Critical Thinking & Faith

Have you ever had a light bulb moment, an epiphany, that moment when you see something clearly for the first time and go ‘aha’! After a time of ecstatic joy we often pose the question, ‘What does this mean for me?’ Great moments come with more work to do.

Peter has one of those moments. Jesus asks the disciples who he is (Mark 8:27-30). They reply what they have heard from others. When you speak to people about who God is they often reply with other peoples answers. Rarely do you hear what they think.

Peter gives his own answer. The Messiah. Jesus doesn’t applaud him. No gold star for Peter. The other disciples are told not to talk about who Peter thinks Jesus is. This is a light bulb moment, which is going to take an eternity to unpack. Don’t go off with undigested ideas.

Critical thinking is vital to our understanding of Jesus and faith. We need the skills of questioning, recognition, articulation and reflection to allow us to fully discover who He is. Under the questioning of Jesus, Peter achieves recognition. This questioning had been going on for sometime, always leading back to the ‘Who do you say I am?’ Peter articulates what he has arrived at.

Jesus says don’t say anything to anyone. They were not yet ready to articulate what they had discovered. They didn’t have the language, knowledge or the lived experience to.

But when Peter gets it right on the day of Pentecost he is powerful and persuasive, fully possessed of the knowledge he only now glimpses. Jesus is right to allow them time to observe, reflect and experience the truth they discovered before letting them take into the rest of the world.

This Easter we only glimpse the possibilities invested in Jesus, yet as we observe, reflect and experience Him may we become empowered as Peter and the Disciples did.

Teenagers, Emotions and Rational Thinking!

'What were you thinking, oh, that's right, you weren't' is something I hear when adults are talking to teenagers about another internet blunder, stupid behaviour or risky stunt. And we smile and shake our heads muttering, 'teenagers!'.

Yet that question is not only directed at teenagers. What about celebrities and naked selfies, politicians and sexual indiscretions, sportsman and another alcohol induced brain failure, and road 'ragers' regardless of age? What were they thinking? The truth? They weren't.

Remember back to your last regrettable moment and try and work what was going on there. How did you find yourself in that unthinkable moment? What were you thinking? If we are honest, there was in fact little thinking going on.

We were being led by our emotions. Dan Ariely, in his book 'Predictably Irrational',  outlines the roles of emotions in negating our reasonable selves. Ask a teenager  in a classroom about safe sex, safe internet rules and safe drinking and they will provide you with all the rational and appropriate replies. They will declare that they would always engage in safe sex, that they follow internet etiquette and do not, under any circumstances drink to a dangerous level.

So what goes wrong when they find themselves in a close embrace with a school friend of the opposite sex and they haven't a condom, on facebook and are angry about being dumped by their girl/boy friend, at a party where everyone is getting tanked and their friends pester them to go for a drive? The odds are they will end up having sex, post an inappropriate image of their ex, drink too much and drive too fast.

Why? Because their emotions are hot. Emotions over-rule the logical brain in these circumstances. It really is about, 'if it feels good, just go for it'. Peer pressure, opportunity and lack of boundaries, or those who will police the boundaries, means that higher order thinking goes out the window.

If you look closely at your last regrettable incident, you will see that you were responding emotionally to the situation you found yourself in. Something somebody said or did, opportunity to experience the forbidden or overindulge, self pity, feelings of powerlessness and loneliness, grief and loss and more have conspired you to do something without engaging your brain and behaving in line with your principles.

It is the reason essentially good people behave badly.

When we say, 'What were you thinking, oh, that's right, you weren't' to a teenager, let us remember that not only are they struggling with the stages of brain development, they are also in the midst of a highly emotional period of life. They are see-sawing back and forwards between rational thought and their emotions in a way we adults have forgotten.

While it is important we educate them about relationships, bullying, internet etiquette, safe sex and socialising we must also educate them about the power of the moment, their emotions, to over-ride everything they believe they believe. Emotional education is often missing from education programs aiming to address behavioural issues.

This is a plea to educators to remember the power of their own emotions, to translate that to the out-of-control emotions of a young person struggling with adolescence and all its intricacies, and to unmask the role emotions will play in what they do.

It is their feelings that lead them, not their thinking. Just like it does for adults.