The Vanity of Thoughts
Here is a Puritan book that can actually be read in less than a year. (It's only 42 pages...) It's called the Vanity of Thoughts by Thomas Goodwin. It's a free download over at Monergism.
Even if you don't feel like reading it at least skim the 42 pages to read the subject headings so you know what the subject matter is before you dismiss the book from the title alone. It is a profound subject. Thoughts. What kind of thoughts we have during the course of our average day. Goodwin does a good job of categorizing them.
But overall the subject itself is shocking. It's shocking in that our thoughts are such a large part of how we pass our days. Goodwin is not shallow on the subject either. He recognizes that there are different depths of our thought, and he is talking about thoughts such as daydreaming or fantasy or regurgitating past events or what have you. He also offers subject matter that it would be good to focus on with our thoughts.
The subject can sound mechanical, but that shows up the mechanicalness of our thoughts themselves. Active, intentional thoughts are different from passive, mechanical thoughts. Long thoughts are different from flitting short thoughts.
People have picked up on the power of having intentional thoughts with such things as the power of positive thinking. Thoughts have power to keep us negative, asleep in life, confused, ignorant; or they have the power to do the opposite.
One important point is we have to have material in us, language, something to form our thoughts from. When we read the Bible this obviously gives us the most valuable material to occupy our thoughts, but it's more than that. The understanding something like history gives us is material for thoughts. As Goodwin says the subject itself is vast and examples are myriad.
1 Comments:
For people who know the Work, or Fourth Way, this is obviously a big subject, though it can be overlooked in its importance in the overall teaching of the Fourth Way. The Work talks of active reasoning. It talks of acting from the Work rather than from life. This involves thoughts (and attitudes as well). This all has biblical analogues: Watchfulness. Acting from God's commands and teachings rather than from worldly desires and delusions. The subject is central, so it was interesting (and somewhat of a shock) to see it discoursed on by an old Puritan, though I've always said the old Puritans were closer to school knowledge (what Work teaching is, or order knowledge) than any other Christians.
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