Author: Alan Richey

Christian, traveler, biker, and lazy bum. I love God, My Family, My Home and My Country.

Critical Thinking

There are many ways people have tried to define what critical thinking is.

Critical thinking means making reasoned judgments that are logical and well-thought out. It is a way of thinking in which you don’t simply accept all arguments and conclusions you are exposed to but rather have an attitude involving questioning such arguments and conclusions. It requires wanting to see what evidence is involved to support a particular argument or conclusion. People who use critical thinking are the ones who say things such as, ‘How do you know that? Is this conclusion based on evidence or gut feelings?’ and ‘Are there alternative possibilities when given new pieces of information?’
Additionally, critical thinking can be divided into the following three core skills:

  1. Curiosity is the desire to learn more information and seek evidence as well as being open to new ideas.
  2. Skepticism involves having a healthy questioning attitude about new information that you are exposed to and not blindly believing everything everyone tells you.
  3. Finally, humility is the ability to admit that your opinions and ideas are wrong when faced with new convincing evidence that states otherwise.

study.com

Critical thinking is the process of carefully and systematically analyzing problems to find ways to solve them. It involves identifying several possible solutions and then logically evaluating each one, comparing them to one another on their merits, and then selecting the one that you conclude is the most promising.
http://www.thebalancecareers.com by
DAWN ROSENBERG MCKAY

Critical Thinking, the process of thinking carefully about a subject or idea, without allowing feelings or opinions to affect you
dictionary.cambridge.org

I could go on with hundreds of ways to define critical thinking, but I won’t. I believe the simpler less complex descriptions and definitions are usually superior. The definition I like the most is from dictionary.com.

Critical Thinking
disciplined thinking that is clear, rational, open-minded, and informed by evidence
dictionary.com

Watching the events over the past few of weeks tells me that much of our society has lost the skill of critical thinking. Man, human beings, are designed with three important qualities; the ability to make choices, the ability to act and interact with our surroundings, and the ability to feel with emotions. I think of this three part nature of man as, Choice, Action, and Feeling.

Choice and feeling are unseen qualities. It is these two aspects of our nature that determines the actions we take. How these three natures interact determines in large part who we are and how others see us.

As people, we’ve determined that education is important to both the individual and society as a whole. We learn language, history, math, scientific discoveries and various philosophies. All this learning, and more, is designed to help us make choices that benefit each of use.

We train our bodies with exercises, sports, motor skills and more to allow us to do the things that need doing. In other words to perform actions.

We also train our emotions. Socializing, charity, liking, lusting, anger, and joy all involve our feelings. Growing up, we learn how to rationally manage our feelings.

We need all three natures of ourselves to be a whole person. We also need to keep them in balance. Choices made without feelings or the ability to put them into action won’t amount to positive results.

Critical thinking helps join all three aspects of ourselves to help make whatever we do successful. If we make choices for our actions without considering feelings, we act in a cold and calculating manner. If we acted on feelings alone without being guided by well thought out choices, we do dangerous things, to us and others. By nature we can act without thought or emotions; when we touch a hot iron, we act automatically to pull away. We train ourselves to do things without having to think or use emotions. We teach ourselves physical skills like walking or riding a bike.

When we act on our emotions or make choices that are not well thought out, we often do regrettable things. Both the cause of the current rioting and the rioting itself are the results of the lack of critical thinking. Yes, there is historical and ongoing actions that need changing and there are influencers and groups of people that are inciting violence and destruction of property for their own unrelated agendas.

If we all learned and practiced critical thinking, much could be accomplished for the good of all.

Earliest Memories

This series of writing is for my children. My daughter, Beth, asked me several years ago to write down some of my memories. Well, David, Beth, and Stephen here will be the first of many. This entry includes three short snippets of things I remember. I promise some of my later memories of growing up will require more than a single paragraph to share.

Let me start by saying I remember some things from a very young age. Certainly at an earlier age than most people do and younger than some think possible. Why do I remember them then? Simple answer, my father was killed in an airline accident shortly before my ninth birthday. At nine, these memories weren’t that far away. When he died, my memories of him, and several things during those early years burned into my memory. To be clear, these are my memories. Some details may have been influenced by other unrelated events and may not be completely accurate. My two sisters, Dawn and Loretta, are welcome to correct any incorrect details.  I’ve never been a detail person, so I could very well get something wrong.

My father was a musician in the US Navy. When I was born in April of 1951, he and the family, my mother and older sister Dawn were stationed on the island of Oahu at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. I will admit that I don’t remember the event of my birth, thank God!

This first memory, I think, is my oldest memory. It may be one of possibly two or three from when we lived in Hawaii. To put an age on this memory, I can only say we moved back to the states when I was about a year and a half.


My sister, mom, grandmother, and me after returning to the mainland.

The event I remember was traumatic, or at least to a 15-month-old boy. My dad was driving a small Navy bus onto, what seemed to me, a narrow bridge over water with no guardrails. We started across the bridge when dad decided to make a three-point turn on the bridge. As would be normal for a young father in his twenties, he decided to joke around with his very young son, me, by making me think he was going to drive off the side of the bridge. All I remember is the absolute fear; I believed him, why wouldn’t I? I’m not sure I have never cried and screamed with more intensity than I did as I saw the side of the bridge disappear. He didn’t drive off the bridge, and the next and last thing I remember about that is him finishing the three-point turn and driving back to where we had gotten into the bus. Like most very young boys, I recovered and never held that against my dad.

The next memory from Hawaii was a pleasant one. Again, my dad was the central focus of this memory. We were on a beach, an ocean beach. We were sitting in the sand not too far from the surf, but far enough that the waves weren’t reaching us. My dad was digging and helping me scoop sand with my hands. I remember that at the point where the water was sitting in the sand, we could see what looked like bubbles coming out if the sand. That’s where he quickly dug and pulled out a sand crab, at least I think that’s what they were. For me, at that age, it was thrilling. End of memory. I don’t remember getting to the beach or leaving it, just that snippet of memory.

I do have one more memory from a time when I still had a stroller. I don’t know where we lived for that memory. This memory is sketchy but visually clear. I was in front of our house, probably Naval housing. I was in a stroller. I remember kicking out the stroller’s wire footbed, which allowed me to self propel it to where I wanted to go. I must have done that often since my mother didn’t come running over to stop me and put it back on. At any rate, I proceeded to walk the stroller down the sidewalk to the corner to a large mailbox. That’s where I saw it, a small paper bag with a bottle in it. I reach down, grabbed the bag, and like all children young enough to be in a stroller, began to put the bottle to my lips. I don’t remember ever getting that bottle all the way to my face before my mom grabbed it from me and brought me back home. That was a quick end to that adventure, but not too soon to have experience the thrill of independence and adventure.

The End of the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave?

The United States of America, one of the greatest, if not the greatest, experiments in freedom the world has known has fallen victim to a disease that is plaguing most of the nations of the world. Before I talk about that, let’s review what it is that has made America the “land of the free and home of the brave.”

The Constitution of the United States is likely the greatest secular document ever written to be a guide and law for defining a nation. Our founders didn’t write this document to tell the people what rights they had as a people, but rather what rights the people voluntarily allow those they select to lead them. After defining the basis in which ordinary citizens will serve in the government, it goes on to limit the rights of that government by calling out a few of those natural rights the government is not permitted to infringe.

Slowly over the past 200 plus years, we’ve given up some of our freedom and rights, either thinking we were fulfilling the greater good or because the courts thought they knew better than the founders. Now, suddenly amid a great reawakening and emerging prosperity brought on by a President who believes in the innovative ability of Americans to make their own choices and to increase their lot in society through free and brave incentives, we find ourselves less free and less brave than our ancestors were when they decided to break away from tyranny and despotic rulers and form this nation.

To think a people who celebrate our forefathers for rebelling against British rule and sacrificed their lives for their children, families, and neighbors are now fearful of an illness, a pandemic to be fair, that might cause 0.03% of our people to die? Because of that fear, we are somehow willing to give up our lives to poverty and the side effects of poverty that we haven’t seen in a century. When we last saw this type of economic devastation, it didn’t happen voluntarily. This time we are going into it with our eyes wide open, listening to the fearful cries of those who would have us become wards of the government, shredding society of all that our forefathers fought and died for. Shame on us!

It is acceptable for a people under siege of an enemy to temporarily agree to give up some of their freedoms to join in a fight to defeat this common enemy. It is not acceptable for our leaders (President, Governors, and Mayors), to go beyond the minimal measures to accomplish the goal of victory. After a victory is won, even at the turn of the battle in our favor, our leaders need to step back and return the rights and freedom they temporarily asked the people to lend them. For those leaders who take advantage of the goodness of their people during this emergency, they need to be thrown out of office, not at the next election cycle, but as soon as the people and courts can accomplish that. If they are unwilling to step down, then impeachment would be the answer. What higher crime and misdemeanor can there be than a violation of the very rights and freedoms that define our society. Let us return to being the land of the free and home of the brave.

The Gospel at 30,000 Feet

I recently went on a 2-week Nova Scotia ride with 8 members of CMA (Christian Motorcyclist Association). It was a wonderful trip, and we all had a great time. I had gone on another Canadian trip a couple years ago, also with several members of CMA. Then, Al, the Wilmington NC chapter president sent an email out to the chapter asking if anyone wanted to join him and Cliff on a bike ride to Newfoundland. I had just moved to Wilmington NC from Southern Maryland and hadn’t joined the chapter yet and really didn’t know anyone, but I wanted to go so I quickly responded before even telling my wife. We went on that trip a few months later and it gave me an opportunity to get to know very well the five others that went on the trip. Nothing like an intense two-week time together to get to know each other.

For those that have ridden on group rides with me, you may know I like to listen to audio books while I ride. I love to read, and when driving a car or riding my motorcycle, I can’t read, so I listen. On the Newfoundland trip two years ago I listened to two books of a trilogy fantasy series that had about 70 hours of listening time.

On the more recent Nova Scotia ride, I decided I would listen to the Bible being read. I starting with Matthew and listened through Revelation, then I went back to Genesis and continuing from there. Similar to the experience of getting to know new friends on the Newfoundland trip, listening to that much scripture over a short two-week period helps one get a good visual overview of the Word, and its message.

Now, I’m not saying what I learned was a deep understanding of the Bible. But, what I am saying is that one very clear message came through. The Bible, both the Old and New Testament together tells a very clear story of the Gospel.

Isaiah, in chapter 53, tells how the chosen people, Israel, could not obey God, not in the least.

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

From the very beginning, man could not and would not follow even the simplest of God’s rules. In the Garden of Eden, Adam did the only thing God forbade him to do. God even told Adam if he did that one thing, he would die. Even knowing that Adam still disobeyed God.

Adam was thrown out of the Garden of Eden, man became more and more disobedient. Cane killed his brother Abel. Man became so evil and removed from God that God decided to destroy all of mankind in a flood, except for Noah’s family. Not even then did man follow God. One of Noah’s sons continued in his evil ways and sinned against his father.

Abraham was a man of great faith, he loved and believed God. When He became so angry at the sin of Sodom and Gamora he destroyed those cities and saved only Abraham’s nephew, Lot, his wife and two daughters. As Lot and his family were running away from the destruction, Lot’s wife apparently with second thoughts about leaving her life in Sodom, looked back and she perished as a pillar of salt. Lot’s daughters were no gems of righteousness either. When they resettled with their father, they got him drunk and slept with him, not once, but each of them did so separately.

God had promised Abraham that he was going to make his descendants a great nation.  Abraham’s decedents had moments of faithfulness but still abandoned the worship of God for other gods and man-made idols.

When Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, they didn’t even get across the Red Sea before they were complaining to Moses, accusing him and God of bringing them out of Egypt just to kill them. Then after experiencing the love and power in God’s rescue through the Red Sea from Pharaoh, they didn’t even wait for Moses to come off the mountain with the Ten Commandments before they were again worshiping a god of their own making, the Golden Calf. But God had mercy on them, again. When Moses presented them the Ten Commandments and the Law, God made a covenant with Israel. God wanted his people Israel to be a beacon to the world of how great their God was to attract the other peoples of the world to God. All that Israel had to do was obey God’s law, which was now written down in detail.

God’s grace remained with them as they turned away from God, over and over and over again. Israel’s refusal to be faithful to God caused them to be taken into captivity again and again, when He brought them back out of captivity, they still disobeyed and worshipped other gods.

Every time God gave Israel another chance to be his bright and shining star, they failed. In listening to Israel’s history, it got to the point that I wanted to move beyond the historical books to the poetic books. It is really discouraging to see how we, and I count myself as one right there with Israel in their disobedience, just could not obey God for more than a very short time. God called King David a man after his own heart, yet David, while following his own lusts, committed adultery with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, one of the leaders in his army. She became pregnant. David’s way of covering up his sin was to try to get Uriah to sleep with Bathsheba to make it look like it was Uriah’s child. That didn’t work so David ordered him murdered by having him killed in battle. Even King David whom God promised that the Savior of the world would be his descendant, couldn’t live without disobeying God’s law.

Paul wrote to the church in Rome telling them that the Jews did have a special standing with God. They were entrusted with the oracles, the very Words, of God. But what advantage was that?

Romans 3:9-12
What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”

Despite man’s inability to follow God and his laws, He still gives us His grace in offering his Son in our place to pay the consequence for our inability to follow him and for all the sins committed by everyone in the world. Everyone.

John 3:16
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

If you come from a good loving family, you know your parents love you. All kids disobey their parents, and good parents forgive them, over and over again. There were consequences for my kids as they were growing up. When they disobeyed, they knew up front they would be punished. They also had a very good idea how severe that punishment would be. The most severe punishment was a spanking. There were only two things that would result in a spanking; lie or defy me or their mother. Even when my kids had disobeyed and I had to discipline them, they were still my kids, still my own and I would do anything for them, anything to benefit them.

Our Father in heaven made that same promise. Obey and things will go well, disobey and trouble follows. In the end, when we had enough history to prove without a shadow of a doubt that we were incapable of obeying, God came himself and stopped the horrible cycle. This is the Gospel, the Good News; “He sent His Son, Jesus, to live the obedient life you and I cannot live and to die the innocent death you and I cannot die, that we might be His own.” *

 

Alan W Richey
alanrichey@gmail.com
CMA Knights of the Light
Chapter meeting Sept 6, 2018

 

 

 

 

 

* ©The Rev. Dr. Samuel David Zumwalt, STS
szumwalt@bellsouth.net
http://www.societyholytrinity.org
St. Matthew’s Ev. Lutheran Church
Wilmington, North Carolina USA