NowTHINK!AboutIt

Avoiding Hackneyed...Making Sense

6 Truths About Thinking, 3 Ways To Think

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A brain should never be used as a sponge.

Auto-Think Will Never Keep You Safe

Everyone thinks.

I do. You do. Bright people do and even the less bright do.

No groups or individuals hold exclusive rights to thinking.

We all entertain ideas, consider possibilities, and we do this constantly.

The only people who don’t process thoughts are either comatose or dead.

But those observations raise many questions. If we’re all thinking, why don’t we all come to the same conclusion? Why don’t we all arrive at the correct answer? Why do we readily, with eyes wide open make bad decisions?

The Brain Is A Tool

Simply put, the brain is a tool. A very important tool. We couldn’t live without it and it does many things automatically. The brain controls breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, and more without our involvement even when we sleep.

The brain also has a manual setting. We can engage it deliberately to make it work for us. Like items in a toolbox, we can pick the brain up and apply it to specific problems as they arise.

When we do that it’s called thinking.

The problem is, though universal and necessary, thinking doesn’t always lead to solutions.

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We employ the brain to help us solve problems but nothing’s guaranteed. Use your brain the wrong way or incorrectly or haphazardly and you’re likely to get into trouble.

Can you imagine using a drill as a hammer or a shovel as a screwdriver? We don’t typically use rakes to paint walls?

By the same token, a brain should never be left on autopilot and should never be used as a sponge. [Read more…] about 6 Truths About Thinking, 3 Ways To Think

In God We Trust – In Christians We Don’t

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Christians are new creations, not final creations.

Christians And Diplomacy
Don’t Mix

Becoming a Christian does not make you right.

Saved, yes! Eternally secure, yes!

Opinionated? Unfortunately!

But will you always be right? Not necessarily. Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

  • Christianity is free from error, Christians are not.
  • God is absolutely free from confusion, believers are always vulnerable.
  • The Bible is without error but it’s rather arrogant to think you understand it perfectly.
  • God is all-knowing. Christians must learn everything.

And to do that they must unravel the thread of truth from the tangle of “Christian” voices claiming to know it.

Christians do enjoy many benefits.

  • A Christian is saved, born again, and Spirit inhabited.
  • Christians are children of God, have a new perspective, and a relationship with God.
  • Christians can change for the better but there’s no guarantee. Some go backward.

What is neither promised nor even insinuated is that on the day of salvation you’ll be blessed with instant knowledge of the truth and a well-developed sense of discernment.

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Those are things you’ll have to work for. Salvation is instantaneous, learning the truth is a process.

The Starting Point

All Christians start off as babes. New Christians are nowhere yet. The fact that Christians are commanded to learn the truth means they don’t already have it.

Believing in God is not a synonym for knowing all truth or being completely reliable.

Reliability, of course, is a character issue and a topic for another post but it’s important to keep in mind that Christians are NEW creations, not FINAL creations and they will never be finished products in this life.

Perfection comes only in the next life and for good reason. It’s difficult enough being a saved sinner in an imperfect world. Perfect Christians would clash intolerably.

But back to my point. [Read more…] about In God We Trust – In Christians We Don’t

13 Thoughts From Moses’ Second Forty Years

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Good intentions is no substitute for careful deliberation

The One Quality That Separated Moses
From The Average Israelite
Was Resolve

AT the end of the first forty years, Moses had both ability and faith (Hebrews 11:24) but he still wasn’t where he needed to be.

Moses ranked well above average in the area of personal development. I doubt he could achieve much more but you need more than personal development alone to serve God.

Moses was in the right place to grow further but he wasn’t fully ready to serve his ultimate purpose. That’s where the second stage is important.

STAGE TWO: THE RESOLUTION STAGE
(Exile in Midian, Exodus 2:11-21).

This stage started with a skirmish but then settled into monotony:

  • At the age of 40 (Acts 7:23) Moses kills an Egyptian in a failed attempt at alleviating the suffering of the Israelites.
  • Rejected by the Israelites and threatened by Pharaoh, he escapes to Midian.
  • In Midian, he defends a group of shepherd girls.
  • He meets Jethro, the shepherd girls’ father, and marries one of his daughters, Zipporah, with whom he has two sons.
  • He works for Jethro, shepherding his flocks for the next forty years.

At the end of forty years as a shepherd, God commanded Moses to return to Egypt. Only eleven verses cover this stage but Acts 7 provides more details.

A few additional observations are helpful.

Additional Lessons

Moses continued to learn in this second stage but it involved different lessons. The lessons in the first stage were mostly mental and physical.

  • Moses was trained in all the wisdom of Egypt – he could think.
  • And he developed the skills of a military leader – he could fight.

But he needed more.

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There were still emotional and spiritual lessons to be learned:

  • How to follow God
  • And how to lead people.

Both lessons were hard to learn and according to his experience, they proved hard to live with.

His Abilities Were Apparent But Insufficient

There’s not much detail from the second forty years but three things are worth mentioning.

  • He killed an Egyptian slavemaster.

His excuse for killing the slavemaster was his desire to deliver Israel but the effort was ineffective so it’s a moot point. What he wanted to do and how things turned out were very different. Israel wasn’t delivered and Moses had to run.

Moses wanted to do the right thing and his effort was an expression of faith but the only thing he really did was vent frustrations.

From this experience, Moses learned that his natural abilities, though extraordinary, weren’t sufficient for the job.

  • He was an able fighter.

Physically, Moses was no slouch. Killing an Egyptian slavemaster single-handedly would have been difficult for the average individual. Not for Moses. If a problem could be solved with physical dominance, Moses was the man.

But, again, he needed more than his natural abilities to solve the problem.

  • He knew God had called him to deliver Israel and he was committed to that calling.

Moses was frustrated with Israel’s continued repression and slavery.

For forty years he watched his parents suffer at the hand of Pharaoh. His parents, particularly his mother, had reminded him often that God had promised to solve their national problem (Gen. 15:13-14) and she surely planted the seed that he was God’s chosen man for that job.

Armed with that knowledge and a determination to follow through, he was going to do something, anything to deliver Israel. [Read more…] about 13 Thoughts From Moses’ Second Forty Years

4 Lessons From Moses’ First Forty Years

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The beginning or bottom is life's only starting point which is no where yet.

The First Forty: Development

The pertinent details of Moses’ life are well documented in the Bible. Thankfully, it doesn’t include his entire bio. Just the important details.

Moses lived long enough (120 years) that a full-length bio would arguably be longer than the Bible and that length would make it difficult to isolate important lessons.

Instead, his life is divided neatly into three separate stages of 40 years each and only the most important details from each stage are included. The first two stages provide very little detail but it’s enough to gain important insights.

The Broad Strokes

Before we get into the lessons, let’s look at the details of the first stage in broad strokes.

STAGE ONE: THE DEVELOPMENT STAGE
(Infancy to adulthood in Pharaoh’s house, Exodus 2:1-10).

Here’s what happened:

  • Israel was enslaved.
  • Death was decreed for all male born Israelites.
  • Moses was miraculously saved from destruction.
  • And was adopted into Pharoah’s house, enjoying the privileges of a family member.
  • Tradition (Josephus) says he successfully led military campaigns.

The Book of Exodus only provides ten verses on this stage but several lessons emerge.

Growth Is The Only Option

The first stage of life for everyone is the growing stage or to put it differently, the stage at which people tend to balk. Growth starts on day one. It’s the only option but we generally find it uncomfortable.

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People want to be grown but they don’t enjoy the process of growing.

They want to be well informed but that achievement requires hard work, the kind we tend to avoid.

No one starts at the end.

The beginning, or the bottom, is the only starting point, which in real terms is nowhere yet. [Read more…] about 4 Lessons From Moses’ First Forty Years

How Did Inspiration Work

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The Bible doesn't mention toilet paper and toothbrushes but it says enough about hygiene to justify the use of both.

Genesis Was Human History
Before It Became Inspired Text

For years Bible believers have taught that the Bible is an inspired book, and for good reason. The Bible says exactly that.

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God. (1 Timothy 3:16)

But the word inspiration needs clarification. The meaning is very different to what most people think.

It translates the Greek word theopnuestos which is a compound word that literally means God-spirited but recent translations have opted for God-breathed because it is closer to how we express words.

The NIV reads:

All Scripture is God breathed.

And many translations follow suit. The clarification is helpful.

Nice, neat, straightforward, and clear.

What I’ve said so far is generally understood and agreed to. There’s very little debate.

How Did Inspiration Work

However, many questions about how inspiration worked are not explicitly detailed in the Bible and the topic gets very little attention.

  • We know the Bible is special revelation – check.
  • We know the revelation was ultimately from God – check.
  • We know that God used humans from all strata of society to record the revelation – check.

What we don’t know is exactly how the mechanics of inspiration worked.

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We accept that the end result of inspiration was words – specific words – on paper.

We accept that human opinions, thoughts, feelings, and preferences have no bearing on the meaning of those words but the answers as to how these words moved from God to/thru humans and eventually onto paper are sound bites at most, and when discussions expand they run in circles and are full of vagaries.

It reads more like a he-said, she-said, they-said back-and-forth full of accusations, disputes, and triple-barrelled words than a fair, even-handed discussion.

Those big words, none of which are in the Bible, are thrown in to make unsubstantiated arguments seem sophisticated and prevent further discussion.

Superintend is a good example. The word is used to explain God’s part in the inspiration process but it is found nowhere in the Bible in relation to inspiration.

It’s a good word but it is neither the beginning nor the end of the story. [Read more…] about How Did Inspiration Work