Your post illuminates into stark relief why there is irreconcilable strife between the devout and the tolerant.
There is a message in Christianity, as well as an analogous one in other religions, that here is revealed truth, a narrow good path traced through a broad road of evil.
The strongly Christian folks I knew had the task of balancing being loving and kind with proselytizing. Their highest mission, the single noblest thing they could do while alive, was to spread the Word. So it came as no surprise when their church elders consistently tipped the scales in favor of proselytizing.
When you are taught that you have been given an inside track to a highly defined doctrine, and when you are taught that this is Truth in a sea of confusion, and when Scripture teaches (in paraphrase) "them as ain't for the Lord, is agin the Lord" - you have a recipe for ideological ossification.
Indeed, it is a logical consequence of the above that tolerance, plurality - is evil, because it seeks to dilute the Truth.
Some folks take this to heart, and as a result we have a post like you found, where someone sincerely believes the kindergarten teacher's subterfuge is a mission of mercy, a heroic act.
Most folks who call themselves Christians have come to some sort of accommodation, a compromise between the scriptural challenge to doctrinal purity and the common-sense wisdom that it's never that simple, and you learn more by listening than speaking. This requires a deliberate or semideliberate act somewhere along the way, a declaration to self that a disconnect is occurring between real life and the New Testament model.
There are and have been some awfully bright people who made a sincere attempt to align doctrine with experience. And an awful lot of people who have struggled mightily to align experience with doctrine [as they see it]. The result has been a fragmentation of the Church into churches, sects, denominations, stray herds ad infinitesimum.
To me, the heartbreak of the New Testament is that when I tried real hard to make it work for me, I became drawn into the compelling argument that there is something exclusive here, a right way vs. a wrong way for just about everything. This exclusivism breeds a sense of moral knowledge, and if you swallow that, all else is style. Separation of church and state is suddenly an impediment to the singular benefit of salvation. And if so many others are demonstrably Wrong, it takes a very special kind of person not to start hating. I have never been able to unwind that paradox, so I have disengaged.
And I hope God forgives me for that. |
