The Virtue Of An Open Mind?
It is virtuous to be open-minded, right? Well, maybe not. At least about some things.I read a column by Fr. Chris Hayden (Conjectures of a Curate) that drew an emphatic high-five from the crew of the Dawn Treader.
Here is the deal. Being open-minded or close-minded, in and of itself, is morally neutral. It is kind of like faith. Having faith, for the sake of having faith, means nothing. The question is, what is the object of your faith? Likewise, what are you open-minded or close-minded about?
I would argue, for example, that is not a virtuous thing to be open-minded about pedophilia. True, you won’t find any verses written in red about what Jesus said about pedophilia. Does that mean we should be open-minded about it? Heaven forbid! The corpus of scripture clearly teaches God’s design, context and purpose for sex. Pedophilia is so far out of bounds that we don’t even need to waste time looking for that ball. We should be close-minded about that issue. God has spoken, why in the world should we remain open-minded on this issue?
Another thing. Promoting open-mindedness as a virtue, in and of itself, is self-refuting. Why? Because open-mindedness is very close-minded about close-mindedness, is it not? Whoops. Little bit of a logical disconnect there. When you encounter a proposition that falsifies itself, please follow my advice. Stand aside and let the argument quietly commit suicide.
That is the funny thing about truth. It is quite exclusive. When we discover truth, we would be well advised to close our minds against that which opposes it.
The next time someone preaches to you about the virtue of being open-minded, ask them what “open-minded about what?” If they are asking you to be open-minded about something which God clearly opposes, then tell them your mind is already full when it comes that subject. Sorry - closed. Full.
We are exhorted to love truth and embrace the one who embodies truth. Let’s fill our minds with truth and our hearts with love, and close our minds around that.
(hat tip: Wes Mollard)
1 Comments:
I love it!
Very good point made about open-mindedness vs. closed mindedness. Along the same reasoning you can substitute this with tolerance vs. intolerance and how in our culture there is a huge push for tolerating almost any idea, premise, or belief regardless of its moral failings. It is impossible to be tolerant of everything, the mere fact that one may profess tolerance of everything implies an intolerance for intolerance. Or even the popular notion of not judging, even though when someone accuses me of judging them or someone else, they are in fact judging me for judging them. In order to stand on the truth we must judge, yet we ought to judge righteously based on God's word and not against our own self-righteousness. Not unto condemnation but unto redemption.
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