Don't Be So Open-minded by Burk Parsons

Our enemy's supreme deception is in his attempt to convince us that he doesn't exist. Toward that end, he has launched his assault against us with every weapon in his carefully fashioned arsenal. Perhaps his greatest success is in persuading us that being open-minded is a good thing. For it is precisely when we accept the notion that open-mindedness is a Christian virtue that we fall into the same devilish trap by which our first parents were ensnared. Once our minds are open to open-mindedness, all ideas, no matter how absurd, can come and go as they please -- with our sanction.


We thus become headless and brainless philosophers who just want to get along. One such philosopher and self-proclaimed theologian has written: "So I believe we have radically to rethink our understanding of the place of Christianity in the global religious picture. And we have to face the fact that it is one path amongst others, and then reform our belief-system to be compatible with this. This is the big new challenge that theologians and church leaders have yet to face. We have to become consciously what are called religious pluralists." This is the mantra of religious pluralists: Liberate your mind, lose your faith, and feel the love.Although many professed evangelicals have become precarious evanjellyfish, I would like to think that most have not yet succumbed to the most blatant sort of religious pluralism. Nevertheless, being the narrow-minded biblical fundamentalist that I am, I am decidedly closed-minded to anything that is not biblical, and I concur with John Calvin: "Wherefore all theology, when separated from Christ, is not only vain and confused, but is also mad, deceitful, and spurious; for, though the philosophers sometimes utter excellent sayings, yet they have nothing but what is short-lived, and even mixed up with wicked and erroneous sentiments." As the closed-minded, Christ-minded faithful we must join arms against the satanic pluralism of our day, whether it is decreed from the Vatican or broadcast from Mecca. We live and breathe for Christ alone and proclaim that there is only one way to God. Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6).