I recently stumbled across a quote, apparently due to Aristotle, that got me thinking.  I thought this was a very profound quote, capturing so much in so few words.

Speaking personally, whenever I read something new, listen to a sermon, or partake in a discussion, I am constantly running the content of the message through a worldview filter.  This is not an overtly conscious act any more because I have trained myself to do this.

Well, to be honest, I think a lot of the filtering is as a result of my Christian conversion many years ago, whereupon I began weighing everything against Biblical teaching.  This “renewing of your mind” along with many years of academic discipline allows me to almost naturally submit my thinking to Scripture and logic.  It’s a bit like driving an automatic rather than a manual vehicle.

So what has all this to do with Aristotle?  Let’s look at the quote and see:

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”  –  Aristotle

Wow, so according to Aristotle, we should be able, if our minds are educated, to delve into ideas, philosophies, books, poetry, and many others things “of the world” without buying wholesale into the ideas themselves.

What may surprise you even more is that we have a high-caliber example of such engagement in the Bible. Can you guess who and what he wrote?  Do a study of Acts 17:22-34 and tell me how the person in the middle managed to quote, not from the Bible, from from the literature of that culture, back at the culture-makers themselves!