Toxic Thinking

By: Dr. Harold Sala

The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know. 1 Corinthians 8:2

Have you ever asked yourself, “What causes a criminal to think as he or she does?” What makes a person think a crooked line is straight and a straight line is crooked? Believe it or not, it is not uncommon for criminals to actually believe they are doing society a great favor by sabotaging a pipeline somewhere or embezzling large sums of money from a corporation account.

And, yes, suicide bombers undoubtedly believe that they are doing God a favor by blowing themselves up along with as many as possible considered to be enemies or infidels.
Toxic thinking is how I describe it when a person’s brain apparently goes out his ear for a drink of water and doesn’t come back in time to avert a disaster. How else explain the deaths of 913 people who drank Kool Aid laced with Cyanide on November 18, 1978, led by a cultic figure infamously remembered as Jim Jones, in a mass murder-suicide that was as horrific as anything Hitler ever thought up.

Toxic thinking is a strange aberration from the truth whereby some actually feel that irrationality is right and true. Thus the perception of truth and reality, not truth or reality themselves, becomes important.

It isn’t only cult figures or people who think the government is spying on them through their water pipes and electric power lines who are infected with toxic thinking. There are vast numbers of people whose thinking is toxic today. Like what? Consider the following:
A person’s thinking is toxic when he abandons absolutes—right or wrong, and says, “Everybody’s doing it, so why shouldn’t I, as well?” Your thinking is toxic when you believe or convince yourself that the end justifies the means. Like, “Dad wants me to stay in college, and unless I make good grades I can’t stay here, so buying the answers to the final exam surely can’t be wrong.”

Your thinking has become toxic when you reason that you deserve better than you are getting, so if you are not given what you think is rightfully yours, you are entitled to take it. Your thinking is also toxic when you think that God owes you more than you get— that you deserve to be exempted from the problems of living in a toxic world—and give up on Him.
A math professor began his lectures by presenting a series of optical illusions to a class, ones that played tricks on your brain. What your eyes saw and what your brain perceived were entirely two different things. Then the professor would take an ordinary ruler and show that how you perceived the drawing wasn’t true.

He used a measurement that was accurate, and that’s how you straighten out fuzzy, toxic thinking as well. So how do you measure truth? How do you know that 12 inches is a precise measurement?

By what do you measure life and truth? How do you know if something is true or merely is the perception of truth? Answering that would take far more time than is allowed to me, but your answer begins with God. It’s about Him—not about you.

For centuries, however, men of all cultures and geographic localities have not only believed there is a God, but that He has revealed Himself through our world, through nature; through the incarnate Word, Jesus Christ, who lived and walked among us for 33 years; and through His recorded Word called the Bible.

A final thought. The effects of that which is toxic are readily observed and can be empirically demonstrated. Truth is not an illusion. Toxicity kills and destroys, and by the same standard you can observe the difference God makes in the lives of those who trust Him. There is a difference—a great one.

James Parmis Ministries

James Parmis Ministries
http://www.JamesParmis.com

A Minor Inconvenience

By: Dr. Harold Sala

I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches. 2 Corinthians 11:28-29

A bad day, said someone, is when you learn that your insurance policy covers falling off the roof but not landing on the ground. Have you ever observed, however, that how people respond when they hit the ground has more to do with how they view life than where their bruises are when they connect with terra firma?

Take, for example, a conversation I had with Jerry Poe, a plumbing contractor friend of mine, who tells about being called to locate a leaking pipe beneath a concrete slab in an apartment building. Taking a jackhammer, they broke up the concrete floor, found the leak and fixed it.
First, the leak was in the bedroom floor. Then it was in the little kitchen, then the living room.
Then the leak sprouted in another bedroom. Every time the whole little place was upended. Of course, there was inconvenience and damage.

Speaking to the manager of the apartment complex, Jerry commented about how gracious was the woman living there, who didn’t seem to be greatly upset by the inconvenience. The manager replied, “She is a Nazi Concentration Camp survivor and I’m sure that she considers this only to be a “minor inconvenience.”

Leaks in a concrete floor are—yes, “a minor inconvenience” compared to enduring life in a concentration camp, wondering whether or not you would live to see the light of another day, let alone live to see your grandchildren someday walk down the aisle to claim a husband or wife in marriage.

Fascinating to me is that those who have experienced great tragedies—say surviving a plane crash, or a desperate, life-threatening illness, or a rescue having been trapped underground in a mining accident—never seem to be upset by what bothers most people—computers not working, the water pipe under the concrete slab collapsing, or you missing your flight at the airport.

The issue is perspective, learning to assess how much stress something is really worth in relationship to the damage it does to your emotional well-being. When I was a boy, there was a shoe repair shop on Pearl Street that I would occasionally visit coming to or from school. The cobbler there had posted a sign that I will never forget, that said, “Don’t sweat the small stuff; it’s all small stuff.”

For a few moments, friend, make a list of what is creating stress in your life. Then ask yourself, “How many of these items caught God by surprise? How many of them are beyond His control?

And how many of them are death-threatening?”

If it is true that nothing happens apart from what a sovereign God has allowed (the difficulty confronting you), and that the Shepherd of your soul has promised to walk with you through the dark valley as well as over the mountain pass, why should you be upset by a “minor inconvenience” that you think is a major disaster?

When I set up an autoexec.bat for a computer operating with the CPM system—now made obsolete by Microsoft—I entered a line as a reminder that helped me keep those “minor inconveniences” in perspective. It read, “Remember, this too shall pass.” It’s good news, friend, to realize that when you are God’s child the worst you will ever have it is now—in this life.

When John Wesley was held up and robbed at gunpoint, he wrote in his diary that he thanked God that his life was not taken, and he thanked God his horse was not stolen and, yes, that he was able to get to his destination. Forget the insurance policy that covers falling off the roof.

Better to land on your feet with bruised feet and think of it as a “minor inconvenience.” Indeed.

Resource reading: 2 Corinthians 11:16-29

James Parmis Ministries – www.JamesParmis.com

James Parmis Ministries
http://www.JamesParmis.com