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Featured Article
 Thinking About Thinking
Jan. 6, 2007
As I think about what we discussed this weekend, I can't help but think about thinking. A perfect recipe for inducing a headache, but well worth the pain, I hope. One of our main texts came from Proverbs 23: 7, "For as he thinks in his heart, so is he." A person's thoughts are definitive of his being. My very essence is revealed by what goes on in my mind. Thus thinking about thinking is key to coming to understand my identity.
With staff members and resources committed to students of color, gay and lesbian students, and disabled students, university campuses seem to be in the business of helping young people pinpoint, explore, embrace, and develop their identity. But as we were led through the two sermons this Sabbath, I realized that a university's quest for aiding students in finding their identity is noble. The unexamined life is not worth living. But any such quest is misleading if there is an unwillingness to acknowledge a Creator. Identity without a Creator and a purpose for the created is only a death mask for meaninglessness.
If identity is just a social construct (e.g. race/ethnicity) or a product of evolution (e.g. sexuality), and not for a higher purpose outside ourselves, why should we even care?
But I am not a product of circumstance. Jeremiah writes that God told him specifically, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; Before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations" (1:5). And if God knew Jeremiah in the whom and who He wanted him to be, why not for each and everyone of us, why not me?
But as Sebastien pointed out, if what we think is equal to who we are, and God knew us (who we are) before we were born, God created us to think certain thoughts.
As I thought about this, it blew my mind, because the next logical progression is this: once you know who you are and you are thinking the thoughts that God created you to think, you are thinking the same thoughts as God. You and God are experiencing some sort of cosmically divine cognitive resonance.
There's something about resonating with another individual, knowing that they are thinking along the same lines that you do, that you agree on certain points, that your minds are working the same way. It causes you to want to spend indefinite amounts of time with them, building deeper bonds of friendship to see how deep this jiving between your minds actually goes.
Could it be, then, that understanding my identity, who I am, in order to experience that cosmically divine cognitive resonance is essential to develop a true friendship with God?
As young adults, we have this special time in our lives to discover "who we are." That's what the college experience is supposed to be about right? But let's remember, in this effort of self-discovery to go to the Authority Himself, the one who created us. And if we do, we'll find the Best Friend we could ever think of.
Amy Sheppard
CAMPUS Missionary
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