“Think for yourself.”
The sentiment at the root of this phrase is used in countless iterations, from exasperated parents asking if a child would follow their friends in jumping off a bridge to an old Apple ad campaign asking its users to “think different” (presumably by all buying the same product). This same sentiment is also commonly expressed as an educational goal, and we often view independent thinking as a sign of maturity and principled virtue. As you reflect on your educational experience, how do you feel about this statement? Do you feel equipped to think for yourself, start to finish, on issues of real importance to you? If you were presented with an issue that you hadn’t thought much about before, and you were asked to formulate a meaningful opinion on the matter, would you know how to start?
One of my goals is to equip you with tools to help you engage in this sort of independent thinking. More importantly, my goal is to do so in a way that draws integrally on your identity as a child of God. We’ll be walking through this process together in many of the resources available on this page, but, at the start, it’s fair that we stop and consider both why I would focus on this issue and what method I’m exactly proposing.
How do we go about “thinking for ourselves” in a way that intentionally draws upon the new selves that we seek to put on, remaining sensitive to the old selves that we struggle to put off? When life throws us questions that our teachers never answered for us, I propose that we approach these issues by asking five questions of our own in what I have creatively labeled the “Five Question Model of Inquiry.”
The Five Question Model of Inquiry
The Five Question Model of Inquiry essentially takes techniques drawn from critical thinking exercises and marries them with an intentional grounding in Scripture. I have no pretentions of this being a wholly new or revolutionary method. Quite the opposite. These are old, perhaps deceptively simple questions aimed at trying to comprehensively consider an issue so that we can move past the often-unsatisfactory answers that are immediately available to us.
Why are these answers not enough? For most burning questions that we have, we can find quick answers at the low, low cost of a Google search, maybe appending our favorite pastor in the search bar along with it if we’re looking for a Christian perspective. However, one of the reasons that these questions keep burning is that they inevitably have a level of nuance and difficulty to them that cannot be satisfactorily answered in a 1300-word blog post, no matter how prestigious the author.
I should perhaps pause here and say that this does not mean that there is nothing to be gained from these bite-sized offerings; there typically just isn’t enough. A good, pithy article can point us in a good direction, but it rarely takes us the whole way.
This brings us to how this is an exercise in critical thinking. For thinking to be critical, it can’t be the first time that we’re thinking through something. Critical thought is careful rethinking of an issue, reviewing it and going back to reconsider it from different perspectives. To draw on an agricultural metaphor, this sort of reflective thought can also be referred to as “ruminating” on something. A ruminant is an animal, like a cow, which will move food back to its mouth to be rechewed as it passes through the digestive system. When we’re doing good critical thinking, we’re going to go back and chew on bits of our initial question multiple times before we come to a conclusion.
Without further ado, then, let’s unpack the Five Question Model. For all of the following, I will use a general framing question, “How do we live as disciples in the contemporary world?” as a clarifying example.
Question 1: What is ______?
Former President Bill Clinton once faced a grand jury over allegations that he had, among other things, committed perjury by responding to a question about his illicit relationship with Monica Lewinsky by saying, “There’s nothing going on between us.” Clinton’s famous defense of himself was, “It depends on what your definition of ‘is’ is.” In other words, because “is” indicates present tense, and Clinton was not in a relationship at the time of his statement, he claimed that he had not lied under oath.
Now, this example is usually cited to show how weasel-like lawyers can be with language, but the exact meaning of Clinton’s original statement was a critical issue in the case. Had the initial question about his relationship been clarified, Clinton would not have been able to dodge the issue like he did.
I’ll offer another helpful example from the legal world: In 1864, two British businessmen agreed to a contract to ship cotton from India to England, with the cotton set to sail on a ship called the Peerless. The problem was that there were two ships in Bombay harbor called Peerless, and they were set to sail months apart. Of course, the man ordering the cotton had in mind the earlier ship, while the man shipping it was thinking of the later ship. Just think how much expense and frustration could have been saved if the men had just been more careful in defining what they were talking about!
The cornerstone of good, careful thinking is good, careful thinking about definitions.
The cornerstone of good, careful thinking is good, careful thinking about definitions. Typically, we can get at this issue best by parsing apart the grammatical structure of the question we’re considering. Some pieces will likely be more crucial than others, but looking at the various nouns and verbs and asking what they mean can help to uncover key assumptions embedded in the question itself.
For example, our framing question of “How should we live as disciples in the contemporary world?” can be broken down into questions about how we live in general, what it means to be disciples, and what this whole contemporary world thing is about. In this site, it is my intention to offer resources to address all of these issues.
By breaking our question up into parts, we have the ability to approach an issue both more broadly and more narrowly. We approach it more broadly because, as in our example, one question has now turned into three. At the same time, these definitional questions are often much more narrow and focused, and, as we see with discipleship, the odds that Scripture speaks directly to at least one component of the question increases significantly.
Question 2: What does Scripture say about _______?
If the first question sets us up with a number of definitions to pursue and more narrow questions to consider, then this second question makes sure that our first stop for answers on these matters is Scripture.
However, when we approach Scripture on these matters, it’s important to remind ourselves about what a responsible posture toward Scripture is. Although it’s common today to approach Scripture as a sort of Ouija board to help us divine the answers to our questions, the Bible does not exist principally to help us through our daily lives. Oh, it certainly does that, but as a secondary effect of using it properly, not as a primary purpose.
I’ll offer resources to focus more on this later, but, for now, suffice it to say that Scripture is a covenant history of God’s relationship with His people. Rather than drawing out what we can from Scripture, we should seek to be drawn in to it. If we’re God’s people, then a key aspect of Scripture is what it tells us about who we are, after all.
Rather than drawing out what we can from Scripture, we should seek to be drawn in to it.
The Bible is quite explicit about some very important questions, including most of the parts of our generic discipleship question; however, approaching the Bible on its terms means that we will find it silent on many things as well. In my teaching, I have previously facilitated explorations of questions like what a Christian sense of humor looks like precisely because, despite the immense importance we put on humor as a quality in the people we spend time with, the Bible never says a word directly about the issue. No one is commended for their sense of humor. There are never five rules for Christian humor laid out anywhere.
So, sometimes Scripture will speak explicitly about a concept, but, before we leave this question behind, we should recognize that the Bible may also deal directly with our topics in another way. To use my humor example: while no one is explicitly commended for their sense of humor, the Bible doubtlessly uses humor to communicate at various points. This means that there can be some value in seeing if there are characters in the narrative or features of the narrative itself which demonstrate a practical application (positive or negative) of the concept you are considering.
Question 3: What Scriptural Principles apply to ______?
Now, just because we find that Scripture is silent when it comes to some facet of our question does not mean that we’re done with it. This is in fact where definitions become so important. To go back to the humor example, if we defined humor as something that happens in the context of social relations, we would find a wealth of Scriptural guidance as to how we are to relate to one another. In other words, while Scripture may not speak directly about something, it always speaks about virtues and principles that nevertheless apply to that something.
This is where those quick Google searches and pithy theological articles can become useful. Even if they state explicit rules, what assumptions function at the basis of those rules? What principles about how we should relate to one another do these articles rely on? What assumptions do they make about what is virtuous and good? If we can discern these things, we can weigh whether these virtues and principles align with Biblical teaching and whether they appear to be the most important relevant principles or whether they might benefit from being balanced with other themes.
For example, if we ask what scriptural principles apply to discipleship, we can move to the question of what disciples are called to do, especially by the Great Commission. If we look to that calling to “make disciples,” we find that this involves a call to spread the Gospel, live lives of holiness, and know our God. A guide to discipleship would be incomplete if it addressed any of these principles without speaking to the others. At the same time, each of these principles can be explored in their own right.
Question 4: What does the World say about _______?
At this point, you might be asking whether we’re done. We’ve carefully parsed our question, and we’ve seen what the Bible says. What more is there? The answer to this is two-fold.
On the one hand, God reveals Himself specially through Scripture, but Scripture is not meant to be an encyclopedia. There are so many things that we can learn from other modes of inquiry that we impoverish our thinking if we refuse to open up our consideration to the broader world. This isn’t to lessen the Bible in any way, in fact, it will open it up further. The Apostle Paul was familiar with Greek culture, and he wove that into his evangelical appeals, connecting with his audience through allusions to Greek philosophy and literature. When we explore our question from the perspective of the varied disciplines, seeing what biology, history, sociology, mathematics, education, or any other discipline might say to the issue, we invite in conversation partners that may open up new questions that drive us back to the first question, digesting a whole new line of thought to ruminate further on the issue.
There are so many things that we can learn from other modes of inquiry that we impoverish our thinking if we refuse to open up our consideration to the broader world.
On the other hand, we might think we have a Scriptural answer by the end of the third question, but how often do we see ourselves living out that perfect answer? Why not? While “the World” can mean a tremendously positive thing in terms of the creative blessings of God, it is just as frequently used in the sense of its fallen character. Our world has been corrupted by sin, us most especially, and the symptoms of our dysfunction make perfection unobtainable.
The darker side of the fourth question then is to try to discern the spirits of the age. What are the ways that the world goes about addressing the question? How are these keyed to principles that conflict with Christian commitments? How does the world take good impulses and disorder them so that we pursue some good thing to a degree that it is no longer good for us?
This is where we’ll get to the question of how we live and what our contemporary world looks like. It’s also where we’ll unpack concepts like the importance of habit and the concept of a social imaginary. As a short preview, though, it is crucial that we learn to exegete the culture around us, to understand the modes of being that it encourages and to recognize whether those orient us toward a vision of the good life that is truly, Biblically, good.
Question 5: How do we answer our initial question?
As I’ve said before, there may be many steps along the way where you’ll want to go back and analyze some new concept in terms of its definition, its reflection in Scripture, and various disciplinary perspectives on it. The process of critical thinking is, by its very nature, iterative.
Eventually, however, you will have explored your question in its intellectual, practical, and imaginative dimensions, and you’ll find yourself back where you started. At the end of the day, the Five Question Model of Inquiry is about walking back a few steps and doing our homework so that we’re ready to get back where we started. We may have had initial, intuitive answers to our question, but the goal is to find our way back there with a much more nuanced and holistic perspective on the issue.
The thing is, we are, at this point, only back to the beginning. You are now (hopefully) ready to pose some sort of answer to your question, but this is hardly the last word on the matter. For many questions, there will be many very smart people who have dedicated their lives to the issue, and it would be the height of arrogance to think that you have surpassed their knowledge in a few weeks.
However, by going back and carefully parsing the issue, by holding those pieces up to Scripture, and by turning them over and examining them from various perspectives, you have done enough work to enter the conversation more confidently. This is the difference between coming to a superficial conclusion and a preliminary one. The sort of deliberative thinking that we’re going to seek to engage in is about laying that groundwork for something deeper, something more meaningful. It’s preliminary, (hopefully) not superficial.
However, by going back and carefully parsing the issue, by holding those pieces up to Scripture, and by turning them over and examining them from various perspectives, you have done enough work to enter the conversation more confidently. This is the difference between coming to a superficial conclusion and a preliminary one.
So this website aims to offer a toolkit and an invitation to wrestle with something that is deeply significant to you, something that you haven’t been able to nail down or study deeply yet. It’s an invitation to take your worldview out for a ride and to test out what it will be like to teach yourself for much of the rest of your adult life. I’ll start by sharing out general tools for applying these questions, but we’ll look for concrete applications of this model along the way, too. I look forward to the conversations that I hope we’ll have together.
It’s time to think for yourself. Are you up to the challenge?