"MR. HALSEY, ARE YOU OPEN-MINDED?"

"Mr. Halsey, are you open-minded?" I've never forgotten that loaded six-word question, my professor asked me in class in front of everybody in the fall of 1961, my freshman year in college. His name was Mr. Vann. The class was the English class (called "College Rhetoric") the academic gods had decreed as required for graduation. I was 18 and had years of academic toil to endure before graduation.

Professor Vann was reading through the class roll and assigning each student a book to read for a book report which was to be both oral (in class in front of everybody) and written. He would read a student's name and then tell him what book he was to read, assigning each student a different book.

But for some reason, still unknown to me, he prefaced my assigned book with that question, "Mr. Halsey, are you open-minded?" That was strange. He asked no one else any question before telling them what book to read for their report.

I suspected Mr. Vann was up to something. I answered his question, "No."

But my answer meant nothing; he assigned me The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger. That book was like the teacher's answer to me;  The Catcher in the Rye meant nothing to me; I'd never heard of it nor its author even though it had been published ten years earlier. Little did I know that J. D. Salinger's book was hailed around the world as a classic in literature. They even erected a sculpture in Lithuania in honor of the author.

However, if a person reads even the first few paragraphs of the short book, which is all I read, he would see that, to be blunt, it's junk. One reviewer, definitely in the minority, wrote that The Catcher in the Rye was a "bad book," stating, "The basic plot of 'Catcher' can be summarized in two sentences; Holden Caulfield is a teenager who hates life, runs away from school, and hangs out in New York City. There he has a terrible time, goes home, tries to run away, and doesn't. The end. No drama. No suspense. . .  the book in its present state basically repeats itself over and over as the hero does the same things in different variations, all the while griping and complaining at how terrible everything is."

Not knowing anything about the book, I took it home and my parents asked to see it. After looking it over, they said, "No, you're not. If you fail the course, you're not reading that book."

I didn't ask, "Why can't I read it?" That question never occurred to me. They didn't want me to read it, so I didn't. End of story. So, I had to do something I'd never done--fake it; write a report, but cheat and not read the book, only pretend via the report, that I did.

Then, out of the blue, as the date for our oral reports approached, the university newspaper came out with a headline: "Catcher in the Rye Removed from Campus Bookstore." Wait. What? Then I figured it out: Unbeknownst to me, my father was so upset by the junk I was being forced to read that he had made an appointment with one of the very highest of the academic deans of the University and told him all about what I'd been assigned and the result was that the dean ordered all copies of the book to be removed from the bookstore.

The school newspaper didn't mention any names, but I was in a sweat because the next day, we were to give our oral reports in class. Talk about bad timing. Would Mr. Vann make the connection between me and the bookstore's removal of the very book he assigned me and only me?

The day after that headline blared the news across the campus, Mr. Vann began to go down the class roll, calling on each student in turn. I was a nervous wreck as the name "Halsey" got nearer and nearer to heed the teacher's call to come to the front and give the report. I would be at his mercy. He could really make it rough. He could begin an in-class rant about censorship and single me out. What was I to do, an 18 year-old freshman against a professor?

And then it happened. As the class rolled on, right before my name came up, the bell rang. The class was over. Class dismissed. We all filed out of the room, handing in our reports. The next class day, the professor called for no more reports. They just stopped. That was odd.

I never knew what had transpired in that conversation my father had with the dean, but I've since wondered if he told him that no reprisals were to be taken against his son. I never knew if the dean then went to Mr. Vann and told him that he'd better not embarrass me or criticize me or penalize me in any way. I never knew and I never thought to ask. I was just glad it was all over.

I don't see how Mr. Vann could not have made the connection between that headline and me. His silence was strange, but maybe, just maybe, he'd been told to lay off. Did he arrange the class so that time would run out, just before my name came up? I don't know. But if ever there was a true statement, it would be, "Saved by the bell."

Now, why go into all this ancient history? It's because of Daniel chapter 1 and what we're seeing up close and personal in our society today are parallel. In Daniel 1, Daniel, a teenager at the time, makes a decision, seemingly small one, but without that decision, we'd have never heard of Daniel. His decision: he wouldn't eat the diet commanded by the tyrant, Nebuchadnezzar. To do so would mean that he would be breaking the Mosaic Law.

Along with the food, the Israelite captives, like Daniel, the best and the brightest, were to be immersed in the "literature and the language of the Chaldeans." The purpose was to make Babylonians out of people like Daniel and his friends Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. This was to change the way they spoke and thought. Their core values, the biblical worldview on which they were raised was under attack.

The Jewish youth were to read only government-approved books, eat only government-approved food, and speak the government-approved language. There is the same strategy that has been going on in our culture. Movies began to portray virginity before marriage as the practice of losers. Movies began to mock parental authority, showing dad and mom as hopeless dimwits. Children and teens were shown as possessing the wisdom that saved the day. The dialogue in the media began to give cultural permission for children to use language that would embarrass a San Deigo sailor home on leave. 

The literary elites proclaimed The Catcher as a classic. History students study A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn which received high praise from Matt Damon in the movie "Good Will Hunting," when his character said, "You wanna read a real history book, read Howard Zinn's  "People's History of the United States."

The textbook, according to Mary Grabar, ". . .  presents Western civilization as marked “by the religion of popes, the government of kings, the frenzy for money, all which leads to torture and murder." She further writes that Zinn's crowning accomplishment was the destruction of the observance of October 12 and "hordes of angry adolescents demanding an end to the holiday."

The world system has its own Babylonian language and a person must speak it or face the consequences. Just one example which could be multiplied a hundredfold: "According to a new Army manual, U.S. soldiers will now be instructed to avoid 'any criticism of pedophilia' and to avoid criticizing 'anything related to Islam.'"(From "Judicial Watch")

I look back on that College Rhetoric Class as a picture in miniature of what we're seeing today and that question as symbolic of what was to come, "Mr. Halsey, are you open-minded." Was I embarrassed by what my father did? Absolutely not. I was glad he did what he did and remain glad to this day. He was determined that his alma mater wasn't going to make a Chaldean out of his son.

It didn't.