Most People Don’t Actually Think

Most people don’t actually think—they just repeat what they’ve heard.

In this episode of the Speaking Your Lingo Podcast, Shane Lingo dives into the "gap" between knowing what you believe and knowing why you believe it. If your views on truth, morality, or God were truly challenged today, would they hold up, or would the foundation collapse?

We’re breaking down the 5 Foundations for Thinking Well to help you move past inherited ideas and build a worldview that actually matches reality.

The Two Questions That Test Everything:
At the end of the episode, Shane poses two massive questions that will determine if you’re actually thinking for yourself or just assuming you are.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

In today's world, most people don't actually think. They just repeat what they've heard. So let me ask you a question. If someone really challenged you on what you believe, your views on truth, morality, even God, would they actually hold up? Today I want to help you answer that. On this episode of the Speak in Your Lingo podcast, we're going back to something I haven't talked about since the very beginning. What it actually means to think well. Because the way that you think, it shapes everything, what you believe, how you live, and ultimately it shapes who you become. So I'm going to give you five foundations for thinking well. And at the end, I'm going to ask you two questions that will test whether you're actually doing it. Or maybe just assuming that you are. So have you ever been in a conversation where someone asks you why you believe something? And in that moment you realize you didn't actually have a good answer. I've been there. Like you know what you believe, but not really why. And so that's the gap. And what I want to do is I want to help us close that gap today. So let's build this from the ground up. We're going to talk about five foundations for thinking well. Now, the first foundation for thinking well is understanding why you believe what you believe. You know, we all have different beliefs about truth, the world, morality, God. But most people never stop to ask where those beliefs come from or what they're actually built on. And honestly, it's really just easy to inherit ideas, maybe from our parents, maybe from culture, maybe from social media, college, politics, whatever it is. But if you're going to build your life on something, you need more than it's just, you know, what I've always heard. You need a solid foundation. Because the truth is weak foundations collapse the moment that they're actually challenged. And honestly, I've had moments in my life where I realized I needed better answers too. So we have to dig deeper and we have to start asking questions like, why do I believe what I believe? How did I come to this conclusion? Is there an actual logical and philosophical foundation underneath it? Because thinking well means really being able to examine your beliefs and not just repeat them or repeat things that we've heard in the past. And for those of you who are Christians, here's what I'll say. What I think you'll discover is if you seriously explore Christianity, is that there are genuinely good reasons to believe that Jesus is who he said he is, that Jesus really did rise from the dead, and he actually has the power to raise you someday as well. And so the reality is, is we have to dig deeper though, in order to get to some of those answers. But what we'll find is when we do, it really strengthens our faith and it strengthens our beliefs in ways that maybe we never thought possible in the past. And so if this is true, really learning how to think well in this way really can change everything. All right, second foundation for thinking well. The second foundation for thinking well is to understand ideas and ideologies you disagree with. You know, when I was getting my undergrad, I had this professor and he talked about this idea or this ability to be able to take in and seriously consider viewpoints that are different from your own. And the way he described it really changed the way that I think. He said, you should be able to take in ideas that you disagree with, essentially place them in your brain and shift them around in order to think deeply about these ideas. To take these ideas in almost as if they're your own. In other words, he was saying that you should be able to take an idea that you disagree with and hold it in your mind long enough to truly examine it and to think through it as if it was your idea. And it's not because you're trying to automatically accept that idea, but because you're trying to honestly understand it. And that's important because it frees you from being afraid of ideas that you don't understand, or maybe even ideas that you disagreed with in the past. And honestly, I've experienced this in my own life. I remember when I was in Bible college and I had this strong belief that Catholics weren't really Christians. And if you're a Catholic and you're listening to this, you know, sorry, but that's just what I believed at one time. And part of that came from how I understood things like the praying to the saints, the role of Mary, uh, works, liturgy, and all of that, for whatever reason, just felt deeply wrong to me at the time. And honestly, I remember being confused that my Protestant school would even allow a Catholic professor to teach a lecture there. And during the same season, I was actually given an opportunity to speak at a Catholic youth camp. And I remember genuinely wrestling with that invitation because my assumption about Catholicism was just so negative during that time. But over time, after hearing different perspectives and arguments and viewpoints from Catholics and even Orthodox Christians themselves, my views started to change. They started to shift. And this didn't happen all at once, but it it was a kind of a slow process over time. And it's not like I suddenly agreed with everything, but I really just started to begin to realize that some of the assumptions and the caricatures that I had kind of inherited from I don't know where weren't entirely fair and really weren't entirely accurate. And as I started actually studying church history and looking into theology and kind of the reasoning behind some of these traditions, my perspectives on some of these things continued to deepen. Now, I'm still happily Protestant and still have, you know, theological disagreements in some of these areas. Um, but at the same time, I also genuinely see that Catholics and Orthodox Christians are actually brothers and sisters in Christ. And in fact, I've come to deeply really appreciate some of the aspects of those traditions. Um, you know, the liturgy, the reverence they have, the historical rootedness. And, you know, when you walk into the liturgy to experience the beauty that's there. And every once in a while, I actually enjoy attending Orthodox liturgy for those reasons. Again, not because, you know, I've abandoned my Protestantism, but because I've come to appreciate the beauty and the reverence and the depths that can be found in those traditions. And the older I've gotten, the more I really resonate with uh C.S. Lewis in his description of Christianity in his book Mere Christianity. He talks about Christianity almost like a house. And this house has many rooms that are connected by this central hallway. And while Christians may disagree on, you know, certain doctrines and traditions within those rooms, we still share that same central foundation in Christ. And I think learning to see that kind of distinction has also helped me to more clearly and more honestly kind of evaluate these things in these areas. And so that's an example where, you know, my thoughts on something have deeply shifted over time. And I think this experience really illustrates something important about thinking well. Because growth in thinking doesn't mean abandoning truth, but it often does mean kind of replacing these caricatures with a deeper understanding. And it also means taking in different viewpoints that can allow you to challenge your own assumptions instead of just, you know, protecting them or reacting emotionally. And sometimes after examining an idea deeply, you realize, hey, there's some there's some truth in this thing, or um, there's some truth in this thing that I disagreed with, and now I need to shift my thinking. Or when we do this, sometimes on the other side, you might realize this doesn't hold up, you know, this doesn't match reality. This this doesn't align with truth. And so you set it aside. But either way, you win because you understand why you believe what you believe more clearly, and the process overall can strengthen your beliefs. And one of the things I'll say about this this idea of, you know, taking in these thoughts and these ideas that you disagree with and trying to take them in as your own, at least for a moment, to try to learn more about them. What it does is it takes humility to be able to do this because, again, you're essentially allowing for the possibility that you don't know something or that you could be wrong about something. And honestly, that kind of humility is where learning starts. And one of the things I'll say is that kind of humility in learning is often rare today because most people don't want understanding anymore. They what they really want is they want reinforcement. But if you combine the first two foundations that we're talking about together, understanding why you believe what you believe and understanding these ideas that you disagree with, then you have a much stronger basis for actually rejecting false ideas instead of just reacting to them emotionally. So, what I'm trying to encourage you to do is to wrestle with these ideas that you disagree with, to test them, to examine them, to ultimately challenge them. And if they don't hold up to truth, then you can just set them aside. And before we move to number three, if this is helping you think more deeply and clearly already, I want to encourage you to go ahead and subscribe so you don't miss future episodes just like this. Now, the third foundation for thinking well is learning from what GK Chesterton calls the democracy of the dead. Chesterton once said this tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who happen to be walking about. So, in other words, what Chesterton is saying is that we need to give the thinkers of the past a vote in our logic today, because our perspective becomes increasingly small if the only voices that are shaping it are the thinkers that are in our modern day. And honestly, modern culture kind of acts like newer automatically means wiser or newer automatically means smarter. But the more that you actually read, the more you study things like history and philosophy and theology and human nature, the more that you look to the past, the more that you realize that's just not true. And yes, we've gained knowledge in some areas, but in other areas we've also lost wisdom. And that's why it's so important to learn from the great thinkers that have come before us. People like C.S. Lewis and you know, the philosophers of the past, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, um, learning from people like Solomon in the Old Testament. These people wrestled with truth, morality, justice, suffering, uh, you know, meaning, human nature long before any of us ever got here. And I love what C.S. Lewis has to say. He he puts this, he puts this beautifully in this quote. He says this we need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future and yet need something to set against the present to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods, and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion. A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village. The scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age. And Lewis's point, it's powerful here. A person who only knows their own time period is often blind to the errors of their day. But someone who studies many generations has read many different books from many different places and many different times, they can begin to recognize which ideas are timeless truths and which ideas are just, you know, kind of temporary trends that are dressed up as wisdom. And honestly, I think that matters now, you know, more than ever in the world of social media and clickbait and just quick responses to things. So what I'm saying is that as you're learning to think well, don't let this generation or your generation become the only one uh or the only lens through which you actually see reality. All right, the fourth foundation for thinking well is mastering your communication because true thinking eventually shows up in the way that you speak. If you can't clearly explain what you believe, there's a good chance you haven't really fully thought it through yet. And that's important because it's one thing to, you know, believe something is true, but it's another thing to be able to explain why it's true. And so we need to learn how to be able to articulate our beliefs in a way that's clear and a way that's rational and really in a loving way as well. Not so we can win arguments all the time, but so we can communicate truth in a way that people can actually understand and in a way that people can actually digest. And so part of thinking well is really being able to put your ideas out there in a clear way and having those ideas, you know, be challenged. So not avoiding conversations, not hiding from objections, uh, but really learning how to respond thoughtfully instead of just responding emotionally. And I think this matters, especially as Christians, because truth without love really becomes harsh and love without truth becomes meaningless. So, what we want to do is we want to strive to be able to communicate both. We want to strive to be able to communicate things clearly, rationally, and lovingly. And as we learn to master our communication in this way, we're gonna see that this goes from just us learning how to be, you know, learning how to think well ourselves to really being able to take the step to loving others because now we're helping them learn how to think well and challenge them in a loving way to help lead them towards truth. And so that's important when it comes to really learning how to master our communication or really the idea of being able to share our ideas in a loving, uh in a clear way. All right, the fifth and final foundation for thinking well. The fifth foundation for thinking well is pursuing the essentials. And I say this because thinking well isn't just about being intelligent, it's about moving towards what is true and beautiful and moving towards what is good. Because every idea that we have, every idea is really taking you somewhere. Because ideas don't just stay ideas for long. Eventually, they shape the way that we live. And some ideas are gonna move us towards truth, and others are actually gonna move us away from it. Some ideas are gonna produce meaning, purpose, beauty, uh, human flourishing. And other ideas are gonna lead to things like confusion and emptiness and destruction. So when you encounter a belief or a worldview or an ideology, you want to ask yourself, you know, is this leading towards truth? Is this producing goodness? You know, is there beauty in this idea? Because wisdom isn't just about knowing more information. It's really about learning how to rightly order your life, right? The goal isn't just to become smarter, but it's also to become wiser. And ultimately, I believe that truth, beauty, and goodness, they're not just these, you know, abstract ideas. I believe they actually point us to God Himself, who is really the source of truth, the source of goodness, you know, the source of beauty. And so the closer we move toward him, the more clearly we'll actually be able to see reality as it is. Now, that brings us to the two questions I told you I'd leave you with. Because how you answer these questions will truly shape almost everything else you believe about reality, morality, purpose, and even really your own identity. So here are the two big questions. What does it mean to be human and where does morality come from? And I'll be coming back to these questions in a future episode to really unpack them more deeply. But for now, I want you to wrestle with your answers to those questions. Because if we get these questions wrong, we won't just think poorly, but we'll actually live poorly too. So I want to encourage you to think deeply, to pursue truth, and don't just settle for inherited answers. With that, as always, I want to say thanks for listening. Thanks for subscribing, and I'll see you on the next episode.