What Do You Think?
“Teach me your way, Lord; lead me in a straight path…”
-Psalms 27:11 NIV
40 Things to Give Up For a Better Life
#7 Naivety
I’m tired of letting others do all my thinking. Are you?
I remember way, way back in college when I took a seminar on Whittaker Chambers. The professor asked for an essay. I have no memory of the details of said essay. But I do remember asking him what he wanted. He said he wouldn’t tell me, that he wanted to know what I thought. It was a radical idea. In fact, it rattled, angered and baffled me. I’d been raised to figure out the right answer and write it down, not to tell a professor what I thought. I was flummoxed. I don’t remember anything else about the class other than my best friend didn’t recognize me the first day because I had been away from school for the summer wearing an appliance that widened my jaw and changed my profile. But that’s a story for another day. Anyway, the conversation with the professor was life-altering: the idea that I might have an opinion all my own and that it might actually be a good thing to think and to share what I discovered inside my own brain.
And somehow over the years I’ve forgotten that lesson. I’ve learned to listen to the authorities, to my friends and family and to never question their opinions. I’ve forgotten how to speak my own mind in an effort to be a godly woman: a submissive, quiet, gentle, nice girl. Now don’t get the idea that I’m ever going to be bold enough to argue with you. But I am deciding that it’s time to seek out Truth and truth, to try to see all the sides of an issue, and to form my own opinions and beliefs.
I think that’s the best and only adult way to live. Don’t you agree?
When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things.
1 Corintians 13:11 NLT
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