Critical Thinking. Our youngest son Shane has been encouraging me to watch Sam Richards on video. Sam is a Penn State professor of sociology. He is well known for gatting people to think and for trying to get people to walk in other people’s shoes. He tries to get people to think about their views rather than just uncritically accepting them.
You can get a good idea about him by watching this brief video discussing white privilege with students. He has a gift for challenging views in a fun way.
The idea of having views challenged and how we can learn from the challenges came up in a phone conversation this week. A long-time friend and reader of this blog shared a story about his son.
Through various circumstances the son saw an opportunity to meet a need for handicapped people.
He was so convinced of the need and the opportunity that he quit his job and raised the money to manufacture the product.
Then the problems came. Every American company he contacted would not make the manufacturing changes necessary to produce the product. Finally, he located a company in China who would produce the product. He had them do it not because of cheaper labor but because they would make the product that no one in America would develop.
Then life got really interesting. He went to China to meet the people. He was filled with all of the negative expectations of Communist China only to find very nice people, clean safe streets and many things that went against his image of Communist China.
He came back well-aware of the dangers of a dictatorship, but with a better understanding of people. For him, a summary dismissal of Chinese people is no longer possible and at the same time he does not support a dictatorship.
Our middle grandson studied in China. He had similar experiences.
Our trip. Last week was a great week. First a splendid wedding of a great-niece in Kansas City. It was a beautiful, meaningful service!
Then a time of comforting for a niece and her son in Wichita. She recently lost her mother.
Then on to Edmund, OK and a special time with my cousin and her family – including my 96-year-old aunt. My aunt knew us and that made the whole trip worthwhile!
We ended with a fun lunch with Jeny’s niece and 9 of her grandchildren. I wish I had half of their energy.
Along the way, we met some spouses for the first time, made new friends and got to know teenagers we had not seen since they were very young.
In addition to family, along the way we saw special friends from high school and from our fellowship group in Normal.
We came home touched by many special moments and good memories.
We also came home tired — I do not think we will be traveling for a while.
Pursuit of truth. My saddest experience about the recent election process was the lack of value placed on the pursuit of truth. Finding evidence for accepting truth is difficult. I have to want it and work at it. Time and time again I watched and heard people have disregard to open inquiry. Let me give you one example:
The following is a graph of inflation in seven countries. The trend of higher inflation is very similar across seven countries. I would like to have an intelligent discussion about the graph.
https://editorial.fxstreet.com/miscelaneous/mike_1-638057930711965726.png
Among the questions I would like to discuss — Did Joe Biden’s policies cause inflation across seven countries? What specific policies of Biden contributed to our inflation? Were external world-wide factors in any way responsible for inflation in the US? If Biden was responsible for inflation going up, who is responsible for inflation returning to normal?
The problem is when I have tried to have a serious discussion about inflation, the most common response I received was some variation of “Have you been to a grocery store lately?” Inflation went up. Joe Biden was president. Inflation was caused by Joe Biden. Too many people have their simple truth and do not want to pursue anything that might change their minds.
One of my great joys is how many of the readers of this blog are willing to have a dialog about differences in the pursuit of truth. I have learned from those interactions. They have helped me in my pursuit of truth. I just wish more people had your good sense.
Part of my focus on truth has developed because our church is studying a book on unity (Until Unity by Francis Chan). One of the important scriptures that caught my eye was Proverbs 6: 16-19:
“There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to Him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers.”
A lying tongue and a false witness who breathes out lies are hated by God. That is a serious call to be truthful.
If we want to make America great, we must put high value on the pursuit of truth, however difficult that may be.
Some keys for me are— I need to have a willingness to be corrected, to have a willingness to admit I am wrong, to have a desire to look in areas other than those that agree with my ideas.
This and That
A reader sent me a Tucker Carlson video of Jan 6. I decided to watch videos of the actual confrontation at the capitol. Until last week I had never really seen more than an occasional news clip. I learned some new information. I will share ideas about the videos next week. You can see one of the videos at – https://www.nbcnews.com/video/watch-jan-6-committee-presents-never-before-seen-bodycam-video-of-capitol-attack-141827653904
If you have never watched a video of the confrontation, it is worth a look. If you already have an opinion and do not think you need to see it, please think about the pursuit of truth. This is not a commentator but rather raw video on body cams and other devices.
Good News
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Peace
Jerry
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