Thinking in Christ — Issue 4

The Way That Seems Right

"There is a way which seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death." (Prov 14:12)

Every argument rests on something it does not argue. Every judgment leans on something it does not first prove. These are assumptions: beliefs taken for granted, accepted without examination, carried silently underneath the words that are actually spoken. They form the floor on which reasoning stands. And a floor is rarely examined by the person walking on it.

That is why assumptions are dangerous. Not because every assumption is false. But because an unexamined assumption feels like no assumption at all. It feels like common sense. It feels like the way things obviously are. Seeming right is the danger itself.

Therefore the first work is not to become cleverer at arguing. It is to name what has been assumed. An assumption may be stated plainly, or it may hide inside a question, a joke, a headline, a tone of voice. It may present itself as a fact, when it is only a preference. It may present itself as neutrality, when it is only a commitment that has not been confessed. There is no neutral floor to stand on. The mind is either conformed to this world or transformed by the renewing of the mind (Rom 12:2, paraphrase). It is either darkened or renewed. It is never nowhere.

Consider how this works. A man hears a claim and answers before he has heard it through. "He who answers before he hears, that is folly and shame to him." (Prov 18:13) The folly is not only haste. The haste reveals an assumption: that he already knows what will be said, that the speaker holds nothing he has not already weighed, that his own first reading is the true reading. Likewise, the first voice in a dispute sounds complete, until it is questioned. "He who pleads his cause first seems right— until another comes and questions him." (Prov 18:17) Seeming right is not being right. It is only being first, or loudest, or most familiar.

From this follows a hard truth about self-examination. The usual counsel is to audit one's own assumptions, to catch one's own biases, to stand outside one's own thinking and judge it fairly. But the judge proposed for this work is the very mind under judgment. "The heart is deceitful above all things and it is exceedingly corrupt. Who can know it?" (Jer 17:9) A deceitful heart cannot reliably audit itself, because the auditor shares the deceit. The mind that tries to correct itself by itself only confirms itself more neatly. It finds the biases it already expects to find, and it calls the finding objectivity.

Yet the same Scripture that exposes this also names the searcher. "I, Yahweh, search the mind. I try the heart, even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings." (Jer 17:10) The search does not come from within. It comes from above. The assumption is not dragged into the light by a stronger effort of the will. It is dragged into the light by a Word that knows the heart better than the heart knows itself. That is why testing an assumption is not an act of independence. It is an act of submission. The mind does not free itself. It is freed by being brought under another Lord.

This is the difference between the two ways of handling assumptions. Apart from Christ, the mind treats assumptions as problems to be managed by technique: list them, question them, weigh them, replace them with better ones. The technique may catch a surface error, and it may improve an argument. But it cannot reach the root, because the root is not a single mistaken premise. The root is the condition of the mind itself. Apart from Christ, the understanding is darkened, and the mind is alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance within it and the hardening of the heart (Eph 4:18, paraphrase). A darkened understanding does not merely hold wrong assumptions. It holds them confidently, and it calls that confidence reason.

In Christ, the order is reversed. The mind is not first cleaned and then handed to Christ. Christ takes the mind captive, and the cleansing follows the capture. Every thought is brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ (2 Cor 10:5, paraphrase). That captivity is not the loss of thought. It is the first honest condition for thought. A thought that answers to Christ can be questioned, corrected, and even abandoned, because it no longer has to defend the self that held it. A thought that answers only to the self cannot be questioned at all, because to question it feels like questioning the self.

Therefore question the assumption, but question it under the Word, not above it. Test the claim, but test it by a standard outside the claimant. "Test all things, and hold firmly that which is good." (1 Thess 5:21) The test is not taste, not consensus, not the feeling of certainty. The test is what God has spoken. Evidence may corroborate what the Word declares, and it may expose where an assumption contradicts it. But evidence is never the foundation. God's testimony about His Son stands first (1 John 5:9-10, paraphrase). A foundation built on evidence shifts with every new study. A foundation built on the Word stands when the studies shift, because the Word is not waiting for corroboration to become true.

This is why the example of the Bereans matters. They received the word with readiness of mind, and they examined the Scriptures daily to see whether the things spoken were so (Acts 17:11, paraphrase). Notice the order. Readiness came first, and examination followed, but the examination was not suspicion for its own sake. It was submission to a written Word that could judge even an apostle's preaching. They did not test the message against their own assumptions. They tested their assumptions, and the message, against Scripture. That is the pattern. The Word judges the hearer. The hearer does not judge the Word.

From this, the consequences of an assumption become visible. An assumption does not stay in the study. It travels into decisions, into speech, into relationships, into the way a person reads a neighbor's motives and a nation's news. A small, unexamined premise at the start becomes a large, unexamined life at the end. "A simple man believes everything, but the prudent man carefully considers his ways." (Prov 14:15) The simple man is not condemned for believing. He is condemned for believing everything, without considering the way.

Therefore name the assumption, and name it plainly when you speak. Say what you are assuming, so that it too can be tested. A hidden assumption cannot be corrected, because no one, including its holder, can see it. An assumption spoken aloud can be brought under the Word, and under the Word it can be kept, corrected, or cast down.

And when the assumption is found false, do not merely replace it with a better assumption of your own making. A mind that swaps one self-made premise for another has changed its furniture, not its master. The question is never only, "Is this assumption true?" The question is also, "To whom does this mind belong?" For the mind belongs either to sin or to God (Rom 6, paraphrase). There is no third owner, no independent tenant who rents the mind to whichever premise pays best. Dependence is not the opposite of thinking. Dependence is the condition under which thinking becomes honest, because the mind at last answers to a Lord who searches it.

Thus the work of this issue returns to its anchor. A way seems right. A first case sounds convincing. A familiar premise feels like no premise at all. Do not trust the seeming. Bring the assumption into the light of the Word, let the Word search the heart that held it, and let Christ take the thought captive. The mind that does this will not become neutral. It will become renewed. And a renewed mind does not merely assume less. It assumes truly, because it thinks under Him who is the truth, and it leaves the increase to God.