Do you think it’s better to be closed-minded or open-minded?
Society would tell you that being open-minded is always better, no matter what. Yet that’s not always the case — particularly if it means being permissive of sin.
To illustrate this point, I’d like to share the story of my amazing intern who worked for me when I first moved to Tennessee. At the time, she was finishing her high school career. She was the most innocent and faith-filled 18-year-old I had ever met.
She was truly a pure soul — the sort of girl who didn’t even want to go to college because she knew she was going to miss her parents too much. When she looked into my family’s freezer, she was shocked to see how much ice cream we had. It wasn’t even that much, but her family rarely consumed sugar. Her ideal treat was a spoonful of peanut butter.
I thought this girl must be an anomaly because I had never met anybody like her before. Then, she started babysitting for us and a few of her friends helped us out on the side as well.
Well, guess what? All of the girls in her friend group were just like her. They were each on fire for the Lord. They held a Bible study among themselves as an extracurricular activity. They were true Christians, and very different from the average girl in America today.
It was such a departure from who I was at that age. I was the exact opposite. I couldn’t wait to get out of the house and go to college. I just wanted to be with my boyfriend. That was the norm at my high school.
But then, I came down to Tennessee and I met these young girls who are genuinely good people.
Now, my intern ended up going off to college. Her time there didn’t last long. She made it one semester before she decided college wasn’t for her and she returned home. It should be noted, she was very bright. She was awarded scholarships and had a 4.3 GPA. She was not some dummy who couldn’t handle the course load.
She left because she knew what she wanted — and she didn’t need a degree for it. All she really wanted was to be a stay-at-home mom and raise 10 kids. She had been in a long-term relationship with her boyfriend who had the same devotion to the Christian faith. It was what they both wanted.
Now, many would say that is incredibly closed-minded. Their argument might be that she’s young, she needs to experience life, and how could she possibly know what she wants?
That’s what the world would tell you anyway. To see how that argument fared, I recently went over to her Instagram account to check in and see what her life looked like.
Let me tell you — with a few swipes on her Instagram page — that former, sweet intern of mine restored my faith in humanity.
Her Instagram bio was a Bible quote. She had posted modest photos, with captions such as “He gave it all up for me and so I give it all to Him.” — obviously referring to Jesus Christ. Her friends’ profiles were the same way.
I thought, “How does someone raise a child like this in today’s America?”
For example, another friend of hers decided to drop out of college after the first semester as well. She just wanted to be a photographer and get married, and that’s exactly what she did. Then another 18-year-old girl from her group of friends got married. They all seem to get married at a young age.
I’m not kidding you — you look at them and think, “What decade are we in, 1920? How is it these girls look so happy, so fulfilled?”
Well, perhaps they’re so positively different and refreshing because they are not allowing themselves to be tempted by what their peers, Hollywood, and the Left tell them will make them happy.
They’re told the only way to find a life worth living is to be “open-minded.” Yet doing that often means accepting secular things and ideas on how to live.
Where does that land you? I would argue that it often leads us to sin.
So, when an entire culture has been raised believing that “being accepting of others no matter what” is the highest good, then we wind up with the very sick and twisted country we see today.
The consequence of so many people aspiring to that level of “exploration” has created a very miserable society. The sort of filth we saw at the Grammys on Sunday — that outwardly demonic performance by Sam Smith — is the result of being “open-minded.”
Who could watch that and think the dancers, the singers, or anybody watching that garbage benefits from it in any way? Who would be so “tolerant” that they would want to watch such a performance, let alone engage in it?
I’ll tell you who wouldn’t want to watch that — my former intern. She has blocked that type of entertainment off and does not want it anywhere near her heart. None of her friends are interested in it either.
The contrast between how those girls live with so much jubilation and ecstasy for life and the Lord versus the Grammys’ pornographic homage to the Devil is striking. It’s clear: One way leads you to something good, beautiful, and true while the other leads you down a dark path.
So, how do we avoid being so open to things that will lead us toward misery, sadness, and despair? Well, that unhappy existence is the result of sin.
So in order to stay away from sin, we must have a moral compass to guide us. That moral compass only works, though, if we close off certain paths and focus on what God offers — not what our open-minded society says will make us happy.