1 Thessalonians 5:21 “Test everything.”
Once again, I am dismayed by lack of critical thinking among my fellow humans. We have permitted irrationality to take hold. We accept and even celebrate as wise and good the person with the loudest voice, who refuses to listen, who shouts down his opponent, and who militantly censors alternate points of view. Why condemn honest questions? Why refuse genuine debate? Why take offense if someone brings supporting data and asks for yours?
This week’s bullying of the US Attorney General by members of the House of Representatives is what brought this again to mind. The discourse from certain congressmembers hardly rose above junior high school taunts. Was anyone enlightened by the questioning? Were the interrogators seeking answers or just seeking an audience? What possessed voters to reward these people with high positions of power?
I have spent my career in data and analytics, engaging in the pursuit of truth every day. My colleagues and I can, with high precision, tell you whether you need two facings of your product on the shelf or one, what is your product’s ideal price point for a given geography, which competitor’s new items are taking sales from your product and to what degree, and much more. Yet with vastly greater issues at stake in our world, so many people willingly surrender their critical faculties and refuse to examine the data or even ask questions. We rigorously inquire and debate the mundane, but at the slightest risk of social awkwardness we become lazy, slipshod, and credulous regarding the most important matters of our time. This is intellectual suicide.
This excerpt from George Orwell writing about his 1945 book, Animal Farm, captures it well: “At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that, or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it … Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.”
More than 70 years later, things are no better. And the mechanisms for suppressing thought have grown far more personally invasive, with reach now on a worldwide scale.
Here is the full text of 1 Thessalonians 5:21: “Test everything; hold on to the good.” This is a beautifully concise summary of the scientific method. Rather than forming a mob and causing an uproar (Acts 17:5), the Bible commends people who “examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true” (Acts 17:11). God himself invites human beings to “come now, let us reason together” (Isaiah 1:18). Questioning, reasoning, and verifying are core to the teachings of both the Old and New Testaments. They are among the behaviors that separate human beings from the animals. They are nothing less than a reflection God’s image in us.
Father, thank you for the many opportunities you have given me to hone my reasoning skills. Never let me stop thinking, listening, and testing everything. Please help those who unthinkingly swallow what is served up by the media, politicians, and popular culture. Help them pause and reflect, testing each assertion before accepting it as truth.
———-
This week: Read Acts 17. Observe how Paul reasoned with his listeners rather than berating them or shouting them down. Consider the different ways his audience responded in various cities. Compare what you read in Acts to what is happening today.
And take a moment to share, re-post, and tell others about this blog. I repeatedly hear from friends that these posts are helping them apply Scripture to work and life. If you haven’t yet signed up to receive emails in your inbox, I invite you to click here to join the mailing list.
God bless you this week and thank you for reading.