\u00a0Recently I have been pondering the difference between “thinking” and “knowing”. It seems to me they are quite different in degree.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
For years I have tried to break my writing students of the habit of including “I think” at the beginning of a sentence expressing an opinion because those two words become redundant when you go on to state what is obviously an opinion.<\/p>\n\n\n
No need to write “I think<\/b> Wonder Woman 1984<\/i> was a terrible movie.” Just have a little confidence and state flatly, “Wonder Woman 1984 <\/i>was a terrible movie.”<\/p>\n\n\n
The difference between “I think” and “I know” seems to boil down to this thing: confidence.<\/p>\n\n\n
I heard somebody make this very point recently with a familiar experience.\u00a0If I say to you, “I recognize that guy over there but I don’t remember his name. Do you know it?”, consider how different my next step will be depending on your response:<\/p>\n\n\n
If you say, “His name is Joe”, I will walk over to him and say, “Hey, Joe! It’s been a long time. How are you?”<\/p>\n\n\n
But if you say, “I think<\/b><\/i> his name is Joe”, well, that’s an entirely different story. My next step will likely be to ask somebody else the same question.<\/p>\n\n\n
“I think” leaves room for a healthy dose of doubt.<\/p>\n\n\n
It is hard to map out exactly how it happened, but by the grace of God, I feel like 2020 moved me from thinking<\/i><\/b> there is a God who loves me, thinking<\/b><\/i> He has a plan for my life, and thinking <\/b><\/i>He has expectations regarding my thoughts, words and deeds …\u00a0 to knowing<\/b><\/i>\u00a0He loves me,\u00a0plans for me,\u00a0and commands me.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0Recently I have been pondering the difference between “thinking” and “knowing”. It seems to me they are quite different in degree.\u00a0 For years I have tried to break my writing students of the habit of including “I think” at the beginning of a sentence expressing an opinion because those two words become redundant when you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8596"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8597,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8596\/revisions\/8597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}