Is critical thinking the same as overthinking? Some self-indulgent epistemological musings.

Sometimes critical thinking is ignored, shunned, mocked, or worse, flat out rejected as overthinking. However, in a world of fake news, tabloid drama, and social media reporting – critical thinking just couldn’t be more important. Dismissing genuine critical engagement with ideas as overthinking is more than biting the hand that feeds, it’s covering it in ketchup first.

I’ve been accused of overthinking many times – and at least fourteen-point-six-two-percent of those times it’s been true. I am a critical thinker, and I’m an over-thinker. I’m a muser, and I’m a worrier. I evaluate hard, and I panic hard! As Nike’s famous slogan says: Just do it… and freak out a lot over it while you’re at it.

There is, however, a significant difference between critical thinking and over thinking, and equating them as one and the same can do some real violence to truth.

We need to process the world carefully – and we need to teach our kids to do the same. So, let’s give these ideas some critical thought… and try not to overthink it!

What’s the difference?

Starting with definitions, critical thinking is applying slow and deliberate questioning to a given idea. It carefully dissects, deconstructs, and reconstructs a given proposition, moving it through stages of doubt and dialogue. It usually follows some kind of objective method, or at least asks a series of probing questions. It challenges and it pokes. Critical thinking – at least for it to work best – requires us to suspend our beliefs to some degree.

Over thinking, however, is trying desperately to make something work the way we think it should.

So overthinking is the weird one here. We often think of overthinking as just getting stuck in a web of extraneous detail, giving ourselves headaches, and subsequently needing a stiff drink or a good boxset-a-thon. Overthinking, we would say, is what keeps us awake and ties us in knots. We see overthinking as over-complicating an issue, thus muddying the waters and losing the clarity.

That, however, is not strictly overthinking – it’s just poor thinking.

Thinking crudely, shoddily, weakly, negligently, or unskilfully are all traits of being human. And it sucks! Sometimes we get bored, sometimes we’re just tired, or need to pee. Sometimes our computers just run out of mental ram or need an emotional update. And, awkward but true, some computers just run better than others for certain tasks.

You can totally get swallowed up in a sticky web of uneconomic thought processes – but this is just not the same as when people mistakenly call critical thinking over thinking.

Agenda-driven overthinking

In reality, overthinking has an agenda, or – put another way – it puts the cart before the horse.

Overthinking starts with a hypothesis and then, rather than testing it, it tries to blindly prove it, bending all data to fit it, and rejecting all data against it. This kind of overthinking clutches at straws, gets (quite literally) mentally hysterical, and loses reason to emotion dressed up in clever sounding prose. It’s usually at this point in a debate, that the increasingly stuck ‘over-thinker’ accuses the critical thinker of over thinking. Go figure. This, btw, is one of the many reasons why debates are such a horribly poor tool to arrive at truth.

Overthinking can also be driven by fear. Worries that something could happen become the subversive agenda of the overthinker, so staying up late at night running possibilities around your head. That too, however, is still agenda-driven – even if in the negative. Usually the best way out of this is to surrender the agenda, rather than digging in. But oh boy does that take some emotional maturity and – I don’t know about you – but I wasn’t taught how to do that in school.

The showstopper conversational killer

Oftentimes, trying to properly evaluate an issue using critical engagement in order to arrive at a careful, or even more nuanced opinion, is simply rejected by the broad-brush conversation stopper: ‘Man, you’re just overthinking it!’

What do you say after that? ‘No, sir, I’m just trying to think carefully and constructively about the issue?’ Good luck. The roadblock is now up, and any further reasoning will be dismissed, filtered cavalierly through the ‘overthinking it’ lens.

A personal parable

I was once told that I was overthinking by suggesting the context of pagan worship practices had something to tell us about the classically interpreted ‘homosexuality passages.’ As proper worship contrasted against idolatrous worship is the backdrop of both Lev. 18 and Rom. 2, I felt that this might have been important to consider when looking at the verses within it – whichever way one comes down on the issue.

I wasn’t necessarily in disagreement with my accusers’ conclusions, however, they told me flat out that I was overthinking, and thus probably wrong. They believed it was black-and-white, and that the original context shouldn’t factor into the interpretation if it could possibly soften or slightly redirect our classical reading. They didn’t want their strong convictions nuanced by burdensome grey areas; at least not while they felt ‘on the spot.’

I actually think it was they who were guilty of overthinking by rejecting data that didn’t fit into their established opinions. If the issue lined up with a different set of convictions, I imagine they wouldn’t have responded the way they did. They would talk context all day, for instance, if someone drew a similar black-and-white application out of slavery in the Bible; but that wasn’t the issue on the table, and it wasn’t the direction of their agenda.

This is exactly the issue though, it’s our established opinions that need to be temporarily suspended when thinking critically. It’s OK, God won’t stop being God, the world won’t fall apart, and they’ll still be there when finish.

I think what was happening in my conversation was that the person was receiving new information on the fly, wasn’t able to process it safely, and didn’t want to lose any ground. That’s fair – and it’s also human. They lashed out from their own overthinking by accusing me of the same.

That’s what overthinking is, a tenuous house of cards built in the wrong direction and without a foundation, and unable to support its weight in critical conversation. Straw men will fall all day to overthinking, but a real independent dialogue partner won’t. Something has to give.

The battle for truth in conversations

Exegesis should never be held to ransom by our hard-headed opinions. Truth should never have to defend itself against emotional violence dressed up in a logic-suit. That’s why critical thinking is so essential.

The big difference is that overthinking comes with baggage. It has an axe to grind, a dragon to slay, or a point to prove. Overthinking is also human, it comes with stories, history, and experiences that can’t be so easily shaken. Learning to think critically in the wake of our own fragile and burdensome cognitive humanity is just hard work – however it is a skill that needs to be developed, and we owe it to the world to try.

Critical thinking attempts to suspend as much subjective assumptions as possible and arrive at the table as neutral as possible. As cold as that sounds, it’s actually this which gives the real ground for compassion and humanity in dialogue. Think about it:

• Real critical thinking in conversation requires room for processing time.
• Real critical thinking in conversation requires genuine active listening and real conversation. Remember that active listening is taught as the temporary ‘suspension of judgement’.
• Real critical thinking in conversation requires genuine understanding for the person you are talking to, not just the category of opinion they hold.
• Real critical thinking in conversation requires more colours than just black and white.
• Real critical thinking in conversation requires movement, nuance and subtlety.
• Real critical thinking in conversation requires an observance of the journey, not just the consequences.
• Real critical thinking in conversation requires time, understanding, movement, and great care.
• Real critical thinking in conversation remembers that we’re’re not God, and that suspending opinions and truth doesn’t make the world fall down.

The epistemological dance between two critical thinkers

I’m a huge believer that critical thinking provides a real epistemological romance. There is a dance to be had between two independent people who disagree but possess actual ability to sharpen, inform, and even disagree in a way that genuinely builds up.

I think we, as evangelical Christians, can be a bit rubbish at genuine critical thinking. It’s one of the many reasons that were so tribalistic. But just maybe if we put down our guns and our axes for a minute, grabbed some perspective and some compassion, we might find so much more communication between our hearts and our brains – then maybe we’ll connect better with other people’s hearts and brains. Then maybe – just maybe – we’ll stop overthinking, and dig ourselves out of this increasingly polarising, tribal rut.

So, let’s ask more questions than we give answers.
Let’s stay teachable and pliable.
Let’s trust God rather than our own compounded and collected opinions.
Let’s reach wider and dig deeper.
Let’s not assume we are the smartest people in the room.
Let’s not have practice arguments with straw men while talking to ourselves in the car.
Let’s not rush truth.
Let’s talk to humans as humans.
Let’s ditch the Western tradition of debate.
Let’s dance together with real brain and heart power.
Let’s think critically.

Overthought rant over.

Did you enjoy this self indulgent ramble about how we think and talk? Well it’s a bit of a bugbear of mine, so you might enjoy a few other places of venting on it too:

– Are you addicted to controversy?
– Ethics, Critical Thinking, and Youth Ministry
– Epistemology of Youth Ministry

And one by my wife

– Phenomenology, Faith, and Young People