Am I Open Minded?
I was reading sisterzion’s blog today (There is no God.) and it was dealing with questions coming from non-belivers. “What if you die and find out there is no God” was the specific question being asked. These types of questions are often used to get us to question our faith (which can be a good thing) and turn us to another path (which is often less good…). The annoying thing about these questions is not in “having” to explain your faith (because that can be a powerful witness) but in that the person asking cannot often answer the opposite question (ie. What if you die and find out there IS a God?). Generally it seems (yes I know, not always) that if you start to question someone’s religion (YES, religion) of non-belief you will often be labled a closed-minded Christian and therefore have no input or rational opinions on any matter from then on. Yes I know I am over stating things a bit, but you get the point.
This brings me the the issue at hand: being open-minded. This is an issue that I am very passionate about and can get very pissed off at people over. There seems to be a huge double-standard when it comes to dealing with beliefs. If you have strong beliefs in something that disagree with what I beleive, you are closed minded. Whereas whatever I believe in, I will always be open minded. You will only become openminded when you disavow what you hold to be truth and start believing what I hold to be truth. Again, I know I am overstating things, but it is to make a point.
It seems that the only people that are always open-minded are those who say they don’t really believe in anything, which, to me, is a crock in itself as in order to not believe in ANYTHING, you are placing belief and trust and faith in that. (You may take note here that I am not the most PC person in the world. I will genearly tell it like it is and I am sorry if that offends you, I generally think people are too sensitive and just need to be real with themselves and others.) The moment anyone has any conviction about anything, they are immediately branded as closed-minded (this doesn’t just apply to Christians). What non-Christians need to understand is that just because we have strong beliefs in something, that doesn’t mean we will not listen to anything else. And just because we believe you are wrong, just as you believe about us, that does not mean we are passing judgement on you. The world is a depraved place, Christians and non-Christians sin, that is the result of being a fallen people. We are taught to love the sinner and hate the sin, if a Christain is not doing that than they have issues to deal with on their own. Now just because I am not passing judgement doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t want you to question what you believe, just as you would do to me.
Truth is NOT relative as much as many would like to believe, and they are completly free to believe it, that doesn’t mean that they aren’t wrong. Being open-minded doesn’t mean that everything has to be valid and true, it means that you respect that others hold different beliefs. Yes, I pray that my non-Christian friends would become Christian because I know it to be truth. You may disagree with that, and you are free to do that, you may still be wrong. You can just as easily say the same thing about me, I could be wrong, but if you were to tell me that I have to change my beliefs because I don’t allow for other truths, you would be the closed-minded one. To truly be open-minded you have to allow for the fact that others will have different beliefs and that is fine. I still think I am right, as do you. Many people would love for truth to be relative because that way you don’t have to tell people they are wrong, it would be very nice, but unfortunately, I don’t believe that is the way things really are. I guess we shall see in the end.
Ok, I think I am starting to ramble a bit, once again. I am sure there are things I meant to say but forgot. I am sure I will remember them sometime..
Shalom
[UPDATE: the original post and comments are no longer available at ModBlog 
sorry!]
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