A misconception about thinking

Megan Phelps-Roper grew up in Westboro Baptist Church, and Fred Phelps was her grandfather. This was the only mindset she knew, and she believed it. She picketed and protested and used her social media account to denigrate anyone who would try to challenge her brand of hate. However, she interacted with one young man, a Jew in fact, who did not trade fire for fire but engaged her in respectful conversation, as best as Twitter could provide. Through these dialogues, Megan began to question what she believed. She eventually rejected what she had known all her life and now "is a social media activist, lobbying to overcome divisions and hatred between religious and political divides." (Wikipedia)

Quite a transformation. If you are like me, my first reaction was "I am so glad she started to think for herself." But did she?

In How to Think, Alan Jacobs argues that it wasn't so much thinking by herself as beginning to think with different people.  He also states that "thinking for her/him/yourself" is rarely used when someone disagrees with us. Rather, it is code for we are glad so-and-so came to the light and now believes what we do.

When we believe something to be true, we tend also to see the very process of arriving at it as clear and objective, and therefore the kind of thing we can achieve on our own; when we hold that a given notion is false, we ascribe belief in it to some unfortunate wrong turning, usually taken because an inquirer was led astray, like Hansel and Gretel being tempted into the oven by a wicked witch. And yet even the briefest reflection should demonstrate to us that nothing of that sort is the case: there is no connection between independence and correctness or social thinking and wrongness...

all of us at various times in our lives believe true things for poor reasons, and false things for good reasons, and that whatever we think we know, whether we're right or wrong, arises from our interactions with other human beings. Thinking independently, solitarily, "for ourselves" is not an option.¹

Jacobs is a Christian even though this book is not directed solely at a Christian audience. His insights about thinking can apply to many situations, but for a Christian, thinking in community is vital. Problems come in when we try to do a Lone Ranger because sola scriptura is not solo scriptura. While it is wrong for any authority figure to demand that we follow his/her interpretation no questions asked, neither should we swing to the extreme of me, myself, and I on the desert island of the brain. I don't think any theologian alive today could have formulated the doctrine of the Trinity no matter how many degrees. Where would we be without these thinkers who went before us? In a Kingdom Hall, perhaps?

Yet we are still growing in our understanding, and Christians still disagree, which is tough sometimes. But I think this demonstrates our need for one another. Theology matters, but it isn't going to happen in a vacuum. It means dialoguing with respect, disagreeing well in love, and holding fast to our unity in Christ. I want to learn how to do this. In the end, if we are pursuing the truth, there isn't a winner and a loser. We are on the same side.

if you can show me that a belief I had thought was true is actually false, I have not lost but have won, because, I do not want to hold a false belief and am now closer to the truth.²

1. How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds, Alan Jacobs, Currency Books, 2017, pp. 38-39.
2. Prelude to Philosophy: An Introduction for Christians, Mark W. Foreman, IVP Academic, 2013, pg. 60.