Our theme for this summers Bigstuf is THINK. I have been thinking about thinking…which kind of makes mental feedback go into some kind of chaotic frenzy if you stay there very long. But…the question is why do we think what we think. All of our thoughts are created by some outside influence. We think something is blue because someone told us to look at a color once and said it was blue and that is now what we think. If you just had a child and you want to see something really cool, teach your kid that all the colors are different than what we know them to be. Show them green and tell them that is red. Do that enough and wow… What would be weird is that the child would grow up and just think they were colorblind when really they just think what they were taught. A 14-year old girl goes into the Gap and decides to buy that cool shirt that she “thinks” she likes and she “thinks” it is her opinion that makes her like it. Really what happened is that some 57 year old guy in a suit in a board room made a presentation a year earlier about what would be cool and that 14 year old girl watched tv and movies and read magazines and saw the same shirt on her favorite musician and she decided she liked it. If that guy in the board room had made a totally different presentation a year earlier, the same girl might have laughed and made fun of that same shirt thinking that she would never dream of wearing it. We grew up in church and either had our “religion” drilled into us or we had a great youth group and we believe and think what we think about God because we had a good experience or because we feel guilty if we don’t or we turn away from those thoughts because someone said “if you believe this, then your life will be fine” and we believed and our dad died and we don’t believe it anymore. The exact same you could have grown up in North Africa and have a totally different belief system and think we are totally right about what we think or believe. Think about that. Whoosh. I want to chat for a few weeks about why we think what we think and I would love to have your thoughts about thinking as we delve into this to get ready for camp. If you have great websites, books, videos, etc about our minds and how they are shaped and our thoughts and why we think them. Join in. Tell your twitter followers. Let’s see what people are thinking. Meanwhile I think we should be asking questions all the time. Who, What, When, Where, Why and how. Especially WHY. WHY? That question by itself changes our thoughts more than any thing else. Lets chat. Think about it. Lanny
I have a slight feeling you are going to create a scenario in which we are able to think and experience God in our own personal way.
Comment by Tim — March 11, 2010 @ 9:27 pm
I’ll think you think He thinks we think without thinking of Him.
Thanks
Comment by Will — March 12, 2010 @ 12:59 am
I meant I think you think He thinks we think without thinking of Him.
Thanks
Comment by Will — March 12, 2010 @ 1:00 am
When I think about thinking the thought that I think is more of a question than a thought, it’s are you open?
Because like you said, we think what we think because someone taught us to think that way. The question becomes how open are we to thinking differently?
At the same time, we do need things that ground us, we do need beliefs that guide and direct us (actually I don’t think we can function without them).
However, that takes me to my next thought that I think when I think about thinking, which is actually a thought and not a question, it’s humility. Because while we need beliefs, we also need enough humility to realize that God is bigger than our brains, we can’t wrap our minds around all of life and faith, therefore we need this combination of beliefs, humility, and openness where we say, “I believe this, but I could be wrong” then being open and respectful enough to listen to others, understand where they’re coming from, and see if maybe there is something there that could or should change the way we think. Those are my thoughts about thinking, I could be wrong though.
Also, I bet you already know this, but in case you don’t I’ll mention it anyway. Don Miller just started a new blog about how commercialism and advertising effect the ways we think, and Shane Hipps’ book The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture really explores how not just content but the ways in which content is presented shape our thinking (I think he tweaked it and rereleased it last year under the title Flickering Pixels but I haven’t read FP, so I can’t speak definitively on the similarities and differences of the two). Hope something in my rambling is almost helpful.
Comment by Jonathan — March 12, 2010 @ 9:36 am
“People mistakenly assume that their thinking is done by their head; it is actually done by the heart which first dictates the conclusion, then commands the head to provide the reasoning that will defend it.” – Anthony de Mello
Comment by anon — March 13, 2010 @ 11:29 am
Hey …a quick comment on your comment about my thoughts about your thinking. That is one of the places i am going with the thoughts about thinking.
Am gonna talk later but for now…you are right. We have to be willing all the time to be proven we are wrong about our thoughts. After all, that is how we got to thinking about what we think now. I don’t have nearly the same theology now that i did when i was 40 and didn’t have the same then that i had when i was 30. I used to believe that pretty much anything i heard from pastors was right and so i thought the same thoughts that they did. Sometimes when it was just so opposite of something that was proven to be wrong by clear logic and science. And then.let’s all just admit it…there are thousands of religions that have beliefs that are different. And they all think they are right. What makes us think that we are right? One of the reasons I loved C S Lewis is because he met all the time with fellow deep thinkers and had debates often about the things they believed. And their thoughts evolved. Anytime we think that what we think is the right way to think, we set ourselves up to become stagnant. That’s all I will say for now. Anxious to talk about how we change our mind and why we should. Oh yeah…and yes i have been reading Donald Millers blog. I recommend it highly. Its the very thing we have been discussing as we develop our “thoughts” for Bigstuf 2010. if you drop by his blog, tell him i sent you.
Lanny
Comment by admin — March 13, 2010 @ 11:07 pm
Thinking about Thinking, could be compared to watching a dog chase it’s tail.
Anytime you inflict pain on yourself, ie stubbing your toe or walking into a glass wall that is what this topic has the potential of achieving.
Think about how God was before “time” began.
That thought alone use to make me dizzy as a child and I felt like Christopher Reeve’s in “Somewhere in Time” and I nearly got lost in my own mind, trapped forever.
So I say all this to really say, with this topic, be so careful.
Especially when using this angle in a highschool summer camp forum of sorts.
There are some things that are for the Lord to know alone that our mind will never be able to comprehend and is out of our ability to understand. So we dive in and we go deep, but we always remember their is only so much air in the tank we are being provided to breath under water and the “deep blue” can be decieving. Lest we think like many sky divers who have plumitted to their death, cause they believed they were flying from the deception of the mind that happens in the free fall.
have fun
jim
Comment by jim — March 13, 2010 @ 11:50 pm
What I think when I think about thinking. When i think about thinking I think how blessed I am that God chose ME to be the species that is able to think about thinking. I think, that thinking about thinking is such a powerful force. Trying to wrap our brains around how the innerworkings of our own brains is actually working, is utterly fascinating. Taking a moment to think about thinking, why do we think? We think about everything. But when someone influences us to think another way, we change our thinking. Then our views on the thing we were thinking about in question, is totally revealed in a different light, all because someone told you to think another way. Things like music and literature change the way we think, broaden our thinking spectrums a bit. But what happens when we let the wrong thing influence our thinking? Then when we think again, we are thinking with a different view. Useage of the phrase “Garbage in, garbage out”. Thinking about thinking, I stand firm on that our minds are a powerful force. Lots of crazy things come out of what we think about. I always laugh when think what must Adam have thought when he had to think about what to name all those animals. Because “hippopotamus” is a totally awesome word to think of. Why didn’t I think of that? Because someone else did first.
Comment by Kaitlyn (Giraffe) — March 16, 2010 @ 1:03 am