I used to be involved with Amway. They had a culture of open-mindedness. According to them, you never know when someone would be good; so they reached out to all sorts of people, including people who were regarded as losers.

This has application in many things besides Amway. I have found that you never know when someone would have something valuable to say. I have seen wisdom in all sorts of places I did not expect it, such as American inner city and rural Australia. I have
even seen wisdom in children. It is very important to be open to input, including input from places you wouldn’t expect to get it from.

Cato wrote, “Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise.” Both religious fundamentalists and materialist fundamentalists make the same error. They fail to avail themselves of vast bodies of wisdom. The first fail to avail themselves of
anything that is not the Bible, such as science, philosophy and other religions; and the second fail to avail themselves of all wisdom that is in religious and spiritual paths of the world. In both cases the result is people having an impoverished
worldview. And that mostly hurts them.

In Christianity, there are the curious and the non-curious. All of the above share commitment to Christ; but while the first are not open to anything besides the Bible the second are. My former partner Julia was a very serious Christian, but she did yoga,
practiced martial arts and studied psychology and Eastern religion. What she was able to do was frame Christian ideas and values in language of other people and make a case for them to people who were not Christian. She was able to explain things in a
way that made sense to people from other paths; and she became very effective at doing that.

I have seen a number of people make case for Christian attitudes in language of secular world. One person who excelled at that was Scott Peck. He could make a psychological case for Christian values. We see the same with Immanuel Kant and Soren
Kiekegaard, who made a philosophical case for Christian values. Both became very effective because they could frame their beliefs in the language of the surrounding world and make a case for them to people who practiced that language.

To both people raised in Christian fundamentalism and materialist fundamentalism, I recommend exploring everything else. There are two possible outcomes of that. One is that you would decide that you started from a wrong place and alter your stance, and
hopefully be able to influence the people in your upbringing in a better direction. The other is that you would come to the conclusion that you have been raised right, and you would supplement your upbringing with knowledge that you have gathered from
other paths and become effective in promoting it to others.

So I know a Jehovah’s Witnesses family in Australia that took interest in New Age. What they did was avail themselves of New Age knowledge and use it in support of Jehovah’s Witnesses. They became highly effective at doing that, and that family
wields a lot of power in their hometown.

Julia’s father was a distinguished scientist, and she influenced him to come to Christ. Here is a woman whom many people thought to be stupid, but she was able to have significant influence on a very smart man. There have been all sorts of smart people
in all sorts of paths, and many things stand to be learned from them. You never know when someone would have something valuable to say. And in this the lessons from Amway stand to be instructive.

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