Toleration is Often Indifference in Disguise<\/b><\/p>\n
\u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter what religion you have as long as you have one\u201d is apt to mean really \u201cI couldn\u2019t care less whether you have one or not.\u201d<\/p>\n
If it means what it says, the question arises about a religion which demands, say, that first-born children be fed to the crocodiles to ensure a good harvest. Somewhere lines have to be drawn. Sometimes it\u2019s not so easy to draw them.<\/p>\n
Buddhism says, \u201cThose who love a hundred have a hundred woes. Those who love ten have ten woes. Those who love one have one woe. Those who love none have no woe.\u201d Christianity says, \u201cHe who does not love remains in death.\u201d (I John 3:14) The trouble is that each speaks a different kind of truth. If you choose for one as the truer and more profound of the two, then you choose against the other, granting it only a kind of proximate validity. Thus toleration must be limited in the interests of honesty.<\/p>\n
It is sometimes argued that in our society the young should not be taught about Christianity. They should be taught about all religions. That is like saying they should be taught comparative linguistics before they have mastered English grammar.<\/p>\n
It is sometimes argued that no religion of any kind should be taught in schools. The name of God should not be mentioned, prayers should not be prayed, religious holidays should not be observed\u2014all of this to avoid in any way indoctrinating the young. This is itself, of course, the most powerful kind of indoctrination because it is the most subtle and for that reason the hardest for the young or anybody else to defend themselves against. Given no reason to believe that the issue of God has any importance at all, or even exists as an issue, how can anybody make an intelligent decision either for God or against him?<\/p>\n
Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking, A Theological ABC, (Harper San Francisco, A Division of Harper Collins Publishers, 1973), pp. 92-93<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Toleration is Often Indifference in Disguise \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter what religion you have as long as you have one\u201d is apt to mean really \u201cI couldn\u2019t care less whether you have one or not.\u201d If it means what it says, the question arises about a religion which demands, say, that first-born children be fed to … Continue reading “Toleration”<\/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-1174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1174","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=1174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1174\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}