What Was I Thinking?

By

B.J. Knefley

What was I thinking? Have you ever uttered those words or thought them? Probably we all have one time or another. Why is that? Why do we open our mouths and say things that we later regret? Do we not think it through? Do we think everyone wants to hear our opinions? Unfortunately, we seem to have many today that believe it’s their God given right to speak what they think regardless of how it might sound or affect others. To do so they will shout louder and do whatever they can to intimate the person whose opinions they disagree with. Their position isn’t about what they were thinking it’s about what the other person was thinking and it’s always about getting the other person to back down.

Sadly, we all can go off on a subject that we think we know everything about and miss some crucial issues. I call it one-sided thinking. It’s not a new thing as it’s been around forever. Rather than being informed we become misinformed and expound on that misinformation in such a way that it becomes our reality. Afterall if I believe it to be true then it must be. Right?

Over the years I’ve learned to ask questions, to look at a subject from every angle. One-sided thinking becomes a one-sided view. When we get to this point, we can’t see anything else. It’s at this point that we become dangerous. Dangerous in the sense that we’ve closed ourselves off to other ideas and/or options. It’s not so much that we can’t, but that we won’t. We do it with politics, human rights, religion, and every other subject you can imagine. Rather than becoming thinkers we become closed minded to the thoughts of others.

I like that God calls us to reason and to think things through with him, (Isaiah 1:18). He doesn’t shut us down but invites us into a dialog. Would it be nice if we all practiced this with others? Perhaps we’d learn how to agree and disagree together. Think about it.