I saw this bumper sticker on the car in front of us as we drove home from Costco last night. I’ve seen it before, and no doubt, you have, too. Ordinarily I would have paid it no mind, but I had been thinking about Nidal Malik Hasan earlier in the day. Hasan, of course, is the suspect in the Ft. Hood shootings earlier in the week. There are reports surfacing that Hasan held some pretty radical (and quite intolerant) Islamic views--views that likely caused him to kill fellow soldiers.
As I write about Hasan, I also think of Scott Roeder, the man who shot and killed abortionist George Tiller in Wichita earlier this year. Somehow he came to believe that killing the doctor was a justifiable act, even a righteous act—one that was presumably pleasing to God. I grew up in the Wichita area and knew much about Dr. Tiller. My dad took part in peaceful protests down at his clinic. But neither he nor anyone else that I knew would have ever considered killing Dr. Tiller to be even an option on the table, much less the right thing to do.
I think of the Columbine shooters, who killed fellow classmates at the school just down the street from where I used to live in Littleton, Colorado. I can’t even imagine the thoughts running through their heads that made them go on a shooting rampage.
The list could go on and on, but the point I am trying to make is thoughts lead to action. One's worldview shapes the way one acts. Our culture says that all worldviews are equally valid, none is any more or less true than any other. (One might say that Pontius Pilate is our spokesperson and his catchphrase is, "What is truth?") Since no one way of thinking is superior to another, of course we should be tolerant of all. But when tolerance is the supreme virtue, what do we do with men and women like Nidal Malik Hasan, Scott Roeder and the Columbine shooters?
6 comments:
Josh McDowell made a similar argument when it came to the 9/11 WTC attack. When then Pres Bush declaired this an evil act, Josh McDowell eruped in his car saying "What right do we have to declair this an act of evil? We have abdicated our right to declare something as evil since we affirm that all ideas/beliefs are equally valid."
Makes one think.
And as always, I can't spell. That first "declair" should look a lot like the second attempt. :)
And the same people who rushed to point to Roeder as a natural product of conservative evangelicalism and conservative talk radio are saying that we mustn't judge Muslims by what one man did (even though it's frighteningly similar to what hundreds of other Muslims have done over the last few years).
Thanks for the comments!
Josh, to be fair, regardless of how (un)popular he was, President Bush did believe in objective Good and Evil. He stated this explicitly in his farewell speech this past January. But I totally understand where McDowell was coming from in regard to the culture as a whole.
Chris, it wasn't my goal to make any comments specifically about Muslims, but yes, the double standard never ceases to amaze me!
Tolerance is the Trojan Horse for acceptance. Once in the enemies of tolerance have no intention of tolerating anything else.
Dan,
I think you're on to something there...I hadn't thought of it that way before, but I think you're right!
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