Here's an All-American story:
- A Central Florida student steals a communion wafer during a Catholic mass.
- He holds it hostage only to return it a day later because he receives death threats.
- A well-known Catholic rabble-rouser condemns the wafer thief but not those who issued death threats.
- A biologist and rabid atheist mocks the rabble-rouser for comparing someone holding a wafer hostage to hate speech, and launches into a general mocking of people all faith, promising to desecrate a consecrated communion wafer if someone will send him one.
- A man uses his wife's company e-mail address to send the athiest a death threat.
- The wife is fired for the man's stupidity
You'd think the story would end there but this story never ends. Christians who issue death threats violate the very core of the faith (No, you five-pointers, Calvin was not justified for letting Servetus burn). Atheists who can't at least practice civil disagreement make a strong argument for the need for continued existence of religion.
People are so afraid of simply letting their beliefs exist in the world of ideas, choosing rather to take up strong-arm tactics with hyperbole and even physical attack (threatened or otherwise). For people of faith, I know this much: You either have faith or you don't. There is no dragging someone over that chasm, no safe bridge to navigate. If you try, both fall in. Christians, specifically, believe only God can bridge that chasm. Apparently, some of us feel God isn't doing his job so we have to do it for him.
Christians, if someone disagrees with you, this and this are the only implicit Biblical guidelines for responding. (And just to clarify, that's the martyr Stephen on the receiving end of those rocks, not the local school board condemning a teacher for refusing to teach Intelligent Design).
It is a strange phenomena in a country that pays so much lip service to democracy and free speech, both of which require civility and maturity, neither of which we practice with any regularity -- or show so much as an intention to do so.
