Difference Between Government and Personal Tolerance of Ideas

19 And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver.
The first time I read Acts 19:19, I imagine I was a little shocked. Isn’t book burning something fascists do? Isn’t that a Nazi thing? Then later in my Christian life, I was told you burn some books because demonic power could be “attached” to the books and that burning would somehow exorcise the evil spirits.
Now that I see it all in a different light as Western culture slides, once again, towards first-hand knowledge fascists. I find myself shouted down on Facebook for having a different idea than the majority. I see riots in the street over the fact that someone with different or “dangerous” ideas wants to give a speech or a lecture. I see books being banned in a roundabout way as Barnes and Noble refuses to carry a New York Times #1 Bestseller. (Called, by the way, Dangerous.)
Why such a violent reaction to ideas? Because people know that ideas can be dangerous. Ideas potentially become actions and laws and cultural norms.
Don’t misunderstand. I defend free speech and in no way support the government banning or burning books. The incident in the Bible, however, was not a government book burning but rather private citizens burning their own personal property because they considered the ideas evil and worthy of the trash heap.
Here is what I wonder: Am I any longer allowed to call any idea or philosophy “evil”? Speech is still free in American, but it’s being stifled via shaming from media, entertainment and educational institutions. I actually worry, in the back of my mind, that my employer will read this post. I’m not sure what they would do.
But as a Christian, I am called to believe that not all ways of living or ways of thinking are created equal. I am called, for instance, to believe the morals given by God in the Bible are better than any other in history. The entirety of Psalm 119 is a collection of 176 verses devoted to the perfection of God’s Law, with statements like:
127 Therefore I love your commandments above gold, above fine gold.
128 Therefore I consider all your precepts to be right;
I hate every false way.
“Who gets to decide good and evil?” you may say. We are at the point in our society where true evil is barely acknowledged. Condemning the foundations of any culture as evil ideas is “bigotry”. There seems to be one side calling the shots on what is “good” and “evil” and there is a remarkable lack of consistency in their reasoning:
- to claim homosexuality is sinful is “evil”, but being anti-Islam is also evil. Yet no culture/religion more anti-homosexual, arguably, than Islamic culture.
- It’s “evil” to oppose feminism, but also “evil” to speak ill of Muslims. But are there any countries where women are more oppressed than majority-Muslim countries?
What the left seems to be against most is Western Judeo-Christian culture — culture imbued from top to bottom with ethics drawn from the Christian Bible (which includes the Jewish Torah). And I’m going to say something that is currently controversial:
God’s ways as outlined in God’s Word (the Bible) is better than any other way!
However, citizens of West — the West that paved the way for the abolition of slavery and held up freedom as the ideal — have lost their confidence and are second-guessing, considering allowing in Sharia law as equal — on equal footing with current law on the books— in the name of religious freedom. Sharia law, however, is not compatible with Western values. They cannot coexist.
For instance, Sharia law outlaws speaking ill of Muhammed. To enforce this law, you would have to infringe on a non-Muslim's freedom of speech and even freedom of religion, because Christian beliefs require that one believes that Mohammed was wrong and even a blasphemer.
Freedom of religion means freedom to worship as you see fit. It doesn’t mean freedom to force evil ideas such as segregation and racial and sexual oppression and bigamy and pedophilia into the law of the land.
If a philosophy runs against the grain of God’s good and perfect Word, there is no shame in tossing it into our own personal trash heap — literally or virtually — to laugh at it, to mock it, to relegate it to the realm of “bad ideas”.
Granted, our current laws ultimately go back to the Ten Commandments. But the Ten Commandments are better. The Bible is better than the Koran. Here’s a great Video series that outlines why!:
Summary: Freedom of expression is important for the very reason that not all ideas are equal. If they were, what importance would there be for new voices to be heard? What would it matter who governed us?
I would never call for speech — whether bad ideas or good — to be suppressed. Allow all the the ideas out there, and my the best ideas win. And may Christians rise up and speak out for what is true and good and right.
If a philosophy runs against the grain of God’s good and perfect Word, there is no shame in tossing it into our own personal trash heap — literally or virtually — to laugh at it, to mock it, to relegate it to the realm of “bad ideas”.
