The Barometer<\/b><\/p>\n
The following story is told by E. Schuyler English: \u201cA man who lived on Long Island was able one day to satisfy a lifelong ambition by purchasing for himself a very fine barometer. When the instrument arrived at his home, he as extremely disappointed to find that the indicating needle appeared to be stuck, pointing to the sector marked \u2018HURRICANE.\u2019 After shaking the barometer very vigorously several times, its new owner sat down and wrote a scorching letter to the store from which he had purchased the instrument. The following morning on the way to his office in New York, he mailed the letter. That evening he returned to Long Island to find not only the barometer missing, but his house also. The barometer\u2019s needle had been right–there was a hurricane!\u201d <\/p>\n
P.R.V., Our Daily Bread, April 28<\/p>\n
Judgmental<\/b><\/p>\n
At a recent gathering of seminary professors, one teacher reported that at his school the most damaging charge one student can lodge against another is that the person is being \u201cjudgmental.\u201d He found this pattern very upsetting. \u201cYou can\u2019t get a good argument going in class anymore,\u201d he said. \u201cAs soon as somebody takes a stand on any important issue, someone else says that the person is being judgmental. And that\u2019s it. End of discussion. Everyone is intimidated!\u201d<\/p>\n
Many of the other professors nodded knowingly. There seemed to be a consensus that the fear of being judgmental has taken on epidemic proportions. Is the call for civility just another way of spreading this epidemic? If so, then I\u2019m against civility. But I really don\u2019t think that this is what being civil is all about. <\/p>\n
Christian civility does not commit us to a relativistic perspective. Being civil doesn\u2019t mean that we cannot criticize what goes on around us. Civility doesn\u2019t require us to approve of what other people believe and do. It is one thing to insist that other people have the right to express their basic convictions; it is another thing to say that they are right in doing so. Civility requires us to live by the first of these principles. But it does not commit us to the second formula. To say that all beliefs and values deserve to be treated as if they were on a par is to endorse relativism — a perspective that is incompatible with Christian faith and practice.Christian civility does not mean refusing to make judgments about what is good and true. For one thing, it really isn\u2019t possible to be completely nonjudgmental. Even telling someone else that she is being judgmental is a rather judgmental thing to do! <\/p>\n
Uncommon Decency, Richard J. Mouw, pp. 20-21<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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