I have previously commented on the book, "Tyranny of Preferences " twice in May and again in early June, 2012.
The publishing-Publishing Co. Timothy is
releasing a book on the same important subject. You can read more about the
book at the publisher's website, where they write:
"This book reveals Josh McDowell and
Bob Hostetler, the new tolerance movement's true nature, as well as its
dangerous agenda. This book will not only help you understand the modern tolerance
doctrine but also to equip you so that you can counteract the insidious effects
on you and your loved ones.
The book's answers will equip you to:
-Neutralize the
threat from the new tolerance by separating truth from falsehoods
-Sincerely accept
other people without endorsing their views and behavior
-Teach your family
to distinguish between acceptance and approval
-In love deal with
a hostile culture "
The book is written by Josh McDowell and
Bob Hostetler. Bob Hostetler has previously served as officer in the Salvation
Army during the period 1980-1992. Bob (Hoss) has authored many books, and you
can read more about him here.
Bob Hostetler is an award-winning
writer, editor, pastor and speaker from southwestern Ohio. His twenty-six books,
which include The Bone Box and
American
Idols (The Worship of the American Dream), have sold millions of
copies.
Bob was ordained to the ministry in 1980 by The Salvation Army. He and
his wife, the lovely Robin, served in The Salvation Army from 1980-1992.
In 2000, Bob (with his wife) helped to
co-found Cobblestone
Community Church in Oxford, Ohio. He has served that church in
leadership and teaching pastor roles.
He has been a disc jockey, pastor, magazine
editor, freelance book editor, and (with his wife Robin) a foster parent
to ten boys (though not all at once). Bob and Robin have two adult children,
Aubrey and Aaron, son-in-law Kevin and daughter-in-law Nina, and grandchildren
Miles, Mia, Calleigh, and Ryder. They live in Hamilton, Ohio.
I will read the book over the summer months
and will return with comments at the end of July. Buy it and read it in order
to see if you come to the same conclusions as me.
-2- Altering words’
meaning
Reflections
during the reading of the book, "The New Tolerance." I will come back
with some additional posts about the book.
The
authors show in no uncertain terms how words change meaning, but that we may
notice it. We may think we know what the word tolerance means. The common
meaning has been what one can read in a dictionary. There, the word tolerance is
explained as follows:
"To
recognize and respect others' beliefs, customs and practices without sharing
them"
Today,
the connotation has been hijacked by those who control politically correct
thinking. Today it is not enough to recognize and respect others' beliefs, one
must also share them, or one is deemed intolerant. And who would want to be termed intolerant?
If,
for example, one is opposed to abortion, it is not enough to recognize and
respect the free choice of abortion, one must not be opposed to abortion because
one is then considered intolerant. To avoid being perceived as intolerant one
must change their position and think it is OK to support abortions.
If
one is opposed to cohabitation or homosexual acts, the same attitude applies.
You have to believe that it is OK in order to not be branded intolerant.
Sweden
has even changed the law so that in some cases it may even be an offense to
express the view that homosexual acts are wrong.
By
changing the content of the word one seeks to steer people's values and their
way of thinking.
That
said, I will return ...
Riga, Latvia
Translated: Sven Ljungholm
3 comments:
John Stott's comment on I Timothy chapter 1;
"Paul's preoccupation in the first chapter is with the importance of maintaining true or 'sound' doctrine, and of refuting 'false' doctrine. This differentiation strikes a discordant note at the end of the twentieth century. It is not only that most societies are increasingly pluralistic in fact(an ethnic and religious mix), but that 'pluralism' as an ideology is increasingly advocated as 'politically correct'. This affirms the independent validity of every religion as a culturally conditioned phenomenon, and frowns on any attempt to convert people. Indeed, one of the chief tenets of 'postmodernism' is that there is no such thing as objective truth, let alone universal and eternal truth. On the contrary, everybody has his or her own truth. You have yours, and I have mine, and they may diverge widely from each other, even contradict each other. In consequence, the most prized virtue is tolerance. It tolerates everything except the intolerance of those who insist that certain ideas are true and others false, while certain practices are good and others evil.
No follower of Jesus Christ can possibly embrace this complete subjectivism. For he said he was the truth, that he had come to bear witness to the truth, that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth, and that the truth will set us free. So truth matters, the truth which God has revealed through Christ and by the Spirit. Jesus also told us to beware of false teachers. So did his apostles." - John Stott, The Message of 1 Timothy & Titus, page 42.
Posted by David Truman, an adherent of Carindale Corps (Brisbane, Australia Eastern Territory).
Sven, I couoldn't agree more strongly. Postmodernist relativism, the idea contained in "This is my truth, tell me yours", is a cancer of culture, society and spirit. Along with New Age, it is the spiritual equivalent of AIDS.
Tolerance of sin is bad. That doesn't mean that we should persecute or demonize the sinner - "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" - but we cannot compromise by pretending that sin doesn't matter. As Christians we must believe there is an absolute moral law, not a relative or subjective one. That is the consistent theme of the prophets in the Old Testament and of the teachings of Jesus and the apostles in the New Testament. None of these believed the Ten Commandments applied only in the Jewish cultural context of about one and a half millennia before Christ; and the promise "I will write my laws on their hearts" was never expressed or understood as something of purely relative or temporary significance.
The whole basis of Christian theology - the need for blood atonement for sin, and its accomplishment through the sacrifice of Christ - is based on the idea that God is holy, he hates sin, will not tolerate it, and requires repentance. This theme runs through the entirety of Jewish history. John the Baptist, and then Christ, preach this, and Christ brings the new promise not only of forgiveness of sins in exchange for repentance, but personal transformation of the believer. All this is fundamental to the theology of the Salvation Army.
To be a Christian is to be deeply counter-cultural. Contemporary popular culture is profoundly anti-Christian, and we can't pretend otherwise.
There is another area in which one can talk about tolerance, and that is in the area of politics and especially multiculturalism.
It has become very fashionable, and an article of faith in the insufferable political correctness that now infests Britain and much of the West, that multiculturalism requires us to respect and tolerate cultural values of other cultures, when they are not just different but even when they are mortally inimical to our own.
So political correctness leads to otherwise earnest (inevitably Leftist-leaning) people, even feminists like Germaine Greer, to excuse practices like female genital mutilation "because it's part of their culture".
Where is the belief here in universal human rights, stemming from the Judeo-Christian understanding that we are all made in the image and likeness of God?
The same thing goes for the craven cowardice of many people in authority in Western countries to take an unequivocal position on things like 'honour killings' and the supression of other people's freedom of worship. What is needed is preparedness to speak and to act from a position of moral clarity. Not "tolerance".
This applies most especially in relation to the demands of Islam, which doesn't want to share the world, but is determined to BE the world - by a combination of violence, deception and whiteanting and destruction of the core values of our culture. This is stealth or civilizational jihad.
The result will be loss of our freedoms, including freedom of belief, freedom or worship, and freedom of speech. The Barnabas Fund documents all the time the horrible persecution of Christians by Islam throughout the world.
CONTINUATION:
The philosopher Karl Popper wrote in 1971, in his book 'The Open Society and its Enemies':
“UNLIMITED TOLERANCE MUST LEAD TO THE DISAPPEARANCE OF TOLERANCE. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.
"In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.
"We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, THE RIGHT NOT TO TOLERATE THE INTOLERANT.
"We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.”
That lays down a clear signpost to how the West - including of course the Christian churches, such as they still are, some of them appallingly corrupted by political correctness! - should deal with the challenge of violently intolerant Islam.
Getting back now to the state of our own postmodernist society, and the ubiquitous calls for "tolerance" of all manner of behaviours, I mention Theodore Dalrymple's book of essays called 'Our Culture, what's left of it'.
In his essay 'The Frivolity of Evil' (2004), writing about Britain, he states:
"... our rates of social pathology – public drunkenness, drug-taking, teenage pregnancy, venereal disease, hooliganism, criminality – are the highest in the world." Looking for the causes of this, he writes:
"Here we enter the realm of culture and ideas. For it is necessary not only to believe that it is economically feasible to behave in the irresponsible and egotistical fashion I have described, but also to believe that it is MORALLY permissible to do so. And this idea has been peddled by the intellectual elite in Britain for many years, more assiduously than anywhere else, to the extent that it is now taken for granted.
"There has been a long march not only through the institutions but through the minds of the young. When young people want to praise themselves, they describe themselves as “NONJUDGMENTAL”. For them, the highest form of morality is amorality.
"There has been an unholy alliance between those on the left, who believe that man is endowed with rights but no duties, and libertarians on the right, who believe that consumer choice is the answer to all social questions, an area eagerly adopted by the left in precisely those areas where it does not apply.
"My patients … are not depressed; they are unhappy – and they are unhappy because they have chosen to live in a way that they ought not to live, and in which it is impossible to be happy. Without exception, they say they would not want their children to live as they have lived. But the social, economic and ideological pressures – and above all, the parental example – make it likely that their children’s choices will be as bad as theirs."
He has pointed out the absolutely fundamental fact that KNOWING HOW TO LIVE requires an absolute basis of moral understanding.
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