Journal

Greg Boyd on Narrow-mindedness

Posted on June 8th, 2006, in the afternoon

I aspire to both a single-minded and an open-hearted faith: I have conviction about what I'm up to in the universe, but I certainly don't want to close my mind to the rest of that universe.

Greg Boyd has a great quote relevant to this aspiration in his Letters From A Skeptic. His father (the "skeptic" with whom who he dialogues throughout the book) had written asking whether believing the Bible to be uniquely "the Word of God" isn't narrow-minded. Greg engages with the question in various ways and concludes as follows:

I don't think this is being narrow-minded, as you suggested. Narrow-mindedness does not attach to what you believe, but how you believe it. If I refused to consider any persective, any religious book, and any philosophy which disagreed with my own, that would be narrow-minded. But just because I hold to a belief that disagrees with other perspectives, other religious books, and other philosophies doesn't make me narrow.

Greg Boyd, Letters From A Skeptic, Correspondence 23

I wholeheartedly agree!