I’M WONDERING ……. JUST WONDERING ……. how many of you out there can do honest research on a topic that you haven’t been in agreement with? You mustn’t answer too quickly because this requires very careful mental scrutiny. I’m not talking about reading something while taking to the reading your own preconceived notions: I’m talking about assuming that your preconceived notions are somehow completely WRONG! I’m talking about an open mind that is really honestly open. I know as an absolute fact that most people CANNOT do this. They have their well thought out, well prayed over set of prejudices – whether they want to realize it or not!

I tried doing this kind of research on a topic that I don’t even care to disclose here because the topic is so hot that nobody fails to have a set of opinions about it. But I did do something that I’m truly wondering how many people can even do: I broached an issue RECOGNIZING AND ACKNOWLEDGING my own personal prejudice and gave it a kind of Cartesian litmus test. I knew that I wanted to find proof that something is very, very wrong and abhorrent in God’s eyes. Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” comes into play as “There is, therefore God is”.

Of course the Scriptures are the place to turn to – that’s a given. What I want to quit doing is bringing my own preconceived notions into my interpretation of Scriptures. That’s a pretty hard thing to do when you’ve got to draw the line somewhere as to what more you’re going to take in from the Anointed scholars out there. I know that the Holy Spirit is/was perfectly capable of guiding and teaching me. The issue that I had personally found so reprehensible … well, I was unable to prove that people who buy into this paradigm are forever lost and I even had to deal with a sense of disappointment because my sense of justice and judgment had been shaken to its core.

Anyway, my whole point is to ask if anyone … anyone at all … is willing to acknowledge that they do have prejudices and preconceived notions which absolutely must be put on the shelf if they want to read anything honestly and squarely. The only way to put this junk on the shelf (suspend judgment) is to acknowledge that you have it in the first place!

Are You adequately open-minded?