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• Illustration: In the movie, Dead Poet’s Society, the teacher repeats to the students that they are to think for themselves.
• Illustration: The president of Yale University told the incoming class of freshman to thing for themselves.
• Illustration: A woman send a newspaper clipping about the burial of 700-800 Iraqis by U.S. Troops, wondering why Willimon didn’t mention it. One reply is, Who’s to say who is right: Everyone has to think for themselves.”
• Illustration: A recent book, The Day America Told the Truth, reveals statistics about the moral decline of Americans.
• It seems everyone is thinking for themselves.

• Torah meaning teaching about how we should live.
• It is summed up in Jesus statement to love God and love neighbor.
• It means we do not worship other gods, call people names, treat others with respect, and drill these words about love into our hearts and heads.
• This is a countercultural way of knowing and living: to not think for yourself.

• Israel’s sons and daughters don’t have to invent the secrets of life themselves.
• This is something passed on from one generation to the next.
• Parenting and teaching has become merely conflict management between conflicting truth claims.
• Without Torah, we become tempted to conform to many different gods of our culture.
• Illustration: As he is about to go out into the world, a son asks his father for advice, and only receives a rambling reply.

• We can look to the saints, and learn to think with them.
• Illustration: Philosopher Immanuel Kant said he was impressed by starry heavens and the morality of man.
• Willimon is only impressed by the starry heavens.