How Fake ‘Tolerance’ Makes Us Lonely
The Stream - Saturday February 18, 2017
by Tom Gilson
The secular West has become the god-saturated West. Those of us who think we’ve been engaged in culture wars should think again. It’s a holy war, a war of religions. Today’s secularism isn’t godless, it has millions of gods. It has its dogma -- “tolerance” -- and its doctrines, and it demands obedience just like any other religion. Though it rejects belief in the supernatural, it’s a religion in every other sense.
This new religion is really quite ancient -- as all new religions are -- but it's celebrated now like never in recent memory. It's the religion of self-deification: humans becoming little gods of their own little worlds.
Its core doctrine can be traced all the way back to the third chapter of Genesis. Rob Schwarzwalder alluded to it soon after the Women's March on Washington:
"You shall be like God," the serpent promised Eve and, through her, Adam. The self-exaltation, the rush of power felt when we defy the Eternal and destroy the lives He creates through us. …
No one else -- and certainly not any true God -- has any say over the woman, for she “shall be like God:” the god of her own womb. She is sovereign there. She can rule it as she pleases.
It Takes a God to Revise Reality
Do you wonder how transgenderism has taken us so rapidly by storm? Jennifer Hartline wrote of each person claiming the power to "remake the human person into a nebulous creature of constant fluidity.” It takes a god to remake a human being, and we are all now our own gods.
You too can be your own god. You can make whatever you wish of yourself, and the rest of us must acknowledge your self-creation on your terms. "Thus have the uber-gods decreed that every child shall become his or her own gender-god," as I have written on this topic. "Day by day we are falling under the tyranny of every small god."
Claiming to be the caring way to treat one another, “tolerance” instead isolates each of us in our own little worlds.
One does not challenge gods, one submits to them, at least within the borders of their own realms. Therefore we do not criticize other gods' worlds, and we do not interfere with their right to rule over them as they wish -- including the beliefs they establish there.
“Tolerance” -- The Dogma That Pretends It’s a Virtue
This hands-off agreement is the one core dogma that cannot be disobeyed. We call it “tolerance,” and we consider it great virtue not to involve ourselves in other gods’ beliefs about their own worlds. There is but one condition, one seven-word ecumenical creed that defines the dogma’s only limits: “As long as you’re not harming anyone.”
Which on its surface seems quite a sensible creed, except it takes on a strange new cast in this self-deifying religion. Consider how we define "harm" these days: "Violating women's rights to their own bodies." "Sticking our nose in other people's bedrooms." Personal injury can be claimed all the way down to "microaggressions."
These are all variations on, “It's my world! You keep out!"
Same-sex marriage "harms no one's natural marriage" because harm is defined strictly in terms of violating other gods' sovereignty inside their own isolated worlds. Who cares what effect it has on marriage as a social institution? "My marriage doesn't affect your marriage" because you and I are gods of our own worlds, social effects be damned.
“Tolerance” is the great pretender. Masquerading as a virtue, it’s actually a horrific sham. Though it claims to be the caring way to treat one another, in reality it isolates each of us in our own little worlds.
The Darkness No Small God Can Overcome
Nothing in this dogma shows us a way to love other gods.
So the gods must be lonely. Their worlds too tiny and self-contained; and nothing in their dogma shows a way to love other gods.
Tolerance is after all most easily practiced by keeping one’s distance. In practice that’s impossible; the gods must interact. But when they do, they agree to keep their hands off each others’ worlds. If they differ or disagree they keep a hush on it. They dare not speak their minds. They cannot reveal who they really are. They do not interact as they really are.
They cannot love or be loved as they really are.
Truth and Love Must Reign
Is it any wonder there’s a war raging? Is it any wonder that Jesus Christ stands against this new religion? How could he do otherwise? He must, as an expression of His own love.
His followers must reject it too. We must reject it especially in ourselves. We all tend to enthrone ourselves on the chair of deity; we must all choose to turn that throne over to God, the true and living God. There is but one God, and He is neither you nor me.
Yes, there are wars of religion going on today. But we violate no god’s true sovereignty by standing with the One true God. Other gods only play at a pretense of sovereignty. In reality they’ve isolated themselves from the only One who is really God, who is really sovereign, and who is really love.
Weep with me for the lonely gods.
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