There is a very civilised and reasonable view current today that we should respect those whose opinions we do not share. We may disagree with such people but we should not demonise anyone just because they might think differently to us. There's room in the world for all sorts of ideas and to condemn another person because he sees things in a different light is to fall into a confusion between person and ideas. It might even lead to violence.
How appealing is such a thought. How sane and just. And yet I disagree with it. Just as faith is a matter of will rather than intellect so there is right and wrong thought and often, not always but often, those who embrace wrong thought do so because of some spiritual flaw in their character. Their beliefs are the result of their personal shortcomings.
This is becoming more and more the case as things come to a point and the sheep are separated out from the goats which appears to be the over-arching theme of the present time. A time, be it noted, when the teaching of Jesus Christ really has been spread to every corner of the globe as was given as a necessary precursor to the End Times. Perhaps at one time it was viable to have the wrong ideas if you were genuinely engaged with the search for truth. After all, none of us is right all the time or even wholly right any of the time. But we have to see why people think what they think or argue what they argue. Increasingly, those who have put themselves on the wrong side, which is the side against God and the natural order of creation, do so because of the disordered state of their soul and we cannot grant them equal rights. It is quite reasonably said we should always attack the argument not the person but sometimes the argument is the person.
When I first became interested in spiritual matters I adopted a universal approach, taking nectar from a variety of flowers, from both temperate and tropical climes, from gardens, forests and jungles. (Sorry, I got a bit carried away there.) But I learnt a lot thereby with different approaches filling in the gaps of others. Christianity, and specifically Jesus Christ, was always central to my spiritual understanding but it was supported by other approaches. However, as time has gone by and the dire spiritual state of the world becomes more exposed I see that only the person of Christ can really save us from the assault. Pretty much everything else, including official Christianity, can be incorporated into the anti-God agenda and often is. Only Christ can offer real refuge against spiritual evil. I don't say other spiritual approaches cannot be valid on their own terms but the centrality of Christ is becoming ever more evident.
Relativism is one of the curses of the modern age. You have your truth and I have mine and both are equally good. No, the unalterable fact is there is truth and there are lies and they are not to be given equal consideration.
6 comments:
This raises a very interesting point. I think I understand what you are getting at. I feel that this is something that has changed a lot, even in the past 20 years - even since 2020!
The difficulty of these times is that the mainstream 'normal' evil is so deep that it pervades almost everything, sooner or later - and, increasingly, so extreme that it amounts to the inversion of all sorts of evaluations.
There are fewer and fewer neutral topics. For example, it used to be possible to talk about literature with someone you disagreed with concerning who were the best authors. But when all authors from more than fifty years ago, or all male-white authors, are regarded as genuinely evil: worthy of deletion from the canon... Then what can be said in a conversation?
Main favourite neutral theme is to discuss cricket (assuming the other person is interested); but this will not be possible for much longer, since the sport is rapidly becoming in-your-face politicized - so that it has already become unpleasant to read most journalism.
This is the problem as I see it. Everything is becoming more and more divisive and it is less and less possible to disagree and respect the person you disagree with on major issues, above all the matter of God and the natural order of creation. If someone denies that you know there is something wrong.
Equality means becoming as Whites. Diversity means removal of the Whites.
In either case of propaganda, projecting itself through current governmental institutions, the individual, by confirming the ideological belief, becomes more and more distanced from anything that could manifest as knowledge of the self, and through knowledge of the self thus knowledge of God, reality.
I was once buttonholed for more than an hour by an extremely earnest Mormon. It grew repetitive and tedious as time wore on, but I appreciated the fact that, by his own light, he was trying to do me good. When we "tolerate" a contrary opinion, I think we must either suppose the opinion too trivial to take trouble over, or too securely fixed to dislodge. I put the word "tolerance" in scare quotes because the second supposition leads to resignation and not tolerance. It strikes me as fatuous when people speak of "respect" in these matters. Such people will often say they "respect" the strength with which a belief they believe to be false is held. This is like respecting a hallucination more than mere paranoia. I am inclined to leave contrary beliefs alone because I am resigned to their intractability. This intractability fits in with your belief that things are coming to a point. It is becoming impossible to change anyone's mind about anything.
If someone speaks in genuine good faith and sincerity (which is not passion) then I can listen to him. But now it seems as though those who are wrong (and there really is right and wrong) are so because of a rebellion against God. I think the test of the present day is to bring that out so it can no longer be disguised or concealed.
What I find interesting is how, in this age of deconstruction, most people, even those who espouse a "principled" relativism, speak and act in such overwhelming absolutist moral categories .
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