A very sobering article at Crosswalk – go read the whole thing: The Rise of Extreme Tolerance.
I’m big on tolerance when it comes to having free speech. Short of slander, libel, or shouting “fire!” in a theatre, I think we should tolerate people saying whatever they want. But tolerance these days has come to mean not disagreeing, disagreeing in a way that denies your own beliefs, or declaring that what you disagree with is as correct as your own beliefs.
The very act of believing something means that we’ve assessed the options and concluded that one thing is superior to the others. But it’s a postmodern convention to pretend that isn’t so; that “my truth” is equal to “your truth.” “What’s true for me is not necessarily true for you, but they’re equally correct,” is a lie we tell ourselves and each other to keep the peace. But the fact is if you don’t think what you believe is correct, then you don’t really hold that belief at all.
I expect these things out of the world, but it’s getting quite common in the church, too, and that’s the sobering part.
In the secular realm, postmodernism’s extreme tolerance has been foisted on an unsuspecting public by the entertainment media for several decades. … We are not supposed to be shocked or notice the overtly self-destructive nature of so many aberrant subcultures. … Anyone who cites religious beliefs as a reason to reject another person’s way of life is automatically viewed with the same contempt that used to be reserved for out-and-out religious heretics. The culture around us has declared war on all biblical standards.
Some Christians unwittingly began following suit several years ago. That has opened the door for a whole generation in the church to embrace postmodern relativism openly and deliberately. They don’t want the truth presented with stark black-and-white clarity anymore. They prefer having issues of right and wrong, true and false, good and bad deliberately painted in shades of gray. We have reached a point where the typical churchgoer today assumes that is the proper way of understanding truth. Any degree of certainty has begun to sound offensive to people’s postmodernized ears.
… Doug Pagitt, pastor of Solomon’s Porch (an Emergent community in Minneapolis), told the gathering, “Preaching is broken.” He suggests that a completely open conversation where all participants are seen as equals is better suited to a postmodern culture. “Why do I get to speak for 30 minutes and you don’t?” he asked. “A sermon is often a violent act,” he declared. “It’s violence toward the will of the people who have to sit there and take it.”2
… Compromise has become a virtue while devotion to truth has become offensive.
But many of the issues being compromised within the evangelical movement today are not questionable. Scripture speaks very clearly against homosexuality, for example. The Christian position on adultery is not at all vague. The question of whether a believer ought to marry an unbeliever is spelled out with perfect clarity. Scripture quite plainly forbids any Christian to take another Christian to court. Selfishness and pride are explicitly identified as sins. These are not gray areas. There is no room for compromise here.
Nevertheless, I constantly hear every one of those issues treated as a gray area-on Christian radio, on Christian television, and in Christian literature. People want all such matters to be negotiable. And too many Christian leaders willingly oblige. They hesitate to speak with authority on matters where Scripture is plain. The lines of distinction between truth and error, wisdom and foolishness, church and world are being systematically obliterated by such means.
The very idea that preaching a sermon is “violence toward the will of the people who have to sit there and take it,” – that someone could say that aloud at a public gathering and not be laughed at for it, is frightening.
Maybe my church is unusual, but we don’t strap people down, Clockwork Orange style, and make them hear the sermon. On the contrary, we attend voluntarily in order to seek the wisdom of our pastor. And it’s a rare sermon that only lasts 60 minutes, much less 30. When I look at the length of time on the podcasts, they’re typically 70-85 minutes. And I’d rather have an intermission than have the pastor leave anything out. We don’t always agree, and usually for different reasons, but we acknowledge his expertise and his Godly authority just by showing up every week. A sermon should provoke conversation, not be one. In the same sense, I don’t go to my physician to converse. I go to get his opinion and advice. That’s what sermon is all about; a biblical consult just like a doctor’s visit is a health consult.
The idea that we all have equal authority and equal knowledge is patently ridiculous. So why do I feel as if saying so is the equivalent of pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes?
