Intolerance . . . is it really a bad thing?

This is a reply I wrote to Northern Tribe's post that I liked so much I decided to post it here. I'm not sure it makes sense, but I really enjoyed writing it. Sometimes I work out what I think as I write. So . . . be patient as you read.

I appreciate attempts to defend Christianity, as I am a wholehearted Christian. But your logic just doesn’t work for me.

Sometimes individual Christians are backwards, intolerant, unenlightened and generally ignorant about the faith they profess to hold. When that is the case, people everywhere need to not condemn Christianity but to adopt sort of a “suffer the little children” attitude (even though they are not truly little children, they perhaps haven’t had some of the same advantages some of us have). That’s a matter of individual Christians, though

When it comes to Christianity as a whole being an intolerant religion, well, then the question really comes down to whether Christ is tolerant. Two questions even. Is Christ tolerant, and what is tolerance? We’ve culturally made tolerance a synonym for kindness almost. Christ is kind certainly, and loving. But love and kindness are not tolerance.

“This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that ‘God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness we lie and do not practice the truth.” But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.

Christianity lives to proclaim the Word of God. That Word says that some men “walk in darkness” and some “walk in the light.” Light and dark are intolerant of each other. “And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore . . . on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.” Yet, to continue the metaphor, if, in reaching out to the darkness, the light were to become dimmer and dimmer and dimmer, more and more gray in an attempt to appeal to darkness, then . . . it would lose its appeal. We are called to be salt and light. “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.”

Your argument seems to be that Christianity is an excellent religion and therefore cannot be an intolerant religion, that it is tolerant of every kind of sinner and Pharisee and therefore cannot be an intolerant religion.

My argument is this. Every religion that makes a bit of sense is intolerant, that’s why there are so many wars fought in the name of religion. Religions are BY THEIR VERY NATURE intolerant of other religions, otherwise they don’t make any sense. If your God is the VERY GOD OF VERY GODS, then admitting that any other religion could possibly be true and right and valid, any other religion who claims that THEIR GOD is THE VERY GOD OF VERY GODS, well tolerance of another religion is just another word for unbelief in your own religion. That’s partly why tolerance is our cardinal virtue these days, because we children of fighting parents value lack of conflict so much and belief in anything so little. As a result, we have a generation without God searching everywhere but the church for something spiritual.

Nosey workers compromise candidates passport data, . . so what?

I turned on my computer today to learn that the top story in the nation was that the candidates passport data had been compromised. I thought about what is on my passport. Hmmm. Not much that I don't tell people all the time. Okay, if it was my passport, I wouldn't care if anybody looked at it, just so long as they didn't print out the info and sell it to somebody who would steal my identity.

I thought that maybe there was actually more in this record that was looked at than I was aware of, but yahoo's article said . . . or maybe it was the AP's (I didn't look) said specifically,

It was not clear whether the employees saw anything other than the basic personal data such as name, citizenship, age, Social Security number and place of birth, which is required when someone fills out a passport application. The file also includes date and place of birth and address at time of application. Agency officials said the files generally would not list countries the person has traveled to.

THIS is NEWS??? Who cares that somebody snooped around and discovered things they could have probably found out easily by just going to the candidates home page.

Pilgrimage

PILGRIMAGE
I shout to You, Lord Steadfast!
Don't turn off your audio feed.
God, if I don't hear from You
I might as well die. What's the use?!?
Are you listening as I cry out for help
Do you have compassion today?
I cuddle up to your sanctuary
I grasp your light pole and won't let go.
Lord, don't settle me with the filthy?
with those who consult spirits
who dress nicely and speak sweetly
but whose inner springs are bitter
God, who am I to say repay them
My own history is filled with verbal violence
God, please teach us not to sin.
Please forgive them for their deeds.
Oh, God, heal our evil, broken land
God, for Your Son's sake, repay only those who cannot be broken
Dear God, let us all be taught as we see them punished
God, I plead for my nation
Give us a regard for Your word yet, Lord
Lord, we revere the supernatural
Teach us to praise Your name with joy and gladness
Teach us to worship You in Spirit and Truth
Lord, we are nothing
You are everything
We are a blip on the pages of history.
We have exalted our country
Forgive us for our pride
Our country is good
Use us as You will
Mold us and make us after your plan
Let us not be prideful as a country or as a people
Let us not confuse Christianity with Americanism
America was founded by pilgrims and strangers
pilgrims are ones on a pilgrimage
Lord, we have settled down and become fat and sassy
Lord, teach us to be pilgrims once again. Amen

Cussing

I was just looking through some scriptures on holiness for something that I was thinking about writing when, what do ya know, something jumped out at me. Well, as anyone who reads this blog much knows, I exaggerate a little. Okay, exaggerating is something of a way of life for me. Things are rarely just what they are. That would just be so Boring. They always have to be like something else.

But, anyway.

What jumped out at me were three killer verses on cussing. So, what's the big deal about that, you say? I know people who claim that there's no prohibition in the Bible against cussing. Well, I don't have a terrible foul mouth anymore. Age helps, that and looking like a Sunday School teacher all the time. Here are some thoughts, though.

"Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit." Matt. 12:33 It's not really a good witness, #1. And, #2, this verse seems to indicate that maybe it's evidence of a heart problem. I mean meaningless expletives wouldn't be a problem, but expletives that degrade the body, God's temple, seem destructive.

"The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks." Luke 6:45 No explanation required.

"If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you." John 15:19 Everytime I open my mouth, I'm giving the world a reason to hate me or love me. Jesus tells me to be ye therefore perfect or holy or mature, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect, or holy, or mature. However you interpret Matt. 5:48, I just don't know. When I combine it with John 15:19 and all these others, the maturity or holiness or whatever just doesn't seem consistent with a potty-mouth. Would the Pharisees have been quite as threatened if Jesus had been out preaching on the hillside using filthy, adolescent language?

possibility of homosexual change

The American Psychiatric Association's website says that "[T]here is no published scientific evidence supporting the efficacy of 'reparative therapy' as a treatment to change one's sexual orientation. The potential risks of 'reparative therapy' are great, including depression, anxiety, and self-destructive behavior." Currently, I'm in therapy. A lot of the course of my therapy has involved depression, anxiety, and self-destructive behavior. Therapy is hard. Depression and anxiety are like the grinding of the therapy gears. Occasional self destructive behavior is like the sparks that hard working gears throw off. What I'm trying to say is that most if not all very involved therapy involves, I would think, depression, anxiety, and self-destructive behavior. Why would this be a problem? Are gay men too big a wimps to undergo therapy because it's hard? If we really respect them as people, then shouldn't we encourage them to seek what will make them better socially fitted to their surroundings? No matter how we rage, their surroundings are never likely to change all that much. It seems a kindness to encourage change.

Paige Patterson

Why does everybody in blog-land hate Paige Patterson so much? I just read this long diatribe about him on Baptist Blogger. So, he's rich! I thought that riches were right up there next to godliness in the Baptist hierarchy. I mean, so many BMWs (correction, rich-looking cars) roar past me as I walk home from Baptist events. Is it just easy to take pot-shots at a symbol of excessive wealth, while we all have our own little ungodly excesses at home that the Lord is convicting us of and we're not doing anything about?

Albert Mohler

I gotta say, my first contact with this guy was when I heard him talking about how evil shows like House and Fight Club were. I love things that make me think, so I was seriously not too crazy about this right wing nut. Well, since then, for one thing, I've just about stopped watching House.

I would have sworn that the character of Gregory House didn't start out like he is now. Mr. Mohler is right about him now, though. On the pretext of being for evolution and science and against anything resembling sentiment or selflessness, he's just become juvenile. Fight Club made me believe that following evolution to its end (not that I'd ever want to do that) meant chaos and the collapse of civilization. House has just made me believe that following evolutionary theory to its end just means a bunch of adults playing childish Lord of the Flies games.

Anyway, I've already written about all that. What really kills me is Al Mohler. He turns out to be SO COOL! Seeing as how I just did this whole bit above on atheism, I'll drop a link here to an awesome article that Mohler does on The New Atheism (http://www.crosswalk.com/blogs/mohler/1450685/). It's from last November or something, but it's totally awesome. His new blog is pretty excellent, as well. It's at http://www.albertmohler.com/ Oh, man, how does he consistently find such incredible topics? Blows the mind. It makes me feel like I should just be an Al Mohler echo. Not that he's the only one that makes me feel that way. They're all over the internet, once you know where to find them. People of faith who actually have minds and vocabularies, both in working order. Oh, God bless them.

Homemaking at SWBTS

C. B. Scott said: "The B.A. in Humanities with a concentration in homemaking being offered at SWBTS is a needful and timely offering."

I'm not a seminary graduate, and I suppose nobody cares what I think. But, right on, Pastor Scott!

"Saving Grace"

I just watched a couple of the filthiest scenes I've seen on TV on a show called "Saving Grace." I tuned in because of Holly Hunter, the series star. I've seen her do some awesome acting. I was excited to be able to catch her on TV, but this series . . . just didn't seem to know where it was going. Besides the fact that I got to see more of Holly Hunter than I really wanted to see in a couple of sex scenes, besides the fact that the series seemed to be trying to justify this with the name "Saving Grace" and some scenes that were totally peripheral to the plot with some grizzled angel named Earl, besides all that . . . it took too long to figure out what was going on and what the plot was going to be about. It seems crazy to accuse something that started off that fast and furious tonite with starting up too slow, but . . . perhaps the director was going for a sense of disorientation. That's certainly what he achieved.

Though it's too late to trash the name "Saving Grace," I think that "Earl" should only appear occasionally when he's going to be the focus of the show.