Tolerance, Blinders, Prejudice

On this morning’s broadcast,  Greg Lori commented that it often appears the most intolerant people in the world are those who are constantly promoting tolerance. For example, if I should say I believe Jesus is the only way to heaven, they call me intolerant. I don’t put a gun to their head and force them to agree, says Lori. I’m still tolerant of their different opinion.

Lori is quite right up to a point. The “tolerance crowd” appears to be working overtime to shut up all Christian witness in the public arena, while no one anywhere even suggests that THEY should be forced to shut up. Apparently the “tolerance crowd” is afraid that Christians one day actually will put a gun to their head and force them to “believe.”

It is true that so long as Christians seek to legislate Christian morality, those who don’t believe in Christian morality have reason to fear the power of government will be used to restrict their behavior in certain ways they find unacceptable.  This raises some questions about the appropriate role of Christian witness in the voting booth and the legislative process. Perhaps, as Greg Boyd has suggested, this legislative arena is not really where the rubber hits the road so far as Christian witness is concerned. (According to Boyd, “Christ didn’t come to improve Satan’s kingdom, but to destroy it.”) Although not entirely irrelevant,  perhaps political action still ought to be much more at the fringe of Christian concern. The current system of authority itself is the enemy of God. Our witness of Christ stands against the principalities and powers of this world, the agents of which have often either lied or shot their way to the top, or else have bought the election.  Of course there are glowing  exceptions where godly people have been powerful witnesses in politics, but the system tends persistently to push them out. Ultimately our hope is in the King from heaven and we invest our lives in something that is seen only by faith, something that is by earthly standards politically untenable- like peace on earth Jesus’ way.

Lori went on to describe the trial and crucifixion of Jesus. He compared the soldiers who arrested Jesus to the Green Beret and the U. S. Navy Seals for the quality of their training, but then compared them to Hitler’s S.S. in terms of their inexcusably brutal behavior. I wonder why Lori did not compare their behavior to Abu Graib or Guantanamo. Does Lori actually believe that American Christianity today is somehow closer to God than was German Christianity in 1940? Has he forgotten that Hitler was an elected leader in a democratic system something like ours? Does he believe that our troops are less subject to sinful impulses or our leaders less capable of giving evil orders than people in other countries?

I suggest that hidden within our religiously inspired nationalism is a kind of self worship–worship that places one’s own nation above all others in the name of God. It seems to imply a kind of mediator position for our own nation between God and the rest of humankind, and that, I suggest, could be called a  kind of treason–treason against the King of Kings who alone is worthy of that position–who alone is qualified to mediate between heaven’s authority and earth’s humanity.