Anyone can see how extreme our society has become these days. Hateful rhetoric, volatile politics (on both sides), political and racial violence, "trigger words," "microaggression," the dire need for "safe spaces" -- on and on it goes. It seems like our society is infested with "extremists." No, I don't mean people with extreme views; I mean people who take the ordinary farther than they should.
It seems like the word of the day is "hate." If you disagree with transgender "theology" today (where "theology" suggests that "transgender ideas are god"), you aren't in disagreement; you're a hater. If you don't fully embrace and encourage the entire LGBT alphabet soup, you're not simply tolerating them; you're hating them. If you don't like Biden, you're a hater, and if you don't like Trump, you're a hater. The only way to not be a hater today is to fully and warmly embrace ... everything and everyone. Which, of course, is manifest stupidity, because in our world there will always be opposing ideas and embracing all opposing ideas is the ultimate in insanity.
Here's the problem, of course. There are, in fact, people out there who hate -- who hate in the extreme. But if everyone is a "hater," then locating these actually hateful people becomes impossible and both defense against and help for them is beyond our grasp. In truth, if we make all disagreement "hate," we'll very quickly run out of anyone who loves. And I think we all agree that this would be a serious problem.
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In order to confirm my point, Dan tells me that to refer to "transgender" as a "theology" or to "LGBT" as "LGBT alphabet" is hate. To add to the hurt that any oppressed person feels is hate. To refer to the guy who believes he's Napoleon as insane is not, for reasons I don't quite understand, but you must see where they're coming from. The current rule is "You will agree with us that our present 'reality' is true and unquestionable, so your belief that transgender is a malady and not a reality or that LGBT is a sin and not true and good is hate." Or ... we believe that the Bible is true and warns against such things and we're hoping to spare them harm from misguided beliefs. Oh, no, that's not possible. I'm sorry. That's outside of the current rule. My mistake. Wait ... isn't telling me that my belief in God and His Word is hateful not hate? Ah! And we're back at this extreme, aren't we?
I've said for a while that when "hate", "evil", NAZI", "extremist", and words like those to describe fairly ordinary disagreement that the effect is to devalue those words. As you say, it makes it harder to identify those who really do "hate". I am more and more convinced that this trivialization of evil is intentional. If one can make someone who won't vote for Biden/Trump the moral equivalent of Hamas, then they open the door for all sorts of retribution based on who you vote for. "Is it OK to punch a NAZI?" was all the rage a few years ago. The problem is that the goal isn't to stop actual NAZI's, but to normalize violence against anyone who gets called a NAZI no matter what their sin is. Evil is a real and horrible thing, but when it's trivialized for political/social purposes it makes things worse.
And because everything opposed to "our" position is deemed hate, then all the real hate, the true hate, gets lost in the shuffle and can't be properly dealt with. It's similar to all these DEI standards. It used to be, if I saw a woman as a CEO, then she must have done some really good, hard work to get there. But now, because of DEI, I have to question, did she earn that position on merit or simply because she's a woman? (Even though we can no longer define what a woman is, we have to be sure to segregate them.) Same with any minority or someone on the upper end of the victim hierarchy. They may have earned it by merit, but because diversity is the goal rather than the best person for the job, we're left wondering, is this the best person for the job, or are they only the best (insert group) for the job? When Biden stated that he would only nominate a black woman for the Supreme Court, he automatically reduced the pool of possibly better candidates. Could she be a better Justice than a white man? Probably. Can we know that she is? No, because they weren't even an option.
It seems to be the Christian blogger’s bane to be bullied by people like Dan, who apparently cannot tolerate others holding equally strong, opposing positions. How ironic--it is “the pot calling the kettle black.” As you point out so regularly, the stance of “I will not tolerate your intolerance”--usually espoused by those “extremists” you mention--is pure hypocrisy. We feel as justified in holding our views, and resisting pressure to yield, as he does--yet his behavior is acceptable, and ours is despicable? May God grant Dan “repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, [so] he may come to his senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will” (2 Tim. 25-26). And thank you, Stan, for sparing us readers from Dan’s “contributions” to your posts.
David,
Am I correct that when you say "our" position, that you are not referring to the position that we all share? That you are referring to the position of whoever claims "hate"?
Yes, that is correct.
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