Intolerance Lives Under Many Masks

Today, intolerance means different things to different people. However there is fast becoming a new dominant culture, with which you are expected to agree - that is with its new ways of seeing humanity, whether human rights, views on gender, LGBT rights, and which has no space for intolerant religion.

DON'T CRITICISE:

In a nutshell, the fast-growing view is: 'Don't criticize my point of view, because I have every right to it.

And if you do speak a word against it I will take that to mean that you are inciting hatred and are phobic. If you do not respect my beliefs, you are a disruptive element in our new peace-loving society, and you need to be silenced.'

So, the new way to live is based on conformity. And if governments and social policy-makers can enforce, by evolving legislation, total conformity to new progressive ways of seeing our humanity, then, the common view is, we shall have truly transformed societies. Crime will be virtually eliminated. New respect for each other will flourish, and we can all look forward to a new, bright future.

As this movement increasingly gains momentum it will be become more difficult to say anything against it. Remember, it is the new way to think, and if you question it, the day may be not far off when you will be sent on a re-education course. But remember there is nothing essentially new about this sort of totalitarian ideology. It was with us in the communism of the Soviet Union and the Chinese Cultural Revolution under Chairman Mao, with his little Red Book.

But now, what is happening before our very eyes is that postmodernism, which majored in the skepticism that there were no absolutes and that all societal values were merely relative, and that our own reality comes through individual interpretations - all that has since passed, and now where are we?

NEW DOGMATISM:

In western societies, there is an increasingly monolithic, new secular dogmatism that is beginning its autocratic reign. Under its rule, to disagree is to put yourself into the shoes of the bigot and troublemaker. Disagree in the mildest, kindest way, and you will be pitied, and quickly advised to toe the line. And if you are considered to be religious, but especially a Christian, then throw away all your religious junk beliefs, and quickly shape up to life in our modern world.

So, where did freedom of speech go? Oh, you have no right to that sort of freedom. Freedom of the Press is fast going. Religion gave it in the first place anyway, so now it can take it back again. Now there's real freedom; freedom to think the big thoughts of the influential social engineers. Freedom to make sure you follow them.

Is there any justification for what might well be seen as a new all-pervading intolerance? No, the movers and shakers have read the books and seen the movies, and now they are positioning themselves to be the new social cult leaders. We are at the dawn of the new age that requires the complete dismantling of historic biblical Christianity. Remember, it was biblical Christianity that shared why the world was broken, why there were grief, guilt, and death.

That gave an objective moral foundation for societies. There was a true historic moral fall, and the consequences of it have hit us all; we were all sinners, spoiled, self-focused and corrupted in the sight of a holy creator God. And we all needed to be reconciled to God, who in great mercy and faithful love had even sent his eternal Son, through whom all things were made, to die for the moral rebels, paying the ultimate price to satisfy God's justice.

TRUE JUSTICE:

You like the idea of fair play? Our humanity was given it as a small reflection of the perfect justice of God, which was made clear and plain in Christ's death. He was the one whom the establishment rejected and upon whom they heaped all their intolerance and bigotry. But that was no accident. Christ voluntarily gave himself to death to save all those who would repent and put their faith in him to save them from the holy justice and wrath of God against sin.

And in that great salvation, all who receive it as the gift of God freely purchased by Jesus' death enter a new life; one more vital and real than new humanism's plastic version. A life of peace with God, of compassion and sensitivity to the sick, the despairing and those trapped in the bigotry and intolerance of the new social engineers.

Yes, you may call Christianity intolerant if you wish. But remember, it respects you and gives you the fullest freedom to investigate its claims, to consider the person of Christ, his death and resurrection, and invites you to draw your own conclusions. The 'ram it down your throat' type of angry caricature is not biblical Christianity.

Of course, on its own terms, it is definitely authoritarian because Jesus Christ is Lord - he is the way, and the truth and the life, but he is gentle and invites you to come to him. He calls and draws, but not like the new culture that has no time to treat you as a valued person and invite you to scrutinize the basis of its claims.

But don't be surprised that when we challenge the false masks of intolerance with the final, unshakeable truth that 'there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.