Passive Thinking

"Whatcha thinkin' about?" "Oh, nuthin'." I'm sure you've heard it. I'm sure you've done it. The truth is we are never thinking about nothing at all. What we might do is "passive thinking." The separation here is "active thinking" versus "passive thinking" (as opposed to some sort of bizarre "zen" notion of idling in the mind in order to discover the "Light of the Intelligence" or some such). In active thinking you're pursuing something. You're analyzing something. You're planning something. You're engaging your mind for a purpose. In active thinking you're trying to solve a problem, whether it's inquiry or curiosity or direct problem-solving. In passive thinking you're ... not. Whatever rolls through your mind rolls through your mind. You may or may not pick any of it up to examine (switching to active) but you're just cruising along in mental autopilot without analysis or examination.

Studies have suggested that your brain is more active when you are asleep than when you are watching TV. Television is generally what we call "amusement." Fittingly, "amusement" comes from the French "amuser", a two part word with "muse" at the end -- "to think" -- and "a" at the beginning -- "not to" -- thus, "not to think" or "not thinking." That is the point of amusement -- passive thinking.

The problem is that in passive thinking we are not analyzing what is going through our heads. In this state it is possible to feed stuff to your subconscious without your permission, so to speak. You didn't examine it. You didn't approve it. You just ... dumped it there. So when your favorite talking head makes truth claims, you are far less likely to analyze them than you might be, say, in an actual conversation. When TV detectives solve a case in a day because their DNA analysis gave them an answer in minutes, we nod and say, "Yeah, that's the way it works." Except, it doesn't. At all. (Trust me; I know.) But we dumped it in there without any effort, so it's now a fact. And we dump a lot of garbage into our brains without thinking about it just by means of this "passive thinking" that we thoroughly enjoy in our living rooms in front of our screens.

I don't think we think about (yes, playing on the same concept) the stuff that we are subjecting ourselves to. Or our children. It's TV, right? It's entertainment; that's all. What's the big deal? So we buy in on the news stories and assume that kidnappings and rapes and airplane crashes and -- whatever the news these days is covering -- are at an all-time high because we saw it on the news. Cops are mad killers, especially of black people. We know that because we've seen the news. That's why people are uncomfortable around police officers. Of course, it's not true, but we've shoved this stuff into our brains without analysis and then assumed it to be true because "It's in there."

We do this far too much, and not just in front of our televisions. We do it on the Internet. We do it listening to music. We do it in conversations. We consume stuff without evaluation, not realizing that we're consuming lies. Lies about morality, lies about reality, lies about society, lies about us and others. We do it sitting in church. "Wait ... what??" Yes. Remember the noble Bereans? They listened with minds in gear so that they could examine the Scriptures "daily to see if these things were so" (Acts 17:11). They took it in, but they took it in actively with a verifiable truth source as a guide ("the Scriptures"). As a result, "Many of them therefore believed" (Acts 17:12). Not passive; active.

When they were teaching me to drive, they told me, "Don't look at the parked cars; look where you're going." "Why?" I asked. "Because you'll always go where you're looking." So we sit there and calmly imbibe of society's kool-aid -- television, movies, music, Internet and other sources -- passively injecting poison into our brains and wonder why Scripture can seem so foreign to us at times or why there is such differences of opinion even among believers. No wonder we are called to be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Rom 12:2). We've certainly done enough damage to them. And we keep it up because we've been told that it's just harmless entertainment. (In a hypnotized monotone: "Yes, master, it's just harmless entertainment.")