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Of course we should think. Of course we should be reasonable. Of course we should (God help us) use “critical thinking” if that term does it for us. But don’t go thinking you’re getting to the bottom of anything that way. In the end, were stuck with what Solomon described at Ecclesiastes 8:17:
“I considered all the work of the true God, and I realized that mankind cannot comprehend what happens under the sun. No matter how hard men try, they cannot comprehend it. Even if they claim that they are wise enough to know, they cannot really comprehend it.”
They can’t really comprehend it, no matter how hard they try. When people carry on that their thinking is so sharp as to put aside emotion, it just makes things worse. It “locks in human bias under a veneer of science.”
Witness the “faith, hope, and love”—all emotions of 1 Corinthians 13:13, “but the greatest of these is love.” Contrast that with some of the baser emotions Paul mentions at 1 Timothy 6: 3-4:
“If any man teaches another doctrine and does not agree with the wholesome instruction, which is from our Lord Jesus Christ, nor with the teaching that is in harmony with godly devotion, he is puffed up with pride and does not understand anything. He is obsessed with arguments and debates about words. These things give rise to envy, strife, slander, wicked suspicions, constant disputes about minor matters.
The power is in the emotions; faith, hope, love on one end and “pride, envy, strife, wicked suspicions” at the other. One can discuss either using all their powers of critical thinking, but that does not change that the first are noble and the latter are base. So use your critical thinking, but don’t let it go to your head. in matters involving God, it is like showing up at the job with a toolbox stuffed with wrenches when what is required is a screwdriver. And, by all means, don’t think it a virtue or even within your power to divorce emotions from thought. Humans are not built that way. They can blind themselves to think they are but they are not.
Most Witnesses describe their faith as the most rational of religions. They have a sense with the Bible of having put a jigsaw puzzle together. But that doesn’t mean it will satisfy the standards of “critical thinking,” which considers only that which is provable. The stuff wouldn’t be called faith if it was provable. Says Luke Johnson, “The historian cannot take up anything having to do with the transcendent or the supernatural. Therefore, the historian cannot talk about the miraculous birth of Jesus, his miracles, his walking on the water, his transfiguration, his resurrection from the dead and so forth. Well, fair enough, the historian can’t talk about those things, but that methodological restraint . . . very quickly becomes implicitly an epistemological denial, that is the historian can’t talk about these things, therefore they are not real.”
Consistently, we read that those who embrace stick with faith do so on factors other than their critical thinking. Acts 13:48 simply calls it being “rightly disposed for everlasting life.” (“When those of the nations heard this, they began to rejoice and to glorify the word ofJehovah, and all those who were rightly disposed for everlasting life became believers.”) It is hard to envision that as a function of their critical thinking.
Even passages that do call for analytical thinking ability—call it “critical thinking” if you must—make clear that such thinking is not the motivator. Rather, it is the tool that one employs with motivation, but would not do so otherwise. For example, a choice was thrust upon the Boreans when Paul and Silas paid a visit in the first century:
“Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica [where the two had been run out of town], for they accepted the word with the greatest eagerness of mind, carefully examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.” (Acts 17:11)
That they were rational is evident in that they carefully examined the Scriptures daily to see that what Paul and Silas were telling them was so. But from where does the eagerness come? That one will be emotion, not logic. That one will be heart, not head. That one will be people conscious of their spiritual need, and so determined to fill it. That one will be people who intuitively know they have a spiritual need and that it is analogous to their need for vitamins, without which one gets very ill and never quite knows why. Nobody hungers for vitamin C or vitamin D. Instead, they make themselves conscious of that need. That those of Borea put such a premium on spiritual matters explains that they are called noble-minded. It’s a nobility that has nothing to do with the intellect, the head. It has everything to do with emotion, with what a person is at heart.
It is high time to wrap up this series. It has spanned six parts. It doubtless includes redundancies which need be edited out if I ever combine the six. The stuff called critical thinking is fine as a seasoning, but disastrous as a main course. You would think that would be evident as the ship goes under while co-captained by luminaries all claiming to excel in such thinking. But it is not.
Isn’t “critical thinking” the prime tool of those who “think they are wise?” The holy writings have no use for that type of person: “Have you seen a man who thinks he is wise? There is more hope for someone stupid than for him.” (Proverbs 26:12) Emphasis on critical thinking gives rise to the mantra that more understanding will solve all problems. How is that one working out? Humans don’t need more of the stuff. If anything, they need less. Moreover, they need it to stand aside so that higher qualities may shine through.
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