Biblical Recorder - Score one for thinking

27. January 2010 by Tom Ehrich, Religion News Service

As a New York Jets fan, I was both frustrated and fascinated as I watched the Indianapolis Colts dismantle the Jets’ Super Bowl hopes in a conference title game on Sunday (Jan. 24).

In losing 30-17, our Jets weren’t out-hustled, out-skilled or out-coached. What I saw from the vantage point of HDTV and endless replays of nearly every down was simple yet profound: the Jets were out-thought.

Like an expert chess player, Colts quarterback Peyton Manning probed the Jets’ vaunted defense, found its weakness — the mid-range seam between linebackers defending short passes and safeties preventing bombs — and relentlessly exploited it.

Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez has skills equal to Manning’s, but he’s a rookie and hasn’t yet learned how to “think” the opponent into submission. In a game that can seem to be dominated by brawn and breaks, thinking might be the ultimate weapon.

The realization was sobering and yet hopeful.

We live in an anti-thinking era that denigrates “pointy-headed intellectuals” (as George Wallace famously dismissed opponents of segregation) and refuses to accept nuance, subtleties, compromise and doubt.

It often seems better to tap the mindless rage of the vexed than to examine reality; better to turn the downtrodden into swarming mobs than to address their legitimate needs; better to paint critical political issues as good vs. evil than to balance competing self-interests in solutions that a majority can live with; better to demonize one’s enemy than to show respect for a different opinion; better to distort facts than to probe complex situations.

Rather than be troubled by a candidate’s lack of knowledge and poor preparation, partisans exalt inadequacy as an asset promising a “common touch.” We surrender prime time to the shouters, not the thoughtful.

The drive against thinking is more than politics. Rather than encourage young adults to use computers for exploring human knowledge and resolving human problems, we encourage an estimated seven hours a day of texting and gaming, as if multi-tasking during class and manual dexterity in virtual combat were critical skills.

Religion, too, is marred by partisans who throw sacred texts as weapons, rather than deeply study them.

Education also prizes obedience and conformity — from standing in line to taking standardized tests — and treats the restlessness, curiosity and boredom of children as problems requiring medication.

Entertainment is no better — it prefers violence and voyeurism to the subtleties of character development and ambiguities of human motivation.

Business turns predatory, rather than thoughtful, and heaps outlandish rewards on those who react quarter to quarter, rather than those who think long-term.

We need more players like Peyton Manning, who can think their way through a problem.

We need more engineers whose instinct is to solve problems, not pursue short-term gain through trivial fads.

We need more teachers who challenge students to think and hold them accountable for laziness, even if parents object.

We need political leaders who explore complexities, not yesterday’s polling figures, and think their way through to actual solutions.

We need religious leaders who affirm different opinions and encourage the humility that comes from thinking. We need cultural leaders who see our hunger for meaning.

We need business leaders who value invention, research, long-term horizons and thoughtful engagement with a volatile global economy.

I’m convinced we have such thoughtfulness in our midst. We just need more examples like No. 18, who took a bad first half in stride and just thought harder.

(EDITOR’S NOTE — Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus,” and the founder of the Church Wellness Project.)

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Gene Scarborough

Good analogy!!!

Team work / smarter thinking / picking out the weaknesses and sending strength against it. By gollies that certainly HAS NOT BEEN Congress in the last few years and certainly not last night as some cheered and raved, while others sat stone-faced with no desire to work toward any teamwork whatsoever!

The same could be said of us Baptists, as well. We would rather fight than love and forgive along with respect one another. Maybe that's why we aren't winning games either these days!

posted Thursday, January 28, 2010 9:10 PM | Report Abuse

Del Parkerson

This is an excellent column, for it decries the tendency we humans have for desiring and trying to enforce cookie-cutter agreement in every field of endeavor. God never made two people alike. We don't think exactly alike. As Baptists, we never have agreed on all things, and we never will. This doesn't mean we cannot love one another and work together to be engaged constructively in missions and ministry. The "us against them" mentality that often takes place in Baptist life doesn't just cause us to disrespect one another. It also weakens our our denomination's impact on the world in a measurable way. May the seeds Tom Ehrich sows in this article reap a harvest in the Southern Baptist Convention in the years ahead.

posted Monday, February 01, 2010 12:28 PM | Report Abuse

Dr. James Willingham

Ah! Finally, some one realizes that the mind might have a place in the process. In fact, the Bible makes such a thing primary in that the first requirement of the Gospel is repentance which means a change of mind based upon reflection, upon thinking through things as God sees them, and then turning from sin to Christ. We have, sadly, defined repentance simply as turning from sin to Christ without the intervening process of thinking that the very term metanous requires, namely, a change of mind based upon thought and thinking.

Perhaps that is why our predecessors and ancestors in the period from 1740-1820 were much more effective than we are today. After all, they were able to work with the most astute political thinkers of all time, secure religious liberty, evangelize in quantity and quality, unite Separate and Regular Baptists, persuade General Baptists who believed Christ died for all and yet were neither very evangelistic nor very missionary to become Regular Baptists who believed Christ died only for the elect and who were both evangelistic and missionary. lay the foundations for our educational institutions, initiate one of the early antislavery movements (the friends of humanity), employ uneducated and educated ministers, and launch the Great Century of Missions. O yes, I almost forgot, and influence 255 Congregational churches to become Baptist churches according to the historian C.C. Goen. Amazing, simply amazing!

Could it have been due to a better grasp, intellectually, of the Gospel and the message communicated by the Bible than we have today? I think so. They were more given to reason than we are. Even our most conservative approaches these days are emotion laden understandings. Their grasp in those days long passed seem to be insightful and understaning of the fact that the truths of the Bible are apparently contradictory and are to be held in tension which helps a believer to be balanced, flexible, creative, and magnetic. One thing is obvious: They were certainly more winsome, attractive, compelling, charming, and captivating than we seem for the present. They could certainly think. Consider how Stearns and Marshall could have Eldresses in a day when there was no question about believing and obeying the Bible. I tried to recover their case for such. However, my presentation, "The Genius of Orthodoxy: Eldresses," met with a profound silence. A Conservative who could have published and replied to it stated simply, "I don't agree," but he never answered it. The Recorder simply reported the topic and never offered any comment as if the moderates were afraid to touch something that might support their views on womwn in ministry due to its affirmaton of scriptural inspiration and accuracy with acknowledgment of its intellectual depth. What an opportunity was missed a quarter of a century ago.

Still I have been praying ever since 1973 for a third great awakening, one that will win the whole earth and every soul upon it in one generation in order to have a more literal fulfilment of the promises to Abraham of a seed as numerous as the stars of Heaven and the sand by the seashore as well as the number of the redeemed in Heaven which no man can number. And the time is drawing nearer every day. Things seem so dark now, so threatening, but can it be the storm of blessing that is getting ready to break with blessings on our heads? Remember this area experienced the labors of folks converted in the First Great Awakening and the effects of the Second Great Awakening and helped to launch the Great Missionary movement to win the elect to Christ. If their theology could do it then, if the presence of Heaven could attend their labors, if their spirit of humility and devotion, if all of these could bring such blessings as to change the Reformation over from a Gospel recovery, persecuting effort to an outgoing, winsome, attractive movement and message, then think what might be, if we began as they did to plead the promises in Jonathan Edwrds' Humble Attempt and William Carey' Thoughts on Missions? A good grasp of paradoxical interventions might well serve to enable and empower our labors in evangelism and missions. God grant that it will.

posted Tuesday, February 02, 2010 3:07 PM | Report Abuse

Now, listen to Jim carefully. He has presented his wise observations in good paragraphs any dummie (like me) can understand.

In fact, I appreciate the great level of thought presented by each commentator. We can do better than we have in recent years, in my opinion!!!!

posted Tuesday, February 02, 2010 7:21 PM | Report Abuse

How right Gene is that there needs to be thinking, and Del was right on target about how we can differ and still love one another and work together constructively. Many years ago I suggested that we needed to use tools like the Johari window with specific reference to our theological problems in order to work out our differences in a way that would led to more amicable resolutions in our relationships. We used the Johari window in dealing with race relations, and it was a helpful tool (not the only one, of course, but one). Why can't Baptists determine to do the same. And like the Reconciliaton Commission in South Africa which while it did not accomplish a great eal prhaps did set a shining example and goal to shoot for, thus we might try to establish one in theology. We have a worthy goal, the support of a great mission force, and the winning of vast multitudes. We need to do brainstorming on methods of advancing the Gospel in an age becoming ever more hostile to it. In short, we need to out think and out love this age with methods designed to attract souls even when we must present the negative side of the message. By God's grace, we could give ourselves first to prayer and then to reconciliation efforts and then to planning and thinking efforts to develop mans to win this age. Who knows? We might see the whole earth turn to Christ before we die! Mr. Spurgeon certainly prayed for the whole earth and every one upon it as the Elect of God to be saved. See his evening devotions for Aug. 6 and Dec.24.

posted Tuesday, February 02, 2010 10:28 PM | Report Abuse

Score one for thinking

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