Overall this tiny booklet was refreshing. If I had a highlighter handy I would have highlighted most of the book.<\/p>\n
The way we think can either move us forward or hold us back. Our way of thinking determines how we solve our problems, how we relate to people and how we live our lives. We don\u2019t spend much time thinking about our thinking because we think our thinking is right\u2026 but let\u2019s face it at the end of the day our thinking has been influenced by the tweets we read, the Facebook statuses we liked and the latest headline. Rarely do we step back and ask ourselves, \u201cWhy do I think this way?\u201d This little book gives us permission to step outside of our culturally imposed boxes and think freely.<\/p>\n
The one thing that I found especially helpful in this booklet was the way they cover sociocentric thinking. I feel like this is the first time that I found the language that best sums up the problems I\u2019m facing in the immigrant communities that I am part of. Nowhere is sociocentric thinking as evident and paralyzing as it is in the immigrant communities in the United States\u2026 or anywhere in the world where a group of immigrants choose to settle. I agree with Paul\/Elder when they say that, \u201cmost people do not understand the degree to which they have uncritically internalized the dominant prejudices of their society or culture.\u201d (P22) These things become even more cemented in the immigrant communities around the world.<\/p>\n
I live in three different worlds. My family of origin is Romanian. We speak Romanian in the home (I\u2019m not very good at it!) and my parents together with the Romanian community are convinced that the Romanian way of thinking is the right way to think. I serve in a first generation Korean church (I don\u2019t speak Korean) where the entire community believes that their way of thinking is the right way\u2026 and I identify mostly with my American side, which too thinks that its way of thinking is a little bit superior to that of the rest of the world. In trying to reconcile these three different ways of thinking, I find it difficult to be objective and critical\u2026 it\u2019s easy to conform\u2026 it\u2019s hard to bring critical thinking in when in fact critical thinking is threatening and scary for most people. Critical thinking causes your foundation to shake\u2026 and no one wants that.<\/p>\n
In theory, as leaders we want people to think critically. We want them to internalize our words\u2026 to judge them\u2026\u00a0 and to really think through what we\u2019re saying, but I\u2019m not sure just how much we are up to the challenge. When critical thinking challenges your identity, are we willing to put it all on the line?<\/p>\n
Some of the questions I have as I wrap up this reading\u2026<\/p>\n
Isn\u2019t critical thinking what causes some to be leaders and other followers? Doesn\u2019t the world need both?<\/p>\n
What if more Christians were thinking critically about their faith\u2026 what would the church look like and what would our impact look like in the world?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Overall this tiny booklet was refreshing. If I had a highlighter handy I would have highlighted most of the book. The way we think can either move us forward or hold us back. Our way of thinking determines how we solve our problems, how we relate to people and how we live our lives. We […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[294],"class_list":["post-740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dminlgp-lgp4-paulelder","cohort-lgp4"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=740"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2932,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740\/revisions\/2932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}