To Think

     Do you believe, generally speaking, there's a whole culture in this country of people who do not know how to think?  The art of thinking is not really talked about much, at least in my little tiny corner of the world.  Maybe where you live and function people know how to use their brains productively, but I postulate that people many times surrender the task of thinking to others to do it for them.  This is true in many arenas - politically, in the workplace, and of course, in religion.  Why do we seem to have a lack of great thinkers such as C.S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, A.W. Tozer and Oswald Chambers?  Or are they out there, and I just don't know where to look?
     I have started listening some to Bott Radio Network, 94.3.  A variety of speakers present programs, some are thought provoking and some are a little like cotton candy.  I have found that I enjoy thinking about, and listening to the challenges presented by people like Alistair Begg, Erwin Lutzer, and Ravi Zacharias.  In fact, his show is called, "Let My People Think".  On his website, he lists some beginning reading materials for those who are interested in apologetics - or, "the art and science of Christian persuasion: communicating the relevance, coherence, and reasonableness of the Christian Gospel to skeptics, cultural influencers, and critical thinkers across the globe."  (from Ravi Zacharias' website,   http://www.rzim.org/about/.  
     
John Bunyan, Pilgrims Progress
Daily Light on the Daily Path (collection of Bible readings)
Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth
Os Guinness, The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Letters
J.I. Packer, Knowing God
Roger Steer, George Muller: Delighted in God
John Stott, The Cross of Christ
John White, The Fight
Brother Yun, Heavenly Man
Ravi Zacharias, The Grand Weaver: How God Shapes Us through the Events of Our Lives

Have you read any of these? 

     Anyhow, my son gave my husband a book called, "Think: The Life of the Mind and the Love of God" by John Piper.  The purpose of the book:  "This book is a plea to embrace serious thinking as a means of loving God and people.  It is a plea to reject either-or thinking when it comes to head and heart, thinking and feeling, reason and faith, theology and doxology, mental labor and the ministry of love.  It is a plea to see thinking as a necessary, God-ordained means of knowing God.  Thinking is one of the important ways that we put the fuel of knowledge on the fires of worship and service to the world."  (From the introduction, Page 15). I'm interested in this book, and in learning how to think.  I'll let you know how it goes.  In the meantime, I encourage YOU to sit somewhere, and just, "think".  Who knows what may happen next...