THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON DISCIPLESHIP: OPEN TO REALITY, CLOSED TO FALSEHOOD
What does it mean to be open-minded? Aren’t Christians unwilling to compromise on their theological convictions close-minded by definition? While this may appear to be the case, I would like to argue that there is no unqualified open- or closed-mindedness. They are relational categories often bound together: being open to truth in all its forms closes us to falsehood. When we are open to reality, reality becomes a constraint that keeps us from embracing fictions that misunderstand and distort the Triune God.
The Trouble with Freedom
In his 1978 Harvard commencement address titled “A World Split Apart,” Andrew Solzhenitsyn spoke about the challenges facing the West. One of those challenges involves an asymmetry between moral responsibility and individual rights. He notes,
“The defense of individual rights has reached such extremes as to make society as a whole defenseless against certain individuals. It is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations. On the other hand, destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society has turned out to have scarce defense against the abyss of human decadence, for example, against the misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, such as motion pictures full of pornography, crime, and horror. This is all considered to be part of freedom and to be counterbalanced, in theory, by the young people’s right not to look and not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil.”
Freedom decoupled from the theological constraints of Scripture cannot help but erode toward evil. While it may seem more open-minded to replace the theological constraints of Scripture with general morals or a biblical ethic devoid of divine authority, such openness is illusory. Paradoxically, this sort of open-mindedness closes us and others off from reality—we settle for some notion of wholesomeness when only holiness will do.
Solzhenitsyn is right to criticize the asymmetry between responsibility and rights. His analysis, however, is incomplete because it is not rooted in God’s self-revelation. It does not begin with an obligation to God that governs our obligations to one another. As I note in another article, “While we could point to any number of morally corrupt practices (e.g., theft, murder, sexual assault of various sorts, greed, etc.), doing so can mask the underlying dynamics of disordering loves: loving God’s creation on our own terms and for our own purposes.” If our loves are to be rightly ordered, they must emerge from and be governed by our unqualified allegiance to God.
So, we may say that there is a certain type of open-mindedness that is deeply problematic. It is an open-mindedness that severs itself from the authority of God and his word. But isn’t doggedly holding to a particular set of convictions the definition of close-mindedness? Is suggesting that the right sort of open-mindedness must conform to certain teachings merely a word game—a way of relabeling close-mindedness? I don’t believe that to be the case. Instead, I would argue that constraints—like the constraints of God’s word—open us up to reality rather than closing us off from reality. As such, I would argue that discipleship—learning to live under the authority of Christ—opens us up to opportunities that are beyond anything we could ever ask or think (Matt 28:18-20; Eph 3:20).
The Necessity of Constraints
We need constraints. We can’t expect to communicate without the constraints of language. Consider the following sentence:
A;oiuapvmeneioahapfe akdafe0w eeriovleamny w0elfanvey wwislenwuhof lllpavien.
Though the “sentence” begins with a capital letter and ends with a period, it is completely unintelligible. Because I didn’t follow the rules (or constraints) of language—lexical, grammatical, and syntactical rules—there are no recognizable words for you to read. You can’t immediately understand what I meant by the sentence (if I meant anything at all). It is unintelligible. Even when I typed the sentence into ChatGPT, it generated the response: “Looks like your keyboard went rogue there for a second! Want to try that again? Or should I try to decode the secret message?” Those letters (and numbers) in that arrangement can’t be understood.
This example isn’t limited to language. In her work on complex systems, Alicia Juarrero recognizes the significance of context-sensitive constraints noting, “Some constraints must therefore not only reduce the number of alternatives: they must simultaneously create new possibilities.” At the risk of oversimplifying Juarrero’s argument, context-sensitive constraints create an ordered environment that can increase in complexity without falling into chaos. As Juarrero suggests, “The orderly context in which the components are unified and embedded constrains them. Constraints are therefore relational properties that parts acquire in virtue of being unified—not just aggregated—into a systemic whole.” To put it differently, constraints allow the various interdependent parts of a complex system to work together by limiting randomness and creating consistency.
Rather than assuming that constraints always limit our potential, we need to recognize that constraints often open us up to possibilities. Applied to the distinction between closed-mindedness and open-mindedness, we can see that a lack of constraints does not necessarily equal more freedom. When we free ourselves from the claim God has on our lives, we become less capable of living in light of reality, particularly the reality of the Triune God’s active presence in our lives. Denying God’s claim on our lives by determining our own course assumes we are independent of, rather than dependent on, God. Rejecting his authority—or passively ignoring it—closes us off to reality so that we are incapable of following “the way, the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6) that is Jesus.
The point is that being open- or closed-minded are relational categories. What are we open-minded about? What exactly are we closing ourselves off from? Though we may often call someone “open-minded” or “closed-minded,” we normally come to that conclusion based on the ways a person responds to some idea, proposed change, person, etc. As such, when we think about open-mindedness, we, as Christians, are not thinking about being open to anything and everything. For Christians, being open-minded must be described theologically. We are open, for instance, to the word of the Lord even if that openness requires us to change, confess, or suffer loss. We are open to the wise words of godly women and men. We are open to the insights of those whose work in various disciplines brings clarity to some aspect of reality. We are closed to the idea that we exist independent of God or that the Triune God does not demand our full and complete loyalty.
Discipleship and Open-Mindedness
As I noted above, discipleship—learning to live under the authority of Christ—opens up opportunities beyond anything we can ask or think (Matt 28:16-20; Eph 3:20). What exactly does that mean? Consider what living under the authority of Christ allows. Christians can:
-Be all things to all people that we might save some (1 Cor 9:19-23)
-Find joy in suffering for the Lord (Rom 5:1-5; Jam 1:2; 1 Pet 2:19; 3:14; 4:12-13)
-Walk in a newness of life rather than being a slave to sin (Rom 6:4-14)
-Live free from the anxieties that come from becoming too focused on the world’s “present form” that are passing away (1 Cor 7:31)
We can do these—and many other things—because we recognize the world’s right order. Since the fall, it has been disordered, and we are disoriented within it. When we are ignorant of God or in denial about him, we can still manipulate the world to make ourselves more comfortable or assert our own will (see my discussion of the Tower of Babel narrative). But there is a difference between acting on the world and understanding it. As Iain McGilchrist notes,
“We take the success we have in manipulating it [the world] as proof that we understand it. But that is a logical error: to exert power over something requires us only to know what happens when we pull the levers, press the button, or utter the spell…It is hardly surprising, therefore, that while we have succeeded in coercing the world to our will to an extent unimaginable even a few generations ago, we have at the same time wrought havoc on that world precisely because we have not understood it.”
We can’t understand the world apart from God. We need him to reveal the underlying dynamics of the world so that we aren’t just pulling levers and pushing buttons. He does this through the covenant, which reveals who God is by forging an ongoing relationship with his people and giving them guidelines for their various interactions together.
In the Old Testament, Israel’s life is rooted in the people’s ongoing obedience to God. The nation will not succeed by building military might, establishing political alliances, or calling on other gods for assistance. They will thrive by obeying the Lord and remaining loyal to the one who is their “life and length of days” (Deut 30:20). Similarly, in the New Testament, we see that Christ is “the way, the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6). Following him is the only way because Christ reveals the way of life completely aligned with reality.
Discipleship trains us to imitate Christ. We learn “to observe” all Christ commanded (Matt 28:20). In doing so, we do not close ourselves off to other possibilities because there are no other possibilities. Instead, we open ourselves up to the Triune God “who is able to do far more abundantly than that we ask or think according to the power at work within us” (Eph 3:20). The constraints placed on us through discipleship point us to an alternative way of life conformed to the image of Christ.
So, does this mean that we should reject any knowledge that does not come from scripture? Not at all. Incomplete as it may be, human knowledge can recognize the good, the true, and the beautiful. Humans can even order themselves to them to a certain degree. We need to affirm human thought that recognizes goodness, truth, and beauty while pointing out the incompleteness of that knowledge. We are always oriented by and to discipleship. We are always striving toward our chief aim—understanding God and enjoying Him forever—while encouraging others to do the same.
Christians should pursue open-mindedness in the sense that we are always open to gaining a deeper understanding of the Triune God, his creation, and the goodness, truth, and beauty that God himself has established. We are not open in the sense that we are willing to entertain ideas without making them subject to the final authority of God’s word. We are constantly seeking to understand ourselves, others, and the world in relation to the Triune God. This framework allows Christians to entertain a variety of ideas while refusing to surrender the ground of discipleship: Christ’s authority over all things in heaven and on earth (Matt 28:18).
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