Thinking

You ever notice how much we impose our own thoughts on others? You talk to someone you've known for years and you just assume that you still share a lot of common thoughts that changed with you as you grew to understand the world in a different way. We think everyone sees what we see- have you ever tried to explain algebra to a sixth grader who's never seen it before? Solving for a variable is more difficult than you remember. It's the same thing with learning to read music or cooking for the first time or anything like that. We forget, or at least I do, that other people have brains of their own, containing different thoughts and opinions than I have in mine.

I do the same thing with my emotions and fears. If I'm upset, everyone else must be too. If I've had a great piece of news, it should make everyone else's day too. If I'm afraid that someone's mad at me or disappointed in me, they must be furious and ashamed of me. If I notice someone looking at me, they must have feelings for me. I'm really good at backing up all of this with facts I notice, twisted to make irrefutable, fit for what I think is true.

There's no good way around all these biases. The best I can do is recognize that they exist, when I'm thinking about things and hope to discredit them in my stronger moments. The fact is, I can't get out of my brain to understand what's inside yours or his or hers or theirs, any one of the thousands and millions and billions of thems out there. I can try, but it'd take effort. I'm not good at effort. I'd rather run the same rut over and over again, and complain about why I can't get out.

And if I can't get out of my head to understand you, who is human and rather fundamentally similar to me, how can I pretend that I can understand what's going on in God's head? Answering questions of Why Creation is the way it is, Why we're given what we have, all of those require understanding what goes on in God's potentially metaphorical head.

I mean, it's not like God hasn't tried. Beyond giving us all of these amazing things to look at and study, God's also endeavored to have people try to explain God's thoughts to us. God even gave us Jesus. We've had a couple millenniums to grapple with all of this. It's difficult.

But I do think all of this requires grappling. We have to try to understand these things, and I know I haven't tried enough. I think I've looked at the Bible like I look at dirt- on a surface level, I understand what it is and how it functions in everyday life, but it's kinda always been there, and I don't really understand what it means to dig in it, how to use it to make things grow. I need to, though.

I've been thinking a lot about the way I see God. From the sermon two Sundays ago, when I was introduced to the quote, "God created Man in his own image and Man, being a gentleman, returned the favor," to a conversation with a quasi-friend, when he defined the attributes of God and I realized that I was afraid to answer, because I'd be wrong. How can I try to understand how other people think if I don't even know what I think?

I need to define what I think. I need to think about what other people think. I need to understand the ways I've been creating God in my own image, and the times when I've seen God for who God is, because I'm sure those times must exist. (And while I'm doing all that thinking, I still have to work and interact and coexist and try to bring good into the world, because if I'm not acting, my brain won't let me just think. It's a fault.) But I need to try. And in trying, I need to do. I don't need to be dragged down anymore.