CHRISTIANITY IS INTOLERANT, JUDGMENTAL AND NARROW MINDED

Transcription

1 1 CHRISTIANITY IS INTOLERANT, JUDGMENTAL AND NARROW MINDED Clip: Watters World not every answer is a good one This is our third session of The Big Con: Lies the World Wants You to Believe. Last week we looked at the culture s lie that we exist to be happy and we should decide how to live based on what makes us happy. To borrow a line from Monty Python, And now for something completely different. Some of you, this will be right up your alley. Others of you, it might miss a bit. But this is a lie we need to understand and be able to respond to. The lie is this. Christianity is intolerant, judgmental and narrow minded. Therefore, Christians should keep their views to themselves. If you listen to the loudest voices in our culture, that s the message you ll hear. We in the west are moving into a time in which good people will be accepting of all, tolerant of everything, and judgmental towards nothing. So, Christians, you had better get with it or forever find yourselves on the wrong side of history, marginalized and dismissed as a vile, petty relic from ages past. Make no mistake about it. There is an agenda to this lie.

2 2 The culture we live in and the elites who fashion its ethos want to shame you for your beliefs, shut down your voice, and stop you from influencing the direction of society. In the first decade of the 21 st century, what was referred to as The New Atheism, attacked the Christian faith for being not just irrational and unfounded, but for being dangerous to human progress and scientific advancement. Of course, when you stop to ask yourself: Where are the world s most enlightened democracies with the broadest understanding and greatest protection of human and civil rights? The answer is: where Christianity has had the most influence. Western Europe and America. And where has science made the most progress? Where have medical and other technologies most thrived? Of course, the answer is where Christianity has been and continues to be the most practiced. The United States. Still the charge was made in the gravest of terms that the Christian is faith dangerous. How dangerous? Hitchens referred to faith as a deadly threat to the survival of humankind. Dawkins called faith one of the world s great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate. And Sam Harris wrote that even religion at its best is one of the principal forces driving us toward the abyss. That s what was new about the new atheism. Not its arguments against the existence of God but its over the top attacks towards people of faith.

3 3 Here s a clip of Reza Aslan describing the difference between the old and the new atheists. Clip: Reza Aslan. Secular humanists and the new atheists are certain that if we could just rid the world of religion the future would quickly evolve into a utopia of brotherhood and charity. The innate goodness of man and the blessings of technology would no longer be perverted by antiquated superstitions and divisive creeds and the result would be a golden age of understanding and progress. Hmm, if only we could test that theory. If only there had been societies in the past that had eradicated religion so we could see what they produced? Oh, there have been? The Soviet Union. Red China. Nazi Germany. The Killing Fields of Cambodia? Over 150 million innocent people killed in the last century alone by these four atheistic regimes. Lots wrong has been done in the name of religion, even in the name of Christianity, but the worst crimes humanity has witnessed in recent times, were not committed by believers but by nonbelievers. Hmm. Maybe the problem is not religion. Maybe the problem is people.

4 4 But that would disrupt the narrative put forth by humanists and atheists that if we just got rid of religion, man would be able to save himself and all would be right with the world. For all of its fury and vitriol, the New Atheism at this point is spent. After all was said and written, the new atheists could not by logic or reason prove their central thesis that God does not exist. And atheism, new or old, rather than being the rational conclusion of unbiased, intelligent people seeking the truth, was exposed for what it is. A belief system based on the philosophy of naturalism an a priori assumption, not a demonstrable fact, but an unprovable presupposition that the physical world is all that exists either coming from nothing or always existing without any beginning. Take your pick, but both theories require the very thing that the new atheists deplored faith in something that cannot be proved and is unsupported by fact or reason. But the seed was planted. Christianity is dangerous to progress and to the human race. And the attack of the last decade morphed into its present form. Christianity is abhorrent and dangerous because it is intolerant, judgmental and narrow minded.

5 5 And Christians should either change their beliefs to get with the culture or they should keep their divisive, offensive views to themselves. The agenda behind this lie to stop Christians from sharing their beliefs. And it s working. According to the Pew Research center, when orthodox, Bible-believing Christians were asked what they do when someone disagrees with them about religion, 10% said they try to persuade the other person to change their mind 70% try to understand the other person s beliefs 18% avoid discussing religion altogether In other words, only 1 in 10 would try to share their faith with a nonbeliever in hopes that he or she might believe in Jesus. The lie is working. Christians are afraid of appearing intolerant and arrogant to the point that we are unwilling to share what a gracious God has done to save the world. What do we say to the charge that Christianity is intolerant, judgmental and narrow minded? We can begin by saying that many Christians have been. One of the positives about Christianity is that it exists for broken, sinful people. It not only welcomes the broad-minded and generous of heart, but also the angry, the bitter, the ignorant and the judgmental. It calls us to be and helps us to become better than we are, but our transformation is a life-long, often infuriatingly slow process

6 6 So, it s sad but not surprising that many Christians, threatened by a culture that attacks their beliefs, wrongly lash out in anger, small of spirit rather than open hearted, and often fail to represent the spirit of Jesus as we should. And it doesn t help that the media seems to have a knack for finding these people and putting them front and center to be our spokesmen in every public debate. Every movement has its nuts. Ours just seem to have a knack for getting in front of a microphone. But let s look at the charge that Christianity is inherently intolerant, judgmental and narrow minded. Let s start with intolerance. 1. Is Christianity Intolerant? Let s be certain we know what we re asking. There s more than one kind of tolerance. There s A. Legal Tolerance: The recognition that people have the legal right to believe whatever they determine is true and to practice their faith as they see fit or not practice any faith at all. We Christians want that right extended to us here in the US and to our brothers and sisters in countries where Christians are in the minority and where they are persecuted. So, of course, we believe in legal tolerance for people of all faiths and for people of no faith at all.

7 7 B. Social Tolerance: The recognition that people should be treated with dignity and respect regardless of their religious beliefs or lifestyle. Not only do we support this kind of tolerance, but we aspire to an even higher standard. Jesus told his followers to love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 19.19) and even commanded that they should love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you (Luke ). We are called to much more than tolerating those with whom we disagree. We are instructed to love those who hate us and bless those who curse us. It s a given that we should respect and tolerate those who believe differently than we do or practice a lifestyle we cannot condone. There s a third kind of tolerance. C. Truth Tolerance: The notion that no belief about ultimate reality (who God is and how we should live in light of who he is) should be evaluated as being false or inferior to any other belief. All beliefs should be granted equal status as a claim to truth. This idea is based on the postmodern belief that there is no absolute truth. Truth is not something out there that we discover but it s what we believe in here it s whatever we believe in here. We all create our own truth and your truth and my truth can both be true even if they contradict each other. Let me get into this with a question. Is physics tolerant? Is it accepting of any answer, any theorem, any solution as long as the person proposing it believes it to be true? No?

8 8 So, in some sense physics and physicists are intolerant. Does that make physicists bad people or physics a despicable science? No? Why not? Because the point of physics is to find the truth. Physics exists to discover what is real about the world. And the goal of physicists is to determine the facts and make them known. But what if the person with a theory that contradicts the laws of physics really, really believes it? And it gives him a lot of comfort thinking it s true? Wouldn t it be better, for the sake of his feelings and so everyone could get along wouldn t it be better in the name of tolerance if physicists would just say, Well, your theory is probably just as valid as mine? No? So, accepting something as the truth when it s not actually true, just because someone believes it is you re saying that wouldn t be physicists being open-minded and tolerant; that would be scientists misleading people and failing to do their job. Ok, I get it. And it s the same for chemistry, mathematics, engineering, sociology and history, right? The point of all those disciplines is to discover the truth and make it known. Not to make room for every competing and wrong belief and call them right.

9 9 So, why is it different when it comes to Christianity? Why is it intolerant to say and why does it make Christians awful people to believe that what Christ taught is the truth, and contrary beliefs are incorrect, even if your answers are meaningful to you and give you comfort. Well, you might say, physics is different than religion. Physics is about facts and reality. Religion is about how we should live and treat one another. Brother, if that s what you think, sorry if this sounds intolerant, but you don t understand what religions claim to do. Religions, all religions, believe there is some reality beyond what we can see and touch. In fact, this reality that can t be experienced and studied with our physical senses, if anything, is more real than the world physicists study. Because long after this world is gone, the reality that religions claim to describe will continue to be. And all religions claim to provide us with actual, valid information about that reality. C.S. Lewis put it well in God in the Dock. C.S. Lewis: Christianity claims to give an account of facts to tell you what the real universe is like. The primary purpose of a religion, any religion, is not to fill our lives with meaning, or tell us how to become better people. Religions may do that, but so do many secular philosophies.

10 10 The purpose of religion is not to help us sleep comfortably at night. Religions may do that, but so can a good sedative. The primary purpose of every religion, what makes it a religion, is its claim to tell us the truth about the divine. Who or what God is. What he expects of us. And how we can be rightly related to him. Every religion makes truth claims. And when we say that what Jesus revealed is the truth and that contradictory teachings are not, we re not condemning people for their beliefs, we re simply critiquing truth claims. That doesn t make us arrogant or intolerant of others. It makes us thoughtful and intolerant of error in the same way that physicists are. At this point, I m not trying to convince you that the Christian understanding is correct. I m simply trying to make the point that believing you have the right answer whether it s in physics or philosophy or sociology or religion doesn t make you intolerant of other people. In fact, one of the best ways you can help someone and one of the most caring things you can do is respectfully show someone where he may be mistaken about what matters most. Look at 1 Peter 3:15: Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect

11 11 We shouldn t ever share our faith in a way that is arrogant or condemning, but always with gentleness and respect. Fail to do that and even if we get the answer right, we end up being wrong. Legally and socially tolerant? Yes. Tolerant of people with wrong ideas. We should be. Tolerant of what s false and untrue? No one should be. 2. Is Christianity Judgmental? It s strange but the reason our culture is so adamant that being judgmental is wrong is because it has been influenced by Christianity. It was Jesus who taught, Matthew 7.1: Do not judge, or you too will be judged. A little context will be helpful here. In the time of Jesus, everyone had their place and everyone knew their place. Some people were judged acceptable, others were not. Some were judged to be blessed, others were labeled as cursed. Some were deemed as possessing real value, others were not. And how you compared to others told you who you were and where you stood.

12 12 The Jews viewed themselves as inherently better than non-jews. They were God s people. The rich were deemed more blessed by God than the poor. The deformed or the diseased were unclean and unacceptable. Their condition was the result of their sin an outward manifestation of their inward unworthiness. And Jesus says, this kind of condemnation of others is absolutely wrong. You are called to love, because God is love. And you cannot love people when at the same time you are judging them as being of less worth than yourself. That was a completely radical idea when Jesus proclaimed it. But like yeast in a loaf of dough, the teaching and the example of Jesus loving the poor and the outcasts, over time, elevated Western culture to the point that we proclaimed that all persons are of equal worth and that a society is judged by how it treats its most vulnerable. So, judge not was an important word in the time of Jesus and it still is. We are never to judge people in the sense of denying their inherent worth for any reason. Not because of their color, class, national origin, sexual orientation, religion or political affiliation. We can t even look down on the Oklahoma Sooners even though the only reason they re any good is because they steal half their players from Texas.

13 13 And we don t deny a person s worth or judge him as unloved or unwanted by God or beneath our compassion because of his sin. Whatever that sin might be. Here s a clip from The Shack which makes the point that even the sinful were once innocent and are still loved by God. Clip: The Shack Christian theology is interesting. We say that evil is much worse than anyone else on the planet does because it not only harms others but it rebels against a good and holy God. But we also believe that people who do evil are more loved than anyone else of the planet worthy of the death of Christ. Our present context is very different than the culture Jesus addressed. We live in an uber-tolerant time which rejects the idea that there are absolute moral truths that apply to everyone. Consequently, the meaning of judge in our time has a different context than it did in Jesus day. The culture tells us that if you cannot affirm a person s decisions, a person s behavior, a person s lifestyle, if you think what they re doing is wrong because it doesn t conform to God s will, even if you love that person, you are judgmental. Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life stated it well.

14 14 Rick Warren: Our culture has accepted two huge lies. The first is that if you disagree with someone s lifestyle, you must fear or hate them. The second is that to love someone means you agree with everything they believe or do. Both are nonsense. You don t have to compromise convictions to be compassionate. The word to judge has two meanings. One is what we just discussed. 1. To view or treat another human being as possessing less worth than ourselves because of some trait he possess or some action he has committed. The other is 2. To discern or to differentiate. Judging in this sense is not only acceptable, it s a must for Christians. We are to judge between right and wrong, good and bad, truth and falsehood. In the same chapter, Matthew 7, where Jesus tells us not to judge, he warns us about false prophets. He tells us that we will know them by whether they produce good or bad fruit. Clearly we are meant to be discerning when it comes to the message that people preach and to the lives they live. And honestly, those who tell us not to judge at all, do, in fact, themselves judge this way all the time this. They judge racism and white supremacy to be wrong and they are absolutely right to do so. They condemn sexism and sexual harassment as wrong and they are absolutely right to do so.

15 15 They say that demeaning another person because of his or her sexual orientation is evil and they are absolutely right. They preach that mistreating the planet is wrong and they are absolutely right to do so, even if they are flying to their environmental conferences on their private jets. The culture tells us that it s wrong to judge, but it has no problem judging certain practices and prejudices to be wrong. So, what gives? The culture says it s off limits, it s offensive and wrong to judge someone s personal decisions. If it s a public issue, if your choices hurt or demean another person or group of persons, then it s ok to judge that. But not how one conduct s one s personal life. This is a tough one. First, I don t judge and you don t judge anyone s worth before God, no matter what they do. Remember, everyone we meet is worthy of Jesus dying for them But we can t act like all personal choices are fine as long as no one is being harmed. Jesus condemned personal choices and practices like greed, sexual immorality, lust, hypocrisy, and unbelief even if no one was being directly harmed. Jesus calls us to live a righteous life personally and publicly. And a righteous life is defined by what God views as right not by what our culture condones or what people feel is right for them. Here s a short clip from Magnolia. Tom Cruise is holding a seminar for men, meant to make them feel good about who they are and getting what they want.

16 16 Here s his philosophy. Clip Magnolia In our uber-tolerant culture where people feel entitled to whatever they desire, when we say there s a right way to live, they will feel judged and often become angry. Tell a hedonistic, materialistic culture that we are all accountable to God and that there are ways of living that please him and ways that don t. And no matter how nicely you say it, you will be accused of being the morality police, judgmental and arrogant. But that s what Jesus taught. And so that s where we have to stand, primarily concerned with the log in our eye, rather than the speck in someone else s eye. Last criticism. 3. Is Christianity Narrow Minded? This attack usually accuses Christianity of believing that it s the only way to God. The first thing to say is that practically all religions have some truth in them that we can learn from. And most of them teach that we should be kind to others and honest in our personal affairs. But the world s religions differ wildly when it comes to the most essential topics.

17 17 In fact, they could hardly be more different when it comes to Who God is and how we become right with him. Christians describe God as a personal being. By that we mean that God possesses a will and an intellect and he acts purposefully in time and space. Hinduism teaches that God is impersonal, possessing none of the those qualities. All that is is divine, including you and me. Your problem is not being forgiven for your sin but overcoming your blindness to your own divinity. That view is called pantheism. Buddhists are difficult to pin down. Some are agnostic. Others believe there are many gods. And some Buddhists are atheists who believe that there is no god at all. Hinduism and Buddhism think we Christians are all wrong when it comes to God. I guess you could call that being narrow-minded. I call it being consistent. Contradictory truths can t both be true. Muslims and Jews believe in a personal God, who acts purposefully in history. But neither believes in the Trinity. Neither believes that Jesus was divine. Both are convinced that the death of Christ on the cross has anything to do with our salvation. Jesus died needlessly and for nothing. And they certainly don t believe he rose from the dead.

18 18 So no religion but Christianity accepts Jesus as the unique Son of God, or as Lord and Savior, or as the atonement for our sins. Neither do atheists and the secular humanists. Does that make them narrow minded? I don t think so. It makes them either right or wrong, but it s childish to say you re narrow minded because you believe you have found the truth and you reject propositions that contradict that truth. Is Christianity narrow minded? If believing you have found the truth makes you narrow minded, then yes we are. But let me tell you about the truth we have found. Our truth is a God who so loved the world that whoever believes in him all races, all peoples, all classes, the lowest of the Hindu classes that are considered unworthy and untouchable by their religion, the gravest of sinners, like John Newton who was a slaver until he met Jesus and wrote Amazing Grace how sweet the sound, those who deny him like Peter and those who persecute his people like Paul, a thief on a cross who with his last breath asks for mercy, a leper who begged if only you are willing you can make me whole there s never been a soul in this world who was not loved by our God.

19 19 That s our truth Narrow? Look at the cross. The arms of Jesus are open wide open to all who will come. We don t want you to believe what we believe because we think we re better than you. We want you to believe what we believe because we know that Jesus has made us better than we were. And we believe whatever you have done, however you have fallen, wherever you have wandered, his arms are open. As the song says, there is a wideness to God s mercy and it includes you and all who will come. David Rupert article: Rick Rood writes an adaptation of Dr. Erwin Lutzer s observations about tolerance: Read more at But it s worse than that, you might say. People have used the Christian faith to do terribly evil things. You re right. And we condemn that as much as anyone. Evil people have used science, the love of country, and fighting injustice to do terrible things. That doesn t invalidate science, the love of country, or fighting for justice. It simply shows the depravity that human beings may exhibit that they would misuse things of value for their wicked ends. The same is true of those who have used Christianity to mislead the masses, divide people of good will, or promote xenophobia, racism or war.