Today Your Creed Is a Preference<\/b><\/p>\n
As I checked in for an outpatient test at a local hospital last week, the admissions lady…inquired, \u201cWhat is your religious preference?\u201d I was tempted…to repeat what Jonah said…\u201dI am a Hebrew, ma\u2019am. And I fear the Lord, the God of Heaven….\u201d But that would surely have got me sent to psychiatry rather than X-ray. So I desisted.<\/p>\n
In ancient times, they asked \u201cWho is your God?\u201d A generation ago, they asked your religion. Today your creed is a preference….<\/p>\n
According to Chesterton, tolerance is the virtue of people who do not believe in anything….When it is believed that on your religion hangs the fate of your immortal soul, the Inquisition follows easily; when it is believed that religion is a breezy consumer preference, religious tolerance flourishes….After all, we don\u2019t persecute people for their taste in cars. Why for their taste in gods?<\/p>\n
Oddly, though, in our thoroughly secularized culture, there is one form of religious intolerance that does survive…the disdain bordering on contempt…[for] those for whom religion is not a preference but a conviction….<\/p>\n
Every manner of political argument is ruled legitimate in our democratic discourse. But invoke the Bible as grounding for your politics, and the First Amendment police will charge you with breaching the sacred wall separating church and state…Call on Timothy Leary or Chairman Mao, fine. Call on St. Paul, and all hell breaks loose….<\/p>\n
Associates of [Hickman] Ewing [Whitewater prosecutor who has been called a \u201creligious fanatic\u201d by some] defend him thus: \u201cHis open Christian faith…is left at the prosecutorial door.\u201d An interesting form of exoneration. Ewing is fit to carry out his judicial duties after all. Why? Because he allows none of his Christian faith to corrupt his working life. Charles Krauthammer, \u201cWill it be coffee, tea or He? Religion was once a conviction. Now it is a taste\u201d<\/p>\n
(Essay, Time, June 15, 1998), quoted in The Berean Call, August, 1998<\/p>\n
Openness<\/b><\/p>\n
Bloom writes: \u201cOpenness – and the relativism that makes it the only plausible stance in the face of various claims to truth and various ways of life and kinds of human beings\u2014is the great insight of our times. The true believer is the real danger. The study of history and of culture teaches that all the world was mad in the past; men always thought they were right, and that led to wars, persecutions, slavery, xenophobia, racism and chauvinism. The point is not to correct the mistakes and really be right; rather it is not to think you are right at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Against the Night, Charles Colson, p. 84<\/p>\n
Nothing<\/b><\/p>\n
As Dorothy Sayers observed, \u201cIn the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair.. the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothig, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.\u201d<\/p>\n
Against the Night, Charles Colson, p. 93<\/p>\n
Main Thing\u2014Christ Preached<\/b><\/p>\n
Let us be on our guard against this feeling. it is only too near the surface of all our hearts. Let us study to realize that liberal tolerant spirit which Jesus here recommends and be thankful for good works wheresoever and by whomsoever done. Let us beware of the slightest inclination to stop and check others merely because they do not choose to adopt our plans or work by our side. We may think our fellow-Christians mistaken in some points. We may fancy that more would be done for Christ if they would join us and if all worked in the same way. We may see many evils arising from religious dissension\u2019s and divisions. But all this must not prevent us rejoicing if the works of the devil are destroyed and souls saved. Is our neighbor warring against Satan? Is he really trying to labor for Christ? This is the grand question. Better a thousand times that the work should be done by other hands than not done at all. Happy is he who knows something of the spirit of Moses, when he said, \u201cWould God that all the Lord\u2019s people were prophets,\u201d and of Paul, when he says, \u201cIf Christ is preached, I rejoice, yea, and will rejoice\u201d (Num 11:29; Phil 1:18).<\/p>\n
J. C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on the Gospels, St. Mark, Cambridge: James Clarke, 1973, pp. 190-91<\/p>\n
Quotes<\/b><\/p>\n
\u2022 Gibbon…said that in Roman society all religions were to the people equally true, to the philosophers equally false, and to the government equally useful. It would be difficult to deny that this is true of some of today\u2019s \u201cdeveloped\u201d societies…Tolerance with respect to what is not important is easy. – Lesslie Newbigin in Foolishness to the Greeks.<\/p>\n
\u2022 \u201cIf you let culture make tolerance the preeminent virtue, pretty soon you won\u2019t have anything else.\u201d – George Marsden, University history professor and author of major book on fundamentalism (Christian History, issue 55, vol. XVI, no. 3, p. 43), quoted in The Berean Call, August, 1998.<\/p>\n
Could You Not Endure Him One Night<\/b><\/p>\n
According to a traditional Hebrew story, Abraham was sitting outside his tent one evening when he saw an old man, weary from age and journey, coming toward him. Abraham rushed out, greeted him, and then invited him into his tent. There he washed the old man\u2019s feet and gave him food and drink.<\/p>\n
The old man immediately began eating without saying any prayer or blessing. So Abraham asked him, \u201cDon\u2019t you worship God?\u201d<\/p>\n
The old traveler replied, \u201cI worship fire only and reverence no other god.\u201d<\/p>\n
When he heard this, Abraham became incensed, grabbed the old man by the shoulders, and threw him out his his tent into the cold night air.<\/p>\n
When the old man had departed, God called to his friend Abraham and asked where the stranger was. Abraham replied, \u201cI forced him out because he did not worship you.\u201d<\/p>\n
God answered, \u201cI have suffered him these eighty years although he dishonors me. Could you not endure him one night?\u201d<\/p>\n
Thomas Lindberg<\/p>\n
To Be Tolerant You Must Have Convictions<\/b><\/p>\n
Tolerance can be exercised only by those who have well-grounded convictions…Those who have no such convictions, but who expouse polite doubt, agnosticism, skepticism, or downright nihilism, can only be indifferent, not tolerant. The two are by no means the same, and history has demonstrated the intolerance of those who clam that truth either does not exist or is humanly unattainable.<\/p>\n
Evangelical Newsletter, Oct. 30, 1981, v. 8, #22, from the \u201cPortland Declaration\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today Your Creed Is a Preference As I checked in for an outpatient test at a local hospital last week, the admissions lady…inquired, \u201cWhat is your religious preference?\u201d I was tempted…to repeat what Jonah said…\u201dI am a Hebrew, ma\u2019am. And I fear the Lord, the God of Heaven….\u201d But that would surely have got me … Continue reading “Tolerance”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}