Religious Expression Considered Harmful
By Doug
Any religious expression, it seems. A commentator can’t say anything remotely religious without getting lambasted by the Left. (And, no doubt, with exclamations like "Jesus Christ!" thrown in for good measure.) While commenting on the Tiger Woods situation, former Fox News anchor Brit Hume dared dig deeper into the story and commented on one of the underlying issues.
Tiger Woods will recover as a golfer. Whether he can recover as a person, I think, is a very open question… the extent to which he can recover, it seems to me, depends on his faith. He’s said to be a Buddhist, I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. So, my message to Tiger would be: ‘Tiger, turn to the Christian faith, and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.’
This has led folks like Keith Olbermann to compare Hume to a "jihadist" and his guest Dan Savage to consider him a "lunatic". Later, Olbermann said that Hume was attempting to "force" or "threaten" Woods into conversion. From my local paper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Jay Bookman called Hume arrogant and pompous. Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly trashes Hume and seems to think that if adherents of a particular religion aren’t perfect then it’s perhaps hypocritical to suggest turning to that religion. His multitude of commenters seem to agree.
But as LaShawn Barber notes, this was all inevitable. The Secularists, those trying to essentially make religion a taboo in the public square and who overwhelmingly live on the Left, simply will not tolerate any mention of religion. (How tolerant.) And certainly not comparatively. If you dare insist that belief in Jesus is any better than venerating a toaster, you’ll get shouted down.
On top of that, LaShawn links to Christian apologist and author James White who points out that, indeed, Brit Hume is right.
The secularists are, of course, howling in protest, but if you read what they are saying, one obvious underlying theme comes to the fore. No one is offering reasoned, objective criticism of the substance of Hume’s comments, because, quite simply, he is right. Buddhism does not, in fact, provide for redemption and forgiveness, but instead directs one to look inward for enlightenment and eventual freedom from suffering (via freedom from desire). But redemption? Not in this life, for in its classical expression, this would involve a long process of moving toward enlightenment through many lifetimes. In any case, secularists do not care about the objective truth contained in Hume’s words, but instead they are enraged that he would actually dare to express his thoughts in public—the realm over which they now claim absolute authority and control.
(Emphasis his.)
If we are not allowed to speak of religion in public, it may be time to hold a wake for the First Amendment, something the Left claims to uphold.
1
Donnie says:
January 7th, 2010 at 9:06 am
The left only believes in mentioning God, Jesus, etc when it comes to mocking Christianity. Or, as you state above, misusing His name as a profanity.
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