On Christian Intolerance.

You can probably suspect that I believe tolerance is a virtue, something we should strive for as a culture, community, world, and so forth.

Of course, being tolerant can sometimes mean not tolerating intolerance. This, of course, is what happens when I decry thus and such group of people who decry homosexuals, or atheists, or whoever.

 I like to think that most religious folk, especially those in the majority religion of my country (that’s Christianity, of course) also believe tolerance is a virtue, even if they on occasion can be found to be intolerant while at the same time believing that tolerance is a virtue.

There is a certain subset of Christianity that disagrees. When asked if tolerance is a virtue, their answer is actually, “NO.” Take, for example, the writings of William Watkins over at the Christian Research Institute.

Virtue — the word sounds almost outdated. When I hear it, I think of such qualities as faith, hope, love, courage, justice, wisdom, fidelity, integrity, and moderation. I’m reminded of men and women who remain faithful to their marriage vows in the face of sexual temptations and strenuous trials, parents who sacrifice personal dreams so their children will have a better start at life, and employees who take a stand for what’s right rather than for what’s expedient.

What about freedom, reason, the ability to change, open-mindedness, skepticism? I am reminded of scientists who change their minds in the face of evidence contrary to their own established beliefs, women and men who are completely honest and open with each other in relationships and so do not violate each others trust (trust is far more important than monogamy), and yes-parents who sacrifice and employees who do what’s right.

Faith is not a virtue. Faith is that which remains the same despite contrary evidence. Faith is “sticking to your guns” even when the world demands you pack them up.

Today, however, we rarely hear about such virtuous people. Instead, we’re presented with contemporary role models such as Marla Maples and Donald Trump, who use sexual license to destroy one marriage and create an illicit one. Obviously our society exalts the “virtues” of sexual freedom and the pursuit of self-centered happiness at any cost.

Really? I hear about them all the time. The author is possibly a victim of confirmation bias. I barely know who Marla Maples and Donald Trump are, and I don’t know anyone who considers them role models! I’d like to know who sees these two people as role models.  Perhaps the author is looking in all the wrong places? It is amazing what some Christians see when they look out into the “secular” world. Some of them sound positively terrified of us.

Safe, sane, and consensual sexual freedom is a virtue! As far as self-centered happiness, it depends on who you talk to. Some people might have this type of morality, but I would disagree that ‘our society’ exalts either sexual freedom or self-centered happiness. Do you have anything other than anecdotal proof that this is the way society operates?

Then, of course, there’s Jack Kevorkian, the infamous “Dr. Death.” This heralded civil rights advocate for dignity in dying has assisted in the suicides of almost 25 people, many of whom were not terminally, nor even seriously, ill. According to Kevorkian, the degree of a person’s illness does not matter when it comes to making the death decision. Rather, Kevorkian explains, “the highest principle in medical ethics — in any kind of ethics — is personal autonomy, self-determination. What counts is what the patient wants and judges to be a benefit or a value in his or her own life.” In other words, the greatest virtue is whatever I decide is best for me.

Kevorkian is a single individual and does not speak for the rest of society, just like the folks at Westboro Baptist Church do not speak for Christianity. If I held up the Westboro Church as an example of how depraved Christianity has become over the years, I would not have a valid argument. Similarly, the actions of one man do not speak for society.

Given that, Kevorkian is right. In ethics, autonomy is very important. But autonomy does not mean, “whatever I decide is best for me”. Autonomy is the capacity of a rational individual to make an informed, un-coerced decision and is used as the basis for determining moral respectability for one’s actions. The writer of this article is, once again, trying to boil down humanist ethics into selfishness, which it is not.

This new moral code is playing well in America. We love self-indulgence and self-rule. So what if we kill our elderly and our depressed and our sick in obedience to the new virtues? What counts is what we want. To each his own.

This is not a new moral code. The idea of autonomy has been around since the ancient Greeks.

Where are we killing the elderly, sick and depressed? Could you please cite some evidence that more elderly, sick or depressed people are being killed in this society then back in the good old days of the 50’s and 60’s? Last I checked, the lifespan of an individual has moved from about 50 years in 1950 to 80+ years in 2009. If our society was so depraved that we didn’t care about others, one would not expect the average lifespan to go up so dramatically. Can you prove that tolerance is having a negative effect on society using some actual data? No, you can’t, because we’re living longer, healthier lives with less crime than we were before.

Such new cultural “virtues” pervade nearly every aspect of our society, just as the old virtues did. And just as the virtue of self-sacrificial love bound together the older Christian virtues, so the “virtue” of tolerance is wed to the new secular “virtues” in an unholy alliance.

It certainly is unholy, and I thank rational thinking for that. But secular humanist ethics includes self-sacrificial love, so I can only assume the motivation of the author to overlook this is to vilify secularism to make his point. Tolerance of others to enjoy the freedom to be themselves provided they do not harm others is an example of self-sacrificial love. Moving on…

The tolerant person, so we’re told, is broad-minded — open to other beliefs, truth claims, moral convictions, and lifestyles. He or she makes room for others to do as they wish, even if their behavior contradicts or even mocks his own. He believes in “live and let live.”

You do not have the right to not be mocked. Christians have been mocking and vilifying atheists for centuries. If you expect to push your system of thought onto others, expect some criticism. I think it is a virtue to be able to do so without whining that you are being mocked. I make room for Christians to do as they wish, so long as they do not undermine science or infringe upon my rights, and their behavior contradicts and mocks my own frequently.

During the ‘50s and ‘60s, being tolerant meant putting up with a slow salesclerk, restraining the desire to laugh at someone’s bizarre dress, or holding one’s tongue when a person made a harmless but erroneous comment. Being tolerant never meant condoning immoral behavior, letting harmful beliefs go unchallenged, or permitting a person’s dangerous lifestyle to influence, much less be taught, to others. In those days we may have disagreed about what is true, but few challenged the bedrock conviction that “true” is the opposite of “false,” and that truth does not tolerate untruth. We believed then that some beliefs and lifestyles promoted the common good while others undermined it.

We believe these things now! We may have disagreed about what is true, and we are disagreeing about what is true now – namely, if any given behavior is immoral, harmful or dangerous. The statistics are not on your side. Crime, for example, has gone down considerably, to the point at which we are now experiencing crime rates equivalent of that in the 50’s.

Immoral behavior should not be condoned, I agree. the problem is that I define what is immoral differently than what the author defines as immoral. Harmful beliefs should absolutely be challenged. Dangerous lifestyles should not be taught to others. I do not know which specific behaviors, beliefs and lifestyles this particular author is decrying, as he does not state them. This is a pity. Before we can claim any given behavior is immoral, harmful or dangerous, we need to prove that it is immoral, harmful or dangerous. Simply claiming that it is, and that this gives you license to condemn it begs the question.

I think it is immoral to not give gays the same rights to marriage as heterosexuals

The author (I think) thinks it is immoral to give gays the same rights.
Who is right? Who is being intolerant? This is the disagreement about what is true we are having.

Those of us who still believe these things are considered bigots, judgmental prudes, or moral fundamentalists by the new “tolerant” regime. Never mind that the new tolerance has led to the destruction of more than 30 million babies in America’s abortuaries. Never mind that the new broad-mindedness concerning promiscuous and homosexual sex is perhaps the leading cause of the spread of HIV — one of the most deadly and elusive viruses yet known to humankind. Never mind that the new openness to “alternative lifestyles” is bringing about legislation that gives civil-rights status to immorality.

I can understand why people dislike abortion, so I’ll leave that one alone. HIV is not elusive, and the lifespan of an HIV positive individual is rising every day. A prevalent disease or death-causing agent does not make the cause of that disease immoral. About 17 thousand people die of HIV in the US every year. About 650 thousand people die of heart disease every year. The behaviors that lead to heart disease (overeating is a prime example) are not immoral.

We must stop this insanity. The new tolerance is not a virtue but a vice. We must expose it for what it is and replace it with the truth.

Okay. If tolerance is a vice, then I suppose I can stop being tolerant of your silly immoral mythology. I can stop being tolerant of your condemnation of gays and sec which does not fit your narrow paradigm of what is permissible and what is not. I can stop being tolerant of your immoral jackhammer to science. I can stop being tolerant of your claims of moral superiority, your attempts to block people from having civil rights, your attempts to inject your mythology into science classrooms. If you insist you do not have to tolerate us, where is the onus for us to tolerate you?

You see what I did there? All I have to do is label any given action as immoral, and suddenly I don’t have to tolerate it anymore.

All truth is exclusive — it excludes what is false as it affirms what is true. After all, if it’s true that the capitol of the United States is Washington, D.C., then it’s false that the U.S. capitol is any other city on earth. That truth excludes innumerable cities.

An objective truth is not the same as a moral truth. This is one of the reasons it is much easier to argue about morality than the capitol of the United States. We can use objective reasoning, logic and rational thinking to come to an objective conclusion about morality, but another individual may use a different system of reasoning to come to a different conclusion. It is evident that this happens in society all the time.

Jesus was the incarnation of truth and compassion. He healed the needy, blessed children, and forgave sins. He even saved a woman apparently caught in adultery from being stoned to death (John 8:1-11).

And yet, He openly condemned hypocrisy and avarice. He threw businesspeople and their wares out of the temple because of their sacrilege (John 2:12-16). He called some of the religious leaders of His day “son[s] of hell,” “fools,” “blind guides,” “whitewashed tombs,” and “vipers” (Matt. 23:15-20).

Hypocrisy is a vice, I totally agree.

Jesus was not the epitome of tolerance, and yet He came during the era of Roman tolerance. The Romans conquered lands militarily but allowed conquered peoples to keep their customs and religious convictions intact. This policy of tolerance led to Jesus’ death. Since the Pax Romana (“peace of Rome”) wouldn’t allow Jesus to upset the people under Roman rule, the tolerant Roman government tried, beat, and brutally executed an innocent man in the name of maintaining peace.

That sounds very intolerant of them, given that the Jews executed Jesus because they were convinced (due to their religion) that he was being immoral by blaspheming.  The Roman government executed Jesus because they believed he was committing heresy. This is not tolerance. This is death due to intolerance, or perhaps the tolerance of intolerance. This seriously weakens the author’s point.

Whom will we emulate — the tolerant in our midst or the Lord over us all? Like ancient Rome, America needs Christians to stand up for what Christ did, not to capitulate to the new “virtue” of tolerance. What America needs are more prophets — imitators of Christ — who will reach out to the lost with compassion, while proclaiming the truth and living the virtues incarnated by the Savior. Prophets may not be honored in their own country, but no country will last long without heeding their wisdom. 

You are equating the individuals in this society who advocate for gay rights with the Romans, who conquered lands and “allowed” people to keep religious convictions intact, and allowed the Jews to condemn Jesus for the crime of blasphemy?  Again, this is a society which tolerates other’s being intolerant, which is exactly the society you want.