-By Rev Michael Bresciani
After the brutal shooting death of Pakistan’s Christian Minister Shabbaz Bhatti for his opposition to ‘blasphemy laws’ the persecution and murders of Christians continues unabated in Pakistan and other Muslim countries. Is this what the west is supposed to tolerate?
Even that lumbering and largely ineffective body known has the UN has voiced its concerns over the brutality and torture by Muslims on young boys in Afghanistan. There, they are sexually molested and severely punished with electric shock and beatings. Is this what we are supposed to tolerate?
In Egypt Christians are being slaughtered and Coptic Churches are being burned to the ground. As the rest of the world watches and President Barack Obama plans to send billions in aide to Egypt, no one seems to mention these human rights violations in the mainstream media. Little wonder that Sarah Palin coined the phrase the ‘lamestream media.” Is this what we are supposed to tolerate?
A visit to organizations like Voice of the Martyrs will quickly dispel the notion that the persecution is only in the aforementioned countries. The list of countries killing and persecuting Christians is enormous and it includes Nigeria, Mali, Mauritania, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan, West Bank, Iraq, Syria, Turkey Belarus, Iran, Pakistan, India, Malaysia, Laos, China, North Korea and many countries in the former Soviet Union. Lest we forget even in South America there is persecution in Columbia. Is this what we are supposed to tolerate.
In America our idea of tolerance and diversity is based on a viewpoint fostered and birthed in a nation that is warmed and coddled in its own insulation from outside troubles. It is what has caused one of the nation’s leading Methodist Universities to offer courses for Imam’s and Hindu Priests even as Muslims and Hindus unmercilessly blast believers into eternity like so much cannon fodder. But of course, that all happens ‘over there,’ not here.
With the help of a generation long effort by secular professors, spineless legislators, presidents and Hollywood/ media comes distractions that persistently slander, slaughter and dismiss all religion in general, all at the same time they insist all religions should be accounted a level playing ground. Should we be grateful that a secular world is so happy to look after us poor bumbling Christians?
Tolerance and diversity are keywords for a social change urged upon a spiritually dumbed down generation under which is hid the real purpose which is removing serious accountability for our choices in life. The real purpose of tolerance is not to promote understanding but it is a tool used to shut down dissenting voices.
But what voices would it shut down? Since Christianity is the only faith in which each person is held accountable to a supreme God and that God says he stands alone, (De 32:39) the answer is quite clear. It is easy to talk of tolerance in a country where the excessive behaviors of Hindus and Muslims is simply not tolerated but is completely illegal. Tolerance and diversity is the liberal idea that makes provender of the human brain. It is what proves that cattle are not the only creatures whose nature is changed by being strictly fed a diet of corn.
Christians offer a gospel of peace in which is found forgiveness of sins, relationship with God and eternal life. Why would anyone with a semblance of a brain and something that may only remotely resemble a human heart pass that up for a system of religion that tortures boys, oppresses women and kills those who are not ready to convert? Is this what we are supposed to tolerate?
America needs to descend from this cloud of liberal high sounding tripe that is leading us to the lowest point of our history as a nation. We have citizens who are angered that there are still those who say the Bible is correct when it says that homosexuality is a perversion. But there is a far greater and more pervasive perversion going on in many levels that is going completely undetected.
In a perfect case of, we said – he said is a picture of what God says, against what we say. God says all life including that of the unborn is a gift and is precious in his sight. We say no it isn’t and we will assign the unborn to medical waste buckets at our own discretion, and then we will brag that it is the law of the land.
God says that homosexuality is an abomination (sin that makes God sick to disgust) but we say not so! But it is a matter of being born that way and should be elevated to a sort of emerging new race or social class of people.
God says through his son, “…I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” (John 14:6) We say you can get to the father any old way you choose, all roads; all religions lead to the same place. It never strikes us as odd that only one faith has a Savior who substituted his life for ours to redeem us rather than asking us to substitute another’s life to redeem ourselves, a price which scripture says God would never accept.
Killing does not produce life even if it is labeled as, done for God. In fact any killing done in his name is blasphemous and unacceptable and is a sure path to perdition and hell. This is something that God will never tolerate.
As long as the killing done in the name of Allah or some Hindu deity is done ‘over there’ the limits of our tolerance has never been tested. God help us in the day when it is! In that day the question, ‘Is this what we are supposed to tolerate,’ will be fully answered.
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Rev. Michael Bresciani is the chief steward of http://www.americanprophet.org. The website has since 2005 featured the articles of columnist Rev Michael Bresciani along with news and reviews that have earned this site the title of The Website for Insight Millions have read his timely reports and articles in online journals and print publications across the nation and the globe.