Learn to Love Thinking
Ralph Waldo Emerson called thinking “the hardest task in the world.” Do you agree? Don’t just read on or move on. Think about it.
Throughout history, most people have avoided this hard task. “Most people would die sooner than think—in fact they do so,” said Bertrand Russell.
Our schools and universities generally don’t teach students to think. They funnel facts (and lies) into heads and call it education. This leads to Ivy League university students viewing terrorism as heroic and deconstructing the Taylor Swift oeuvre. It leads to peoples and generations that base their worldviews on half-truths and nonsensical, self-contradictory beliefs. It is a major reason why, as Revelation 12:9 shows, the devil has been able to deceive the whole world.
The problem is acute. You live in a cacophony of colorful characters, quick laugh lines, simple tropes, short videos, endless scrolling, bulleted lists, flashing lights, incoming messages, music, jingles and sound effects that invite, tempt, seduce and demand that you wallow in shallow thinking.
Consequently we are becoming, as one professor put it, “less emotionally expressive, less energetic, less talkative and verbally expressive, less humorous, less imaginative, less unconventional, less lively and passionate, less perceptive, less apt to connect seemingly irrelevant things, less synthesizing, and less likely to see things from a different angle” (Kyung-Hee Kim, quoted by Scott Newstok in How to Think Like Shakespeare). Ponder that, and you know it to be true. Thinking is living. Failing to think makes for a zombified life, passive, purblind, addicted to animal sensation, bereft of meaning.
Failing to think also separates us from our Creator. Contemplate His mind for a moment. In Isaiah 55:8-9, He says that “as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” The word “heavens” here can signify not just the skies but the space beyond. That’s a yawning chasm between God’s thoughts and yours. But He doesn’t mean for that gap to remain.
God gave us astonishing minds patterned after His own. And as Shakespeare wrote, “Sure, He that made us with such large discourse, / Looking before and after, gave us not / That capability and god-like reason / To fust in us unused.” He made us to work and strain and build our thoughts to become like His. He challenges us, “Come now, and let us reason together …” (Isaiah 1:18). He offers to teach us “the deep things of God” (1 Corinthians 2:10).
No wonder the devil has arrayed his society to distract us in every conceivable way, to shatter our focus and undermine our capacity for depth. It sabotages God’s ability to reach us.
Men of the Bible studied deeply and thought hard: Consider the knowledge of Abraham; the compositions of Moses; the poetry of David, Isaiah and Jeremiah; the learning of Daniel; the research of source material; the compilation of the testaments; the writing of the Gospels; the erudition of the Apostle Paul.
Such accomplishment takes disciplined effort. Our minds get stronger in the same way our bodies do: through toil, struggle, work. “I will not cease from mental fight,” wrote William Blake. Virginia Woolf added, “Mental fight means thinking against the current, not with it.”
Deep thinking does not come naturally to some but not others. Whatever our interests and strengths, all of us must discipline ourselves to do the work of concentrating and thinking about important subjects. This applies to spiritual thinking but is absolutely connected to science, language, history, music and all other forms of knowledge and study. Thinking means not just concentrating, reading and memorizing, but also digesting, contemplating and analyzing, forming fresh connections and original thoughts.
Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry consistently challenges our staff to think. “Thinking is hard work,” he told us some years ago. “Do it until you love it.” In an article about Shakespeare he wrote, “The failure to think deeply plagues all of us. It plagued Shakespeare as well; he had to work hard to develop his mind! God didn’t just hand his ability to him—He made him work like He makes you work! If you want to be great, even intellectually, you must work at it! God makes you sweat and struggle. Yes, He will help you succeed, and He will put all kinds of opportunities before you—but He requires that you work!” (Royal Vision, January-February 2015).
One of the most potent actions you can take to cultivate quality thought is to avoid inferior input. Recognize that your mental diet affects your thought as much as your physical diet does your bodily health. Mental junk food, too often indulged, lards your mind. Rich mental nutrition feeds your well-being. For example, try pondering just one verse from Psalm 119 per day. It is a marvelous exercise. Force yourself to slow down and mull over each statement in this masterful poem. The depth of the author, and of the God behind him, will begin to transform your mind.
Many times in this process, lazy thinking will wash over you: This is hard. I wish someone would just tell me what this means. I wonder what’s on Netflix. Stick with it until you come to enjoy the challenge. Do it until you love it.