Do you perceive reality as it really is? Do you ever make assumptions? Do you think you understand what needs to be understood? Try these:
- You are a participant in a race. You overtake the second person. What position are you in?
- Mary´s father has five daughters. Their names are: 1. Nana, 2. Nene, 3. Nini, 4. Nono and ?? What is the name of the fifth daughter?
- A cup and a teapot costs $110. The teapot costs $100 more than the cup. How much is the cup?
- In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half of the lake?
- Note: This next one must be done in your head only -- do NOT write it down.
Take 1000 and add:
What is the new total?
- A woman was going home. She turned the corner and saw a masked man. She knew she would not get home. Who was the masked man?
- Second position. Normally, being in front of the second person means you are first, but only if the second person remains in second. As it is, overtaking the second person puts that person in third and you in second.
- The answer is Mary. When we see a pattern we tend to assume its relevance. In this case, the pattern of A,E,I,O,U is irrelevant.
- The answer is $5. You may have subconsciously assumed that the teapot was $100. You may have also assumed “simplicity”, something like this, “x + $100 = $110”. But it’s a bit more complex. It’s really like this:
x + (x+$100) = $110
2x + $100 = $110
2x = $10
x = $5
So cup is $5 and the tea pot is $105 for a total of $110. The tea pot is $100 more than the cup.
- Here complexity might be assumed, as if this were a complex math problem. The answer is just 47 days. Think about it for a while.
- The correct answer is 4,100. Did you get 5,000? The decimal sequence confuses our brain. You may have unconsciously jumped from 4,090 to 5,000.
- The answer is “the catcher”. This is a coed softball game and a woman is turning the corner at third base. She knows she will be tagged out by the catcher and will not make it to home plate. You would have no way to know all this if it was not revealed to you (like some aspects of faith), but what assumptions did you make trying to solve the riddle? The masked man was a criminal? The corner was a street corner? Home meant the place where she lived?
Don’t feel bad; we need to make assumptions to survive everyday life. As I eat I assume that my food is not poisoned, although I have no evidence. As I drive through a green light, I assume the cross traffic will remain stopped, although I have no proof. The key is to have an awareness of our assumptions and realize that sometimes our intuition can hurt us and lead to a bad assumption gap. Whether consciously or subconsciously, once you make an assumption, the gap between what you think and reality can get further and further apart. This applies to matters of faith as well.
Our souls (will & intellect) are damage by sin, therefore the will is weakened and the intellect is dimmed in regard to the things of God. Another (not so nice) way to say this is that sin makes us spiritually stupid & lazy when left to our own uninformed (or unformed) assumptions, intuition or conscience. The resulting thinking gaps divide us from God and from each other like bottomless chasms, but Truth brings unity and Christ is Truth itself. In Luke 12:49-53 Jesus spoke of coming to “divide”, but He came to divide us from whatever divides us from Him. He came to close the gaps. In order to actualize this however, we must be separated from our faulty ways of thinking.
In a week or so I’ll post examples from my own faith journey that are all too familiar, and can help to understand bad assumption gaps in matters of faith. Once you start with a bad premise, the gap between what you think and reality can grow at an alarming rate.
The riddles above are courtesy of a “thinking” company called Kepner-Trego that consults for the company I work for.