To me, the best job I could have would be the sheriff of rural Georgia town. The town I envision would be small enough so I have time to ride around in my patrol car and not be bogged down by paperwork and committee meetings, but large enough so I could form a SWAT team and buy a lot of weapons, ammunition, and cool gear. Realistically, that probably won’t happen, so my second best job would be to work for a “think tank.”
How Think Tanks Work
There are hundreds of think tanks in America. One common characteristic of think tanks is they always have some official “statement of purpose” that they put on their promotional literature aimed at financial contributors who want to pay them to think. These donors want the ‘think-tankers’ to think about things and give proposals and action items to other people, usually government officials, who are, it often seems, not so good at thinking by themselves and eager for someone to do their thinking for them.
Learning to Think
Believe it or not, I am highly qualified for a think tank job. Growing up, my mom would often, as in very often, ask me, “What were you thinking?” That gave me the opportunity to practice explaining what I was thinking when I had done something I wasn’t supposed to do.
If the explanation wasn’t to my mom’s liking, as was often the case, then I got the chance to get a thinking improvement lesson applied directly to the posterior end of my body. This particular period of instruction was a means of ‘therapeutic’ intervention that everybody in those days knew stimulated better thinking about what you should and should not do.
Will Work for Thinking
Thinking for a think tank is good work if you can get it, but you got to think about how you can get paid for all those thoughts. I thought about that. If I worked for a think tank, then when someone called and asked me about having lunch with them, I could say, “Let me think about it and call you back.”
Then, I could thumb through dining guides and think about what I wanted to eat while discussing what I thought. That would be part of my job because I would be thinking and because I would only meet people for lunch who I thought I could persuade to pay me money to do their thinking for them.
Thinking is Not Emoting
Let’s get serious. Think about it. Even though most of us will never get hired by a think thank, we still need to learn to think. Christians should be thinkers and shouldn’t let others do their thinking for them. Of great importance is knowing what thinking is not.
Emotions are not thoughts. Emoting and thinking are not the same. Some folks think and act because they ‘feel’ a certain way. That is backward. Some events get to us emotionally, and some don’t.
For example, if you are watching a great war movie and the good guys are winning, you may feel the emotions welling up inside you. That feeling reflects a patriotic and noble viewpoint, but if you don’t feel emotional, that doesn’t mean you are not patriotic; it may only mean you were disappointed because you thought they should have killed more of the bad guys.
Emotions can result from many things, and intense emotions can evince a truthful perspective, but they can also result from false ones. The intensity of your feelings does not determine the validity of your thoughts.
Thinking Through Life
The singularly most crucial thinking you can do is to focus and meditate on the Word of God. King Solomon gave a great picture of what thinking looks like in these words spoken to his son:
My son, if thou will receive my words, and hide my commandments with thee; So that you incline thine ear unto wisdom, and apply your heart to understanding; Yea, if you cry after knowledge, and lift up your voice for understanding; If you seek her as silver, and search for her as for hidden treasures; Then shalt you understand the fear of the LORD, and find the knowledge of God. For the LORD giveth wisdom: out of his mouth comes knowledge and understanding. – Proverbs 2:1-6
Knowledge, as it is used in these verses, is comprehensive knowledge that gives the perspective to judge critically and identify incorrect information, outright falsehoods, and deceptions. When Solomon spoke these admonitions, he equated the mental and physical effort needed to gain knowledge and understanding to a treasure hunt and a silver mining operation. Seeking hidden treasure takes a great deal of work and requires a great deal of knowledge and discernment to sort through the clues.
Searching for silver has similar challenges, because you don’t find silver lying beside the road, it has to be mined. In ancient times, silver mining required tens of thousands of workers, most often slaves, to extract silver from ore. Workers had to dig deep shafts into the ground and haul out the ore. After removal, the ore was crushed and washed to find the heavier silver at the bottom of a settling trough. Ancient mining engineers had to know how to separate the tiny grains of silver from the other metals present and form them into coins.
Solomon’s words to his son are a call to action—a call to memorize (hide), listen (incline thine ear), apply, cry, lift up, seek, and search—all words of diligent activity in the thought-filled mind in the realm of light from the Word of God—and they are ‘action items’ for you as well.
Because Christ is both the power and the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24), through our search, God will give us the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, that is Jesus (Ephesians 1:17). Living and powerful like a two-edged sword, the Word of God pierces our innermost thoughts and brings light and life to the deepest parts of our souls.
Wisdom, gained in this way, is the divine perspective on life and alongside knowledge are treasures hidden in Christ Jesus (Colossians 2:3). The very process of searching brings knowledge and discernment that gives us the wisdom to walk worthy of God.
Think Tank
The Apostle Paul desired that the believers at Colossae be filled with the knowledge of God:
For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God; Strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power, unto all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness. (Colossians 1:9-11)
Knowledge of God, Paul writes, can fill us. This filling is a comprehensive and overflowing process of thinking that is perpetually increasing in the knowledge of God. Knowledge of God, the passage tells us, results in more wisdom and spiritual understanding and, consequently, a more fruitful walk, followed by more knowledge of His will and a further increase in wisdom and spiritual understanding—and on it goes—reflecting, retaining, and recycling through the soul. The result bears repeating: Strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power, unto all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness.
An Assembly of Thinkers
Believers in Christ are living stones built into a spiritual house. We are members of a spiritual priesthood filled with the knowledge of God’s will (1 Peter 2:5). It is a fellowship of the gospel (Philippians 1:5) and fellowship of the Spirit (Philippians 2:1). The Apostle John declared that the basis and bond of this fellowship among believers is the truth of the resurrected Christ’s incarnation—the knowledge of what he and the other Apostles had seen with their eyes, and looked upon, and their hands had touched, which was and is the Word of life (1 John 1:1-3).
An assembly of believers in the Lord Jesus is the ultimate think tank where the thoughts and ideas of believers can find trusting relationships with those who offer “the right hand of fellowship” (Galatians 2:9). As an assembly of believers, we should be speaking together in such a way as to build each other up, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in our hearts to the Lord (Colossians 3:16 cf. 1 Thessalonians 5:11).
We should address one another with candor and in truth, but always with love in our words sprinkled with wit and demonstrations of personal interest in those we are in fellowship with (Ephesians 4:29; cf. Ephesians 4:3). Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; bearing with one another, and forgiving one another. If anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. (Colossians 3:12-13 (NKJV)).
We are together in this. So let’s start thinking together—in a tank, around a fire, or around a table—it won’t matter. What will matter is that you are thinking deeply, meditating on the Word of God and that your thinking will be a demonstration of your grace and knowledge of God in relationship with your fellow believers and toward a lost and dying world that, for all its flurry of activity, and its boastful plans and programs, doesn’t really know what to think.
Harper sends