Maturing & Refining Faith Through Critical Thinking & Discussion of Ideas

A Critical Thinking Group

Let’s Search Out Truth.

Open

Going deeper in your faith and humanity means being open to new ideas & thoughts.  We can’t hide behind  church denominations, dogmatic  thinking, comfortable & familiar traditions, or sets of rules. God created us with an immense capcity to think critically.  Let’s be open to chasing down the rabbit holes.

Honest

This is a critical thinking Christian group, not an indoctrination group. Becoming mature in your faith and humanity requires brutal and crushing honesty. We don’t want to be right for the sake of our ego, pride, predjudice, or denomination affiliation. We want to know truth, and we want to be humbled and changed by it.

Willing

We must be willing to actively listen & change, or this is all for nothing.  We have to be able to willingly put aside what we thought we knew, and look at what actually is.  We have to be willing to alter, adapt, or completely change & adopt a new thought, idea, belief (not your salvation), or action. God is looking for the willing.

The Process

 

1. Topic Overview

Discussions begin with establishing a broad overview of the range of ideas on the topic or issue. Topics or issues usually break down into 3 primary perspectives or set of ideas. An simple way to think of it is: Yes, Maybe, No. It’s not always this simple in practice, but you get the point.

2. Untruth

This is when the fun starts.  We’ve got a good overview of the discussion topic, now we tear into it like a pride of lions, ripping out the dogmas, faslehoods, & things that just don’t matter.
We really want to separate out everything that’s untrue & doesn’t matter to our discussion.  This is hard work, frustrating, & tense.  Take deep breaths, be patient, and work through the ideas, emotions, and thoughts one at a time.  Listen, listen, listen, think, & then speak.  There will be a lot of rabbit holes to run down.  DON’T skip a single hole, run them all down and see where they lead! You never know where you might find truth or uncover falsehoods.

3. Truth

At the same time we’re filtering out ideas that are untrue and irrelevant, etc, we also need to filter in what’s true, relevant, real, and what matters.  This is a hard process because you have to challenge what you thought you knew and look at what actually is. We’re trying to get to the core of the discussion topic using critical thinking, logic, common sense, active listening, comparing and contrasting, analogizing, and abstraction.  The goal is to dig deep, tediously mining every little bit of truth, usefulness, & relevance from the discussion topic or issue.  There will be a lot of rabbit holes to run down.  DON’T skip a single hole, run them all down and see where they lead! You never know where you might find truth or uncover falsehoods.

4. Essentials

At this point, we’re mentally & emotionally  exhausted.  We’ve fought, grappled, and struggled in and out of the depths of countless rabbit holes to find truth, meaning, relevance, falsehoods, dogmas, & incorrect or skewed thinking.  We’ve hotly debated and refined ideas & concepts to razor sharp edges that have indiscriminately sliced & split through our thoughts, ideas, & presuppositions. The blade has challenged our thinking, faith, & humanity to the inner most core, but within this epic struggle, we’ve drawn a little closer to the heart & mind of God. We’re now constructing a comprehensive, well thought out, & thoroughly informed concept of what this discussion topic is truly about.

 Now we’re able to step back, recognize, and pull out the most essential truths from this discussion topic… The Essentials of Faith.  What, if anything, from this discussion topic affects, impacts, or has any bearing on salvation? At the end of the day, just how important is this issue if it does or does not impact salvation? Is it so essential to salvation that we should allow it to be a wedge or contention?  Are the truths, relevancies, flashoods, & dogmas uncovered worth leveraging as a barrier and hindrance to salvation? Is it just a matter of freedoms we have in the faith? Now we’re getting some where!  Welcome to next level Christian Thought.

 

Let’s Get Started

Choose a Discussion From the Discussion Page.