Alan Jacobs on How to Think

We don’t have to look far to find examples of poor thinking. If social media is good for anything, it proves beyond any doubt that humans aren’t as smart as we think we are. Turns out we don’t really want to know what our friends and family think all the time about every issue. And if we’re honest, we might even be guilty of such poor thinking ourselves, at least at some point.

But what if most don’t actually want to think? As Alan Jacobs writes in his new book, How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds:

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Thinking troubles us; thinking tires us. Thinking can force us out of familiar, comforting habits; thinking can complicate our lives; thinking can set us at odds, or at least complicate our relationships, with those we admire or love or follow.

Why, then, would anyone dare to think? And how does thinking make us better disciples of Jesus Christ? I asked Jacobs those questions and more in this episode of The Gospel Coalition Podcast. Jacobs teaches in the honors program at Baylor University. His many books include The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction and The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis.

Is there enough evidence for us to believe the Gospels?

In an age of faith deconstruction and skepticism about the Bible’s authority, it’s common to hear claims that the Gospels are unreliable propaganda. And if the Gospels are shown to be historically unreliable, the whole foundation of Christianity begins to crumble.

But the Gospels are historically reliable. And the evidence for this is vast.

To learn about the evidence for the historical reliability of the four Gospels, click below to access a FREE eBook of Can We Trust the Gospels? written by New Testament scholar Peter J. Williams.

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Collin Hansen serves as vice president for content and editor in chief of The Gospel Coalition, as well as executive director of The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. He hosts the Gospelbound podcast and has written and contributed to many books, most recently Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation and Rediscover Church: Why the Body of Christ Is Essential. He has published with the New York Times and the Washington Post and offered commentary for CNN, Fox News, NPR, BBC, ABC News, and PBS NewsHour. He edited Our Secular Age: Ten Years of Reading and Applying Charles Taylor and The New City Catechism Devotional, among other books. He is an adjunct professor at Beeson Divinity School, where he also co-chairs the advisory board.