Christianity, tolerance, and Rodney King

A redated post

Occasionally, when I used to present the Craig-Parsons debate on Christianity or the Craig-Jesseph debate on theism in my classes, someone would say something like "Do we have to argue about this? Can't we all just get along?"

It's not that easy.

Let's take a look at what Christians claim for a minute. They claim that God almighty came to earth in Christ to save us from our sins. That means that the human race is in pretty bad shape apart from Christ, and we can get connected with God through Christ. Some Christians go further and say that while people who accept Christ are saved, everyone else is going to hell.

Now if you really, really, believed that, wouldn't you want people to believe what you believe. I mean, if you are "tolerant" of them and just let them continue going on without knowing Christ, they may never get the message and have to spend eternity in hell. Don't you think you would want to give them a reason to know Jesus and go to heaven instead?

On the other hand, if this is all false, then it can be argued people are spending their whole lives worshipping a being who is imaginary. In so doing, they are telling their people they can't have sex before marriage, they obstruct the progress of science, they get people to pay attention to some afterlife that will never happen instead of doing the best they can to make this life better for everyone. And, in some cases, they even commit acts of violence in the name of their religion, as did the 9/11 hijackers. Not that the Bush administration was any better, they used their religion to justify starting a couple of wars of their own.

A lot of believers, as well as unbelievers, think that there is a great deal at stake in this whole business of religion. Given that so much is at stake, isn't it a little misguided to implore people to accept a Rodney-King-style political correctness: "Can't we all just get along?"