Defend your thinking

William M. Fabian

In the fictional animated film Anastasia, the evil mesmerist Rasputin is furious that Anastasia has escaped his curse on the Romanovs. He arranges accidents and other misfortunes, but his efforts fail. In desperation, Rasputin sends hypnotic thoughts that are meant to cause Anastasia to sleepwalk to her death. She leaves her safe bed on a ship, climbs the stairs to an open deck, and is about to plunge over the side into the stormy sea. All the while, she thinks she is on a pleasant walk with butterflies flitting around her and enticing companions encouraging her to follow them. Only after her real companion, Dimitri, calls repeatedly to wake her does she realize that she has been tricked.

To the audience, it is obvious that Anastasia is being manipulated. The source of the evil—Rasputin—is identified. But often we go through our daily lives unaware of influences that are, in their way, as hypnotic as Rasputin's efforts to control Anastasia. These influences may come from what the physical senses report as the condition of man, from advertising, human will, idle chatter. But since they don't come from God, we don't need to fear or be manipulated by such thoughts.

I remember a dramatic experience that alerted me to the importance of defending my own thinking. On a warm autumn afternoon,

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