Murky-Mindedness

Clarity of thinking is the birthright of the Christian, because Jesus was the clearest thinker to ever walk the earth. He was not beset by the phenomenon that is so common around us, a kind of muddled and divided mind. We might, for fun, call this a murky mind.

Now, just because it is our birthright, does not mean we are always very good at accepting and engaging with that right. We need not look too far to find many Followers of Christ in all shapes and sizes who could not be called clear thinkers.

Murky-Mindedness could be said to be the holding of some number of ideas which are inconsistent with the whole of a person’s intellectual convictions. Part of the trouble here is that we live in an age which does not acknowledge that truths have to be related or in agreement with each other at all. An age of ‘personal truth’ — of my truth. 

There are antidotes, all is not lost. Let us not fall into the perennial temptation to despair of the state of the world. We cannot run away from the messy and complicated expressions of our neighbors, or our ancestors for that matter, because within them we see the reflections of their hearts, of the human struggle, and the confirmation of Truth.

The current attitude of both religious and secular segments of society is to hurtle onward toward narrow and isolated thinking, and culture, and discussion. This is dangerous, because it is an express train to the murky-minded disintegration which plagues us. I have not the time, nor the space, to engage all of what could be said here at once, but hope to chip away at this block of marble as time goes on. The first step, undeniably, is to establish a firm foundation of what we believe. Not creating an ideological box to force all experience into, but becoming acquainted with the reality which underlies all experiences, with the Truth which governs all things, with the order of the universe and all within it.

From that vantage alone can we push on fearlessly, confident that in all things where Truth, Beauty, and Goodness are found, we will recognize and affirm them.

With our notebook in hand, let us explore everything.