But this is not discourse and it's not an evidence of critical thinking. Which brings us to our subject: what is critical thinking as reflected in speaking and writing?
Being critical doesn't make a person a critical thinker. Far from it. Anyone can be critical of anything and everything. Such people don't make for boon companions and wind up wondering why they have no friends, when they've spent their lives criticizing everybody and everything.
Critical thinking begins with an attitude: humility. The critical thinker is keenly aware that his knowledge is limited and finite, that even when he knows the truth, he knows that he doesn't always know the best way to get it across to others.
The critical thinker understands that he's not Elijah having audibly heard from God with a message to thunder from Mt. Carmel. Too many pastors take as their model the Old Testament prophets, including John the Baptist, and not Peter who wrote, "And all of you, you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, for God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble." He also wrote: "But sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence."
The critical thinker is a reader and a particular kind of reader--he reads the best expressions of those whose viewpoints oppose his. If he reads the worst and most poorly presented presentations of an opposing viewpoint, it tends to make him self-righteousness, arrogant and to characterize his opponent wrongly. When he reads the best, it will cause him to be fair and learn something. It will enable him to see where the one with an opposing view is wrong, as well as why he's wrong. It will strengthen his convictions in the process.
Such a practice makes the critical thinker passionate "in the advancement of his ideas, flexible in the way he proposes them, and impervious to threats, mockery, or scorn." (David French)
One other aspect of a critical thinker is that he doesn't engage in hyperbole, wild exaggeration, and speculation. This is the bane of way too many Christian speakers and writers. Many were born in the superlative case. For sermonic fodder, everything becomes a crisis, everything is transformed into an emergency, everything is something to be enraged about, everything is the worst it's ever been. [For example, when speaking of the division in our country, we often hear, "We're more divided than we've ever been!" But that statement fails to take into account the War Between the States in which the South left the Union and the North invaded them for it.]
Exaggerations abound from all sides: there's a "the war on women." Really? A war? If you oppose a nationalized health service, then, "You want to kill old people." If you oppose same-sex marriage, then you hate those who don't.
Speaking of speculation, when the 9-11 attacks occurred, "The Revs. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson set off a minor explosion of their own when they asserted on television that an angry God had allowed the terrorists to succeed in their deadly mission because the United States had become a nation of abortion, homosexuality, secular schools, and courts."
The question is, "How do they know that?" How can they make such a pronouncement? As R. Albert Mohler Jr, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, said, "There is no doubt that America has accommodated itself to so many sins that we should always fear God's judgment and expect that in due time that judgment will come. But we ought to be very careful about pointing to any circumstance or any specific tragedy and say that this thing has happened because this is God's direct punishment."
The critical thinker will have a sense of what's an "emergency" and what's "the worst," and what's a "war." He will measure his words and make them precise and balanced.
May his tribe increase!
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