The Power of Great Ideas

[This article is part of the “spiritual leadership today” study/discussion going on this year. For all articles in the series, click the Spiritual Influence tab at the top of the page. To have them delivered, subscribe to The Brook Letter]

“Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.” Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of U.S. President FDR

There is a simple psychological experiment that goes like this: close your eyes, and for the next thirty seconds do not think about a pink elephant. Remember, you are not to think of a pink elephant. Ready, set, go…

How far did you make it? And what does that tell you about the way the mind works?

One of the most powerful influences in our lives is invisible, sometimes very small, often hypothetical. We are talking about ideas. They fill our minds, they motivate our actions. They are the shape of how we view reality and–very importantly–possible new realities. Ideas are sometimes mental impressions and other times full-bore convictions. When connected with creativity, ideas are a flow we call imagination–sometimes a trickle, other times a torrent. People get carried away with their imaginations, which is often the way the best new things happen.

Some leaders say they are more about action than ideas. But unless someone is acting out of pure animal instinct with no thought behind it at all, every action has some idea behind it.

Ideas are at the core of spiritual influence. They are powerful realities that move invisibly from one person to another. Ideas come in and go out. They get planted and grow. They change and develop. It is almost like they have a life of their own. Every leader should always be asking himself or herself–what are the very best ideas I can flow to others? Or ask this question: is there one big idea God has influenced me with that ought to be the the big idea I pass on to others?
One of the most loving things God does for us is to shape our minds with his ideas. God influences us with a steady stream of pictures of reality and transcendent conceptions. God’s ideas include the truth about human nature–unique and glorious, broken and wounded, morally perceptive and morally corrupt. God-ideas include realities about who God is: his goodness, greatness, love, holiness. God streams ideas into our minds that are bigger than our minds. No wonder we talk about some things that are so big they “blow our minds.”

Think of the powerful forces in history that were simply ideas before they entered into human experience. Until the moment the detonator was tripped in a metal sphere on a 100 foot high platform in the desert of New Mexico on July 16, 1945, the atom bomb was a theory. Just an idea. But in a split second of blinding light and concussion the idea became a force that would make nations cower and change geopolitical realities irrevocably. Democracy was a theory that was debated in the cities of ancient Greece before anybody thought to see if it could work. Long before the Wright brothers flew the first manned airplane at Kitty Hawk someone had the idea of the airfoil–a wing that would create suction on the topside, making it possible to lift a heavier-than-air machine into the sky. In 1982 a worldwide network of interconnected networks was standardized–the internet–but only on the basis of the idea of “packet switched networks” which came out of the 1960’s.

Then there are the great social ideas: marriage as a union between a man and a woman, freedom and equality, justice and law, economic opportunity and higher education. Any real-life experience of such things has been possible only because the ideas behind them. Such ideas do not hang in the air and drop on unsuspecting individuals–people take the good ideas (and bad ones too) and become champions of those ideas. That is powerful influence.

What various biblical authors do make clear is that the life we carry out now can be and must be governed by and structured under higher principles. Call it “truth,” or “wisdom,” or even “rightness” (justice), the thrust is that ideals matter because the best of life on earth is an impress of the God of heaven. Out of those ideals flow ideas. From the structure and substance of our ideas flow our priorities, decisions, and actions. And what we do in life, because of ideas that flowed into us, then flows out and influences the people around us. Ideas matter. They are powerful and invisible forces that will affect others for good or for ill.