have, convinced that the authority figures in my world were telling the truth, at least a certain degree of truth. Although I sensed a core of truth in what they so dogmatically proclaimed, I knew in my gut that they were wrong at points. But I recognized that, while maybe they were basically right, there was more to it than they let on.

That “more to it” was the part that often mattered most. I also knew that some of the people and views that they continually condemned were not as bad as they were made out to be. Moreover, a lot of the wrongs they attacked were not always necessarily, absolutely, totally wrong. Although I could not have articulated it at the time, a fundamental scepticism was developing.

But I was well socialized, so not for a moment did I ever consider challenging any of this. They were bigger, older, smarter, richer, and they held the power to either punish or reward. There was no future in challenging their positions.

On the other hand, I certainly knew better than to trust my own mind. In school my classmates made better grades, were better athletes, better looking, and more popular. I was not a leader; no one ever followed or looked up to me. I was painfully aware of my own inadequacies. Still, although I was not fully conscious of it, I was also vaguely aware of the limitations of those in authority, as well as those of my more popular and more gifted classmates.

I was nearly fifty-years-old before I realized the full implications of those childhood perceptions. Gradually I came to see that my tacit disagreement with society somehow comprised the elements of a more honest and complete approach to truth and life, the seeds of the dialectic–our subject for a few days--had been planted.

But after long years of floundering through life, I have learned that it is easy to become a good thinker--a human resource sorely needed but always in short supply. Good thinking is in short supply because many people are mentally lazy. Another reason for this short supply of good thinking is that it requires more than more, and yet less than critical thinking, keen intellect, and formal education.

What it does take to become a good thinker is to make, “On the Other Hand,” your habitual response to ideas, whether your own or those of others, spoken or written, in formal or in informal settings. No matter what is presented, always consider what might be “on the other hand.” Other hands can always be found, because no human statement is, by itself, ever complete, something is always left out, there is always more to be said, and it is always possible that what has been presented might be wrong.

Develop a deep sense and appreciation of human limitations, determine to make “on the other hand” thinking second nature, and you are on the road to becoming a good thinker. Results will appear almost immediately. You will become a voice to be reckoned with.

Is that all there is to it? No, but if “on the other hand” thinking becomes a regular practice you will quickly become a good thinker. On the other hand, I remember from my youth a popular mail-order catalog that routinely offered a choice of merchandise at varying levels of quality: good, better, and best.

You already have read enough to reach the genuinely good level of thought. When you come to understand the larger dimensions of the dialectic--the proper name for “on the other hand thinking”--and when you add to that an elementary understanding of how logical thinking works, you will become a better thinker.
And if you are still here when we come to the last post of this blog, we will consider how to become the best thinker that can be made out of your unique personality and place in the world.
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Daddy was a workaholic and always gone, Mother was an old-fashioned housewife, a good one, busy doing all the work that entails. Therefore, I was pretty well left alone and by default became a lonely, lazy dreamer. I roamed the rivers, creeks, and hills, knowing I had been born fifty years too late to be the cowboy or mountain man that I read and dreamed of. I drifted mindlessly through the years until one day I found myself a highschool graduate.

I remember three graduation gifts, one of them in particular. Neither the nice creamy-yellow sport jacket nor the fancy, corduroy shirt of many colors ever looked right on me, but somehow I have remembered them. More to the point was Mother’s gift of a book of inspirational poetry and prose, Quests and Conquests. I enjoyed reading the book for years but was never inspired to actually do anything. The book didn’t change me, but Mother’s inscription written in the front of the book, “Be ye not mentally lazy,” haunted me.

I have no doubt that Mother’s admonition was based on an accurately observed need. I don’t remember having ever thought much about anything for most of the first two decades of my life, but every time I read her inscription I knew immediately that I needed whatever it was that she was calling for. However, I didn’t know what to do about it or how.

The problem was that I had no thinking equipment, skills, or coaching, and had no prior encouragement to think. It would be long years before I made any progress in that direction, but Mother’s words were never far from my consciousness; continually I felt their challenge.

About seven years later, in response to an unexpected encounter with God, I found myself in a theological seminary studying to become a prepared Christian minister. Sometime in the first month of my studies, Gordon Clinard, in his class on the preparation of sermons, declared that the greatest weakness of Southern Baptist preaching was shallowness. Immediately I vowed to be innocent of that fault.

Therefore, during seminary years, I worked, without adequate tools for thinking, at exploring the depths of God’s word and of human experience. I was still depending on others, teachers and books, to do my thinking for me. I still trusted them. Yet, I knew they were missing it somewhere.

Then I encountered Carlyle Marney, that unique, thinking Southern Baptist preacher and writer, and for the first time realized that I did not have to think like all the other Baptists I knew, heard, and read. For long years I had been convinced that if the Baptist emperor was not indeed naked, he certainly was poorly clad in ill-fitting clothing. Marney pointed to a way of thinking that sounded like it actually would fit the gospel message that was at the heart of what Baptists are about. I learned that it was possible to think differently, and express the Christian faith more adequately. I found a sense of freedom that I had never dreamed possible. Now I copied Marney--with a little uneasiness.

In the process of completing three advanced degrees in theology and philosophy I met the existentialist philosophers, the linguistic analysts, and the process philosophers. Thrilled throughout, I entered a new world of living thought. For the first time in my life I began to do a fairly good job of thinking for myself.

When I was given my first teaching position and found that I had to teach--and thus learn--logic, I discovered, finally, a method of systematic thinking. Logic, I came to realize, should be required of all highschool graduates, not symbolic logic, but traditional, elementary logic.

More yet to come.