Why Christians should be Intolerant

 Yes, we’ve all seen the bumper stickers on the tailgates of Subaru Outbacks: “Coexist”, and among others, “Tolerance”… and whatever else is trending in the liberal world. And it’s spelled with different sacred symbols, suggesting equality among people from every religion.

It’s cute.

But wrong.

We live in a culture obsessed with the idea of tolerance. (And I don’t just mean religious tolerance). In classrooms, students will no longer answer questions directly, when posed by professors. Instead, they will either ask another question or they will form their answer with the inflection of a question. Rather than holding the confidence that certainty allows, students will answer even the most obvious questions with a timid air of skepticism. Many will preface their responses with, “This could be totally wrong but…” or “I might be way off but…”

Why?

Because we are afraid of being wrong.

In our culture, it is better to be uncertain than wrong. People who confidently express their views are seen as arrogant, close-minded, and bigoted. This is manifestly demonstrated in our obsession with the word “like”. Nobody wants to commit to a statement fully, so everything is “like” something else. This isn’t very noticeable until you remove the word “like” from your vocabulary. Then, you’ll hear yourself actually committing to statements in ways that aren’t comfortable, because too much certainty is expressed. “Like” dilutes our language. “Like” is like a spice to our sentences that like adds ambiguity rather than leaving us like fully committed to what we’re actually saying.

Yet, in a world where no one is wrong…

No one is right either.

Promoting religious tolerance is admirable in some senses. I understand that I would much rather live in a world where people from different religions don’t behead their opposition, participate in genocide, or excommunicate their family members for believing differently. I always seek to love my enemies and treat people from all different worldviews with the respect they deserve as rational human beings. Yet, if we are all right, then no one is, since some say that others are wrong. Obviously, someone can’t be right about someone else being wrong while that person is also right (at least in a world where logic works). Moreover, if I posit full ideological tolerance, I’ve undermined my own belief. The moment I begin to preach tolerance, I’m expressing my own intolerance for intolerant people. So I’m being intolerant.

And while this belief seems harmless, it stands as one of the most difficult forms of persecution that the church deals with today.

In many ways, Christians are united under a common call to spread their belief (and this is common in most religions). Yet, the tolerant culture answers this call with a plea for silence. If a Christian (or a Mormon, or Jehovah’s witness, etc.) attempts to evangelize, it is seen as an intolerant act. “Who are you to tell me what I should and shouldn’t believe?” is the typical response. (Even though this line of thought falls victim to the same regressing problem that universal tolerance faces, it is, at its foundation, self-defeating and warrants no serious consideration). This has bred a generation of churchgoers who believe firmly that others ought to be evangelized, yet, they are too afraid to do anything about it for fear of offending those who hold different views. It has led to a church full of cowards, buckling beneath the pressure of society. The culture screams at the church to be tolerant, and the church responds with morbid paralysis, too afraid to offend a lost generation so desperately searching for truth, who fall deeper into confusion while demanding silence from those with whom the truth lies.

This is why, as a Christian, I cannot accept the doctrine of tolerance. (And if you are tolerant of me, you’ll understand). According to Christianity, Jesus came to save sinners through His sacrifice, and salvation lies only through believing in Him. If you don’t believe in Him and embrace this reality, you go to hell forever. It’s a pretty simple concept, but carries weight no one was ever meant to fully process. Yet, if it is true, then my highest calling as a Christian is not to be tolerant of other religions, but to ensure that the people I love deeply realize their need for salvation and turn to Jesus. In fact, I can’t do both at the same time, because they’re in direct opposition to one another. I have to choose between offending you (and possibly spending eternity with you) or remaining quiet (and watching you possibly go to hell while I sit back and say nothing)…

May that ellipsis stand as the granddaddy of all ellipses, the most emphatic, reverent silence in existence…

Don’t you see? There is no greater love from a Christian than for him to share his belief with you. He isn’t judging you (unless he’s doing it improperly); he’s loving you! Even if you don’t believe it, he does. And for him to preach to you is love. He would rather create an awkward moment and risk offending you than watch you perish eternally. Tolerance, for the Christian, is the deepest kind of hate there is. For a Christian to believe such ultimate truths and not act on them, watching the world perish while he does nothing, is the worst kind of hate.

It’s like evil.

 

Did Science Kill God?

Most of us are familiar with the Nietzsche quote, “God is dead”, but there are few who know what follows (There are also few who are able to spell “Nietzsche” correctly on the first attempt)…

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? […] Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”

Nietzsche didn’t mean that God, who once existed, had died; he meant that through the progress of science and enlightenment, human beings had transcended their superstitious, religious beliefs and had traded them for an objective explanation of the world that no longer required a god (or any supernatural being for that matter). Diseases, which had been previously attributed to curses, witchcraft, or Satan, could now be explained by science. The traditional belief of the earth’s age was being increasingly eclipsed by scientific discoveries, which portrayed the earth as an ancient, 4 billion year old rock, nearly half a million times older than many had thought. Reason replaced faith. Fact replaced belief. Science replaced religion. And a chilling silence filled laboratories, classrooms, and households alike, as man became the god he had been pursuing for thousands of years.

That’s what Nietzsche meant. And the consequences of this philosophy have become increasingly prevalent ever since.

It’s called positivism.

According to positivism, you can only know that which can be tested or confirmed by science or logic. The world is as old as science tells us it is. You are sick because a virus has infected the cells inside your body, and the appropriate immune response has been initiated. You are depressed because there is a chemical imbalance in your brain. You love because you admire another’s genes and would like for your children to have them. You woke up in the middle of the night unable to move and seeing visions because of a condition called sleep paralysis, which is actually quite common and can be explained physiologically. You believe in God because it helps you deal with death and the meaninglessness of life…

That’s the world according to positivism. There is no supernatural, no heaven, no sin, no karma, no soul, no angels, no miracles, no luck, and certainly no god. There only exists that which can be written in a textbook without offending Stephen Hawking, et al. And although positivism has given rise to a group of predominantly liberal free thinkers, who flaunt their impartiality and give themselves over to the honesty of science, it has stood as an absolute atrocity to epistemology (the study of knowing stuff), since it ignores what might be an entirely separate realm of existence.

God, angels, sin, etc. cannot be tested by science because they exist above the dominion of science. Of course positivism excludes the possibility of a god; it relies entirely on a study that is necessarily separate from the very idea of a god! It can’t prove that there is a god. But it can’t disprove a god either. What can be tested? If a god existed, would that existence not be outside of time, outside of physical barriers, and beyond objective observation (not necessarily phenomenological perception)? But just because you can’t place God inside of a test tube doesn’t mean He doesn’t exist. The two are simply separate, and you will never be able to measure a spiritual being in milliliters, pounds, or atomic structure. Yet, everything that supposedly exists beyond science is held to this standard, which dominates modern thought.

The reason Positivism has taken such a dominant position in modern thought is due in part to the trends in progress. Centuries ago, there existed many phenomena that couldn’t be explained by any sort of scientific discourse. So, naturally, man posited God, spirits, demons, etc. as the cause. When scientific advancements were made, science filled in the gaps, as it were, and proved that there existed an explanation apart from the spiritual realm, an explanation that made sense, could be demonstrated, and didn’t need any sort of god. The most obvious example is evolution, which has been gradually eating away at religious “space-fillers”, used to explain the seemingly unexplainable. This theory (along with many other scientific advancements) has pushed religion aside in a couple areas, and many assume the pattern will continue until religion and any concept of god or spirits is annihilated.

Yet, this is a step too far. Aside from ignoring the problem of causality, science does not rule out the possibility of a god (in fact, I’d argue that science reinforces (not proves) the idea of a god, but that’s a different topic). In order for a process to be caused by a god, it does not necessarily have to happen apart from scientific explanation. This is the underlying fallacy of Positivism. Although it might seem to be the case, science is not gradually decreasing the idea of god; it is merely explaining how what happens happens. And this has stood as such a threat to religion not because it has proven it wrong, but because, for centuries, many had looked to religion to answer scientific questions. But just because science can explain a process does not mean that some sort of spiritual force cannot be involved. It’s possible that the two may even coincide. Some god may or may not be involved. Science will never tell us. Because it can’t.

The unfortunate result of this positivistic shift is the godlike status that has been attributed to science. Now, instead of looking to religion to answer questions that science should address, we are looking to science to answer metaphysical questions. Simply tacking on “scientists agree” to anything adds credibility, even if it has nothing to do with science. Questions of ultimacy (e.g. “what is the meaning of life?”, “is there a god?”, “is there objective morality”, etc.) cannot be answered by science because science only deals with the physical world. Yet, many look to science to answer these pressing questions. Meaning, god, morality, and other metaphysical matters cannot ever be truly addressed by science, and we need to open our minds and realize that science has limitations, and beyond these limitations might be a spiritual realm. And if this is the case, dedication to positivism will cause one to miss an entire sphere of existence.

Science isn’t a bad thing. Technically, I’m a scientist (a biochemist). I love it. Science saves countless lives everyday. You’re using science to read this. Because of science, you have access to infinite information, all crammed into a tiny little glowing rectangle you keep tucked in your pocket. Because of science, I can explain why this cereal I’m eating tastes gross (it’s Vanilla Chex by the way. Don’t buy that. Scientists agree that it tastes bad). Science is a wonderful thing, and intentionally ignoring some of its most factual claims for the sake of religion is both dishonest and unhealthy. Don’t cover your ears. Open them to the beauty of progress and the pure enjoyment of scientific discovery!

Science doesn’t kill God. It never did. God is the creator of science, and it’s truly a tragedy that the two are separated, unnecessarily pit against one another when they really should exist in harmony.