"You're Too Closed-Minded"

Hello, everyone!

 

   Time for a little fun. I've been running into a lot of conversations lately regarding the concept of "opening" one's mind.  What is the first thought that pops in your head when you hear that phrase? Even better, what is the first emotion?  Skepticism?  Anger?  Curiosity? Perhaps it depends on what you consider the idea to mean.  I once saw a man at a bus station wearing a hat that was covered in all kinds of pins.  Most of them had some sort of political statement on them.  One large one on the back read "I used to be open minded, but my brains kept falling out."  Many of us today are of a similar mindset.  We see all too well the common illustration of a skull cap doing a "Pacman" impression in order to welcome the cascade of butterflies and rainbows pouring into it, all the while leaving the brain unnaturally exposed to the elements.  I had a Christian friend of mine once tell me "In my experience, most of the people who tell you that you should open your mind just want to dump their garbage into it." 

     While I concede the unspoken protest that this attitude does not describe all Christians, it is certainly not an uncommon view in American Christianity.  In addition, being "closed-minded' is one of the most common accusations against us, right up there with being "judgmental" and "hypocritical".  Now, am I saying that I believe all these accusations to be true?  Not universally.  However, I do think that there has been a fair amount of misunderstanding regarding the idea of "opening" your mind in the Christian community.  While I cannot speculate regarding where this misunderstanding originated, I do have several ideas regarding why it continues and what we can do to break the cycle.  I want to briefly explore the two ways I believe "opening" your mind has been misunderstood: as a concept, and as a perception.  Then, I want to share a few thoughts I've come across that require "opening" your mind without necessarily requiring that you spill your brains. 

     Let's begin by exploring the concept for a moment.  One fact that everyone agrees on is that this concept obviously implies new information being given the opportunity to be introduced into the mind; you are never encouraged to "open your mind" for no reason.  If you removed all possible ulterior motives behind that idea, how is this a bad concept?  The irony here is that some of us have been so conditioned that we forget that everyone at some point has had an open mind until someone closed it.  Some of us were told to close it to guard against anything that might conflict with what was already put in.  Some of us closed it ourselves either consciously or unconsciously when we reached the limits of our comfort zone.  For most of us, I think it is a mixture of both.  Either way, you cannot very well be completely opposed to the concept of opening your mind without questioning why it was acceptable to open it before.    

 

   Many Christians at this point would point out that the obvious difference is that they have had their minds open to God.  To them, I would ask: What changed?  You think He's done teaching you? "Well, my mind is still open to God."  What exactly does that mean?  Scripture only?  Specific individuals' interpretation of scripture?  Your denominations' interpretation of scripture?  I can already hear minds clamping shut; too many questions, too many implications.  The sad reality is that many of us have closed our minds so hard to whatever threatened what was was inside that we have shut out a great deal of our God.  The ironic part is that the God we have shut out is big enough not only to fill our own minds, but also the minds of each and every person we come into to contact with, if we only let Him. 
    
  

We will get back to that thought after we explore the second area that "opening" you mind is misunderstood: how it is perceived.  While I find it enjoyable and often productive to analyze everything, sometimes the simplest answer can be the most revealing.  The problem many people have with the idea of "opening" their minds may have everything to do with how they picture it.  Again, we think of the human head opening like a lid and we think things like "If I was meant to have an open mind, why do I have a skull to protect it?".  Maybe it's just how we are looking at it.  Besides the common visual association, how does "opening your mind" to new information and thought explicitly imply the loss of anything that was inside?  The answer is it doesn't.  Why does the mind have to open like the picture; with the seam partway down the side?  Why can't it open like a box, with the contents stored to a level below the hinge?  Why can't the mind be more like a jewelry box; with secure and separate compartments for convictions, beliefs, thoughts and theories, facts and fantasies?  Following the progression, why do we have to use the metaphor of a container at all?  

     Opening your mind could be equated with being asked to eat a fresh-caught fish.  You may have to prepare it to make it acceptable to your digestive system.  You may have to season it to bring out the inner flavors.  In the end, though, you are faced with either 1. chewing the meat and spitting out the bones or 2. deciding that it isn't worth the effort and buying a fish sandwich from McDonalds.  I like this metaphor because it implies something that I have always suspected to be true; the more available information has become, the less people have valued seeking it out and assessing it.  Whereas just a few years ago, a library visit was essential to a decent report, now people seldom look into a subject deeper than a Google search on their phone.  Perhaps if we as a culture in America spent more time on a daily basis catching the fresh fish of self study, we would be more open to receiving new ideas which may not mesh entirely with our own.

     Now that we have briefly explored both the concept and our own perceptions of "opening" our minds, we can reasonably say that the concept of opening our minds to new information and ideas is not only favorable, but essential to our development as human beings.  The only questions that still remain are "what or who are we opening our minds to?" and "when, if ever, should we close them?".  To answer those questions and ask a few of my own, I would like to use the metaphor that I personally think of when this subject comes up.

     One of my favorite parts of the book "The Count of Monte Cristo" is when the main character, Edmond Dantes, visits the cell of a fellow prisoner who has been tunneling through the walls of their mutual prison in order to escape.  Edmond discovers that his companion has staved off insanity by exercising his mind.  He has even going so far as to study the sky through the tiny window of his cell and, using the movement of the shaft of light that streams in through it each day, calculate a calender of sorts on the walls of his cell.  This image has always stuck in my mind when I think of mankind.  I picture a prisoner in a cell, whose only view of the world beyond is what he can glimpse through a single, small window facing skyward.  He may use this fact to his advantage, or his despair.  He can lament that he may never understand all of what there could be and conclude that there is no point, or he can pour over what he has been given, understanding that the whole truth may very well be more than what he can see, but is certainly not less. 

 

   I hesitated at first in sharing this illustration, as the portrayal of a man in a cell could have some misleading implications.  The more I have thought about it, however, the more I have realized that this metaphor may be more accurate than we care to admit, even to those who do not believe in "God".  The non-theistic person may view the cell as the human mind, with the window representing man's knowledge of the universe.  In this case, the conditions of the imprisonment are of little consequence.  The point is, man is a prisoner of his own physical and mental capabilities.  Many modernistic thinkers have sought to drown so called "closed-minded" theists in a sea of wonder; the unfathomable infinite universe.  The problem with that approach is that it is counterproductive.  The more we acknowledge the existence of the vast unknown that is hidden from our understanding, the more we must admit that we have no absolute authority to speak on it.  The larger the sky, the smaller the window is by comparison.  I once heard a speaker ask a skeptic if he knew half of everything there was to know of the universe.  The answer was no.  He then asked if he knew ten percent.  The answer, again, was no.  The speaker then said this.  "Let's assume for a moment that you know ten percent of everything in the universe.  Is it possible that 'God' exists in the ninety percent you don't?"  There was no reply.  In that moment, the skeptic knew what it felt like to feel closed minded.  Perhaps that is the reason Carl Sagan claimed to be an agnostic instead of an atheist. 

 

   To the theistic mind, the metaphor of a man in a cell is slightly different.  The cell still represents the mind of man.  The window, however, as well as the light which illuminates the walls of the cell, represents the the knowledge of our universe and God as revealed to us by nature, the Holy Scriptures, and the Holy Spirit.  This is the picture I will be focusing on.  Let's start with the window.  

    Most Christians are perfectly comfortable describing God with words like omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent.  As soon as someone tries to approach them with information that threatens their personal perception of those words, however, many of them take to denying that any of it is true.  It's like they are terrified that admitting the expanse of sky that lies outside of the window's view somehow means denying that what does come through the window is real.  Can God not be revealed through His creation in ways not mentioned explicitly in scripture?  Can He not be "all powerful" over the laws of nature, no matter what they are discovered and re-discovered to be?  Why can't He fully comprehend all of the mysteries of the universe that we have only begun to discover exist?  Why can He not be present in and through and outside off all of the known and theorized planes of existence?  Case in point: watch the video below.  If you subscribe to this man's description of the ten dimensions, is it so unreasonable to picture the concept of "God" as a second point in the tenth dimension?

     I once heard a story about Galileo.  It claimed that, at his trial, he presented his accusers with a model of the universe.  When asked where God was in the model, he was said to have replied "the model doesn't need Him."  I spent a decent period of time trying to verify the validity of that story but I couldn't find any account of it.  What I did find, however, was his amazing letter to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany, in which he fervently argues the very same points I have just been; that the reality of God is bigger than anyone's perception of Him, that there are truths regarding God revealed both in scripture and elsewhere that we will never comprehend, and that, even though some truths may not be contained within scripture, it does not mean that we shouldn't seek them out.  Here are some of my favorite excerpts from the letter: 

   

 "But I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.  He would not require us to deny sense and reason in physical matters which are set before our eyes and minds by direct experience or necessary demonstrations...I would say here something that was heard from an ecclesiastic of the most eminent degree: "That the intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven. not how heaven goes."...Who will assert that everything in the universe capable of being perceived is already discovered and known? Let us rather confess quite truly that "Those truths which we know are very few in comparison with those which we do not know."  We have it from the very mouth of the Holy Ghost that God delivered up the world to disputations, so that man cannot find out the work that God hath done from the beginning even to the end.  In my opinion no one, in contradiction to that dictum, should close the road to free philosophizing about mundane and physical things, as if everything had already been discovered and revealed with certainty...People who are unable to understand perfectly both the Bible and the science far outnumber those who do understand them.

       "And to prohibit the whole science would be to censure a hundred passages of holy Scripture which teach us that the glory and greatness of Almighty God are marvelously discerned in all his works and divinely read in the open book of heaven.  For let no one believe that reading the lofty concepts written in that book leads to nothing further than the mere seeing of the splendor of the sun and the stars and their rising and setting, which is as far as the eyes of brutes and of the vulgar can penetrate. Within its pages are couched mysteries so profound and concepts so sublime that the vigils, labors, and studies of hundreds upon hundreds of the most acute minds have still not pierced them, even after the continual investigations for thousands of years...that which presents itself to mere sight is as nothing in comparison with the high marvels that the ingenuity of learned men discovers in the heavens by long and accurate observation...."* (emphasis mine) 


     I highly recommend reading the entire letter.  I have, and it pretty much boils down to three words: open your mind.  In the same way that Galileo's discoveries threatened people's beliefs to the point of accusing him of religious heresy, many Christians today become extremely confrontational and defensive over issues like the age of the universe, the search for extraterrestrial life, and anything surrounding the subject of evolution.  Why?  In regards to the first two, there is no explicit biblical reason to have an opinion either way.  The "Christian" answer to the age of the earth was derived by adding up the genealogies in the old Testament; hardly above question.  Similarly, Christians who deny life outside of earth seldom have any other reason to other than the fact that it isn't directly discussed in the Bible.  Evolution is a loaded topic which I have no intention of discussing here, but I will say this.  Even if all of evolutionary theory is a not-so-secret plot to promote an atheistic view of the universe, it will ultimately fail for that very reason; and we should know that better than anyone! 

     Now, let's look at the cell.  Referring back to our metaphor, we as Christians must always keep in mind that we are largely responsible for our own imprisonment.  Whereas the non-theistic mind is (in their view) restrained only by the limits of his own comprehension, we are, as stated by our own beliefs, fallen creatures who can only see glimpses of what we once freely shared with our creator.  With that in mind, we have far less reason to be arrogant in our beliefs about the world than non-theists.  We can reason that, even as perfect beings made in the image of God and communing daily with Him, we still were not able to understand all of the mysteries and knowledge of the universe.  Even before the fall, we were created beings, lesser than our Creator.  Even in paradise, we could not see all of the sky.  How much less must we be aware of, now that we have fallen and placed our minds inside of the prison cell of mortality, lined with the filth of sin?  Now, am I saying that we as Christians cannot have or even claim to have knowledge?  Certainly not.  For my Christian friends, this concept would be related to the doctrine of total depravity, something I do not subscribe to.  The author I will be discussing shortly brought up the excellent point that, if man were truly depraved, he would not be aware that he was.  What I am saying is that we, as Christians, have a perspective that paints a far more reduced and humble picture of human intellect than that of secular humanists.  We would do well to remember that instead of imitating the arrogance of modernistic thinkers.  

     One of the books I have been reading lately is The Problem of Pain, by C.S. Lewis.  Lewis, who I only recently discovered was a theistic evolutionist, was not threatened by new ideas or ideas that fell outside the realm of biblical authority.  In the book, he presents the fall of man from a standpoint that, not only do we have no knowledge of the potential actions of God that do not concern us, but that we also have no authority to measure, weigh, or judge them:  "But it must always be remembered that when we talk of what might have happened, of contingencies outside the whole actuality, we do not really know what we are talking about.  There are no times or places outside the existing universe in which all this 'could happen' or 'could have happened'.  I think the most significant way of stating the real freedom of man is to say that if there are other rational species than man, existing in some other part of the actual universe, then it is not necessary to suppose that they also have fallen."**  Lewis was implying that there may be other beings out there even though the Bible doesn't mention them; the reason for which may be that it is none of our business.  These are thoughts that are not coming from a man who is known for denying the authority of scripture.  Rather, these are coming from someone who was and is one of Christianity's most influential modern supporters.  How did he reconcile such thoughts with the knowledge he already had of God?  Quite easily, actually: "God may be more than moral goodness: He is not less.  The road to the promised land runs past Sinai.  The moral law may exist to be transcended: but there is no transcending it for those who have not first admitted its claims upon them..."** (emphasis mine) Lewis was promoting the image of a God that didn't contradict the Bible's claims about Him, He simply transcended them.   
    

     Where does all of this leave us?  Well, there is one final point I would like to make before I answer that.  The reality of "opening" your mind is that many of the people who prompt you to do so don't actually want you to open it.  They want you to change it.  This phrase has been made popular as of late by those who would see their own point of view as singularly superior to all others, simply because it does not seem to be bound by same conditions as others.  This is an illusion.  Many such "open minded" people are slaves to their open-mindedness, forever forced to promote the ironic duality of pluralism that can neither condemn, nor promote any particular point of view over another.  They can't compartmentalize and they often have little filtration.  These are the actual brain-spillers; the ones who are willing to discard whatever previous opinions and convictions they held that clash with the new ones.  There is no expansion here; no growth.  There is simply the "open exchange of ideas" in the most literal and pointless manner.  As I have said before: There is no such thing as a "freethinker".  Thought has never been free.  It comes with the price to be paid to those who thought of it before you; the price of affiliation.  Don't deny your masters: know them.  You should be wary of those who would, as soon as the words "open your mind" come out of their mouths, start to point out what they think is wrong with what's inside. 
  

   To protect against this dead end, and to answer the questions I posed earlier, there is probably a better way of phrasing the willingness to explore new information than simply "opening your mind."  I was discussing this subject recently with a friend of mine who suggested the phrase "growing your mind".  That phrase, along with the phrase "expanding your horizons" may apply more to the process we should be seeking.  Increasing the volume of your thoughts does not mean that all of your previous ones are not valid, or that the new ones are, for that matter.  It simply means that you are willing to learn and to grow, accepting some things, and rejecting others; chewing the meat and spitting out the bones, as it were.  Seeing it from that angle, the two questions mentioned earlier look rather silly: "what or who are we opening our minds to?" and "when, if ever, should we close them?"  We should be open to learning from potentially anywhere.  Galileo himself said "I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him."  Regarding timing, we should never stop learning.  Period.  If I have to argue that point to anyone reading this, I'm confused as to how you read this far. 

     So where does all of this leave us?  I have an illustration to help answer that.  I once watched an episode of the Bernie Mac show, in which Bernie found himself faced with having to ask his niece to repeatedly testify against her friend's dad, who was trying to sue them.  Her testimony was all true, and the lawsuit was frivolous, but Bernie eventually realized that his justification was not worth what he would have to put his young niece through.  The episode ends with him informing his attorney in front of everyone to settle the case, remarking that he would rather be accused of being a bad parent than to actually be one.  In our journey, we will always have those who will accuse of ignorance and say to us "you're too close-minded".  In our desire to expand our horizons, we should be careful not to simply change our point of view to the commonly held one.  We would find ourselves in the very position we were accused of being in.  I would rather be accused of being close-minded, than become so by being too willing to abandon all perspective.  That being said, grow your mind.  Expand your horizons, receive new information, chew the meat and spit out the bones and, if you feel up to it, open your mind.



“Who is this who darkens counsel by words without knowledge?  Now prepare yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer Me. “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth  Tell Me, if you have understanding.  Who determined its measurements?  Surely you know!  Or who stretched the line upon it?  To what were its foundations fastened?  Or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? Job 38: 2-7 (NKJV)

"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." 1 Corinthians 13:12 (KJV)

Links

*Galileo's Letter
**C.S. Lewis; The Problem of Pain