Strait is the Gate and Small the Tent

I don’t know what to say about my eye exam.

On the one hand, I’m having a bad eye day. Some days I see better than others, and today is not a good day. On the other, the doctor said my vision was very good. No need of correction.

I can’t help being bummed out when I remember the way I used to see, but I’m so much luckier than most people, I should be celebrating.

After the exam, I helped the dockmaster at my dad’s marina fix a shore cable, and he told me his daughter was diagnosed with a retinal blastoma. This is a cancer that strikes very young kids. Typically, it’s discovered when the pupil of one eye looks white in a photo. The tumors are white, and they’re on the retina, so a flashbulb brings them out.

She has had 40 operations and only sees out of one eye. I had thirty years of vision better than most people will ever experience, and even now, apart from some farsightedness, I’m better off than most teenagers.

If you want to say a prayer for this girl, be my guest. I don’t know her name.

I got some angry comments when I asserted that Pat Robertson was right to suggest Haiti was under a curse because of idolatry. He’s a strange guy, and I would not call myself an admirer, but I can’t fault him for humbly and compassionately expressing his sadness about a nation that has a history of indulging in a dangerous practice. I would also remind people that he did so while helping funnel millions of dollars to Haiti.

People say he blamed the Haitians and that he said they deserved what they got, but that’s not what he said in the video. The accusations about Robertson appear to be stupid, deliberate, vicious lies. Nothing new there. If they are deliberate lies, the people who are spewing this propaganda are guilty of something much worse than suggesting a nation needs to turn to God.

One of Satan’s best tricks is turning evil into good and good into evil. We’re seeing it more and more now. If you caution people against homosexuality, because you care about them and you know it leads to misery, you’re not showing kindess; no, you’re a hate-filled bigot who likes seeing people die from AIDS. If you say it’s wrong for teachers to show your kids the “safe” way to fornicate, you’re not a responsible parent; you’re a freak who wants to condemn kids to death by projecting your backward sexual hangups onto them. If you think a seven-month fetus shouldn’t be torn apart without anaesthesia for the convenience of an irresponsible mother, you’re not protecting babies; you’re persecuting the sexually enlightened and forcing unwanted babies to live in anguish. And if you say Satan worship leads to misery, you’re punishing victims of a totally random tragedy. Like the many totally random tragedies that inexplicably strike Haiti just about every year while missing the other half of the island on which Haiti sits.

Jesus told us that before he returned to earth, it would be as it was in the days of Noah. What were those days like? Humanity was so perverse, God was willing to wipe it from the face of the earth and start over. The Talmud tells us the final straw was the forming of marriage contracts between people and animals. The one righteous man on earth, Noah, was a laughingstock (until it started raining).

We’re headed that way again. Perversion and arrogance and self-love are virtues. Exposing sin–one of the most helpful things you can do, and something the Bible requires us to do, proactively–is “hate.” Up is down. Day is night. Noah would feel right at home.

Whether or not Pat Robertson is right to suspect the current catastrophe is linked to Satan worship, he’s right to say Haitians need to turn from it. Satan is real, and he is powerful. He gets his due, with interest, and that means disease, violence, natural disasters, poverty, and every other ill imaginable. In short, it means your life will probably be like life in Haiti. God wants people to turn away from Satan so he can protect and bless them, and every Christian should be proud to say so.

Jesus was not tolerant, in the modern, amoral sense of the word. He was forgiving. It’s not the same thing. He didn’t associate with sinners because what they were doing was okay. He associated with them because they needed him more than other people; he said that, himself. He never said, “Your sins are forgiven, and it’s okay if you keep sinning.” He said, “go and sin no more.” He would not have held hands with Buddha and Mohammed and said they were basically colleagues. The most likely thing is that he sent both of them to hell, along with millions of their dupes. He spoke about hell. It’s a real place. He made it clear that many people were headed there. He made it clear that he was the only ticket out. Tolerance was the furthest thing from his mind. He didn’t even tolerate Jews he thought were in error; why would anyone think he would have tolerated voodoo?

The real meaning of tolerance is that you put up with something. It doesn’t mean you endorse it. We have warped the meaning of the word to make it synonymous with approval.

We are told that if we don’t warn people about their error, their blood is on our heads. If that is true, how can it be wrong to criticize idolatry? Ignoring egregious, perilous sin is like refusing to tell someone you saw a melanoma on his back or a rattlesnake under his bed. It’s not “tolerant.” It’s selfish, lazy, and cowardly.

Christianity is an exclusive faith. It does not allow for the possibility that other faiths are anything but evil. The New Testament makes that clear, over and over. The notion that there are other ways to be saved is a hundred percent contrary to Christianity. People choose not to think about this, because it’s inconvenient and makes them unpopular, but it’s undeniable. They have the strange idea that Christianity can be modernized and improved by removing the exclusivity, but if you believe that, you believe Jesus himself was wrong. That makes you a very funny kind of Christian, at best.

People who tell the truth about God are always persecuted. Jesus told us to expect it. It’s normal. It’s evidence that they’re right. If your goal is to please God, you have to set aside your hopes of being popular. It’s not going to happen. You can’t have it both ways. Jeremiah was beaten and imprisoned. Jesus was crucified. Zechariah was murdered. Micaiah was jailed. Elijah was hunted like an animal. Noah’s neighbors reviled him. Nehemiah had to work with a sword in one hand, because his enemies were a constant threat. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were bound and thrown into a furnace. Mordecai and the Jews of ancient Persia were threatened with genocide for refusing to treat a man like an idol. Ten of the original disciples were martyred, as was the one who replaced Judas. Paul was martyred. Stephen was martyred. The Romans used Christians as torches. The Bible could almost be described as a collection of tales about religious persecution. The fact that we make people angry does not mean we’re wrong. If we did not make people angry from time to time, it would mean something was amiss.

This is not our world. It belongs to Satan, and we are foreign insurgents. Every Gideon Bible is like an IED. A Christian in this world is like a festering splinter in a person’s body. The world becomes inflamed and tries to expel us, and sometimes, it succeeds. It’s normal. Jesus told us we would be hated, and that the world had hated him first. Did he lie?

The same idea that drives voodoo drives the tolerance craze. Voodoo practitioners believe you can alloy Christianity with demon worship, and that by doing so, you get the benefits of both. The tolerance pushers think you can be a good Christian while condoning everything the non-Christian world approves of. It doesn’t work that way. You’re on one side of the fence or the other. You cannot reconcile Christianity with secular values. No way.

It’s no wonder the tolerance crowd is mad at Pat Robertson. He’s criticizing idolatry, and in their hearts, idolatry is what they want for themselves. They want to be worldly Christians, serving themselves and other gods and Jesus. You can’t do that. Read the First Commandment.

I regret the many things that I’ve done that amount to idolatry. I wish I had been warned about them earlier. I wish I were more aware of my current chronic errors, and I pray regularly for God to show them to me. I wish I had been raised in a real Christian home, so I would not have made so many mistakes. The Bible tells us to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Add it all together, and the conclusion I draw is that it’s good to warn people when they make mistakes. It’s what I wish people had done for me. The psalms say “Let the righteous smite me; it shall be a blessing. And let him reprove me: it shall be an excellent oil which shall not break my head.” There is nothing self-righteous about warning people, any more than pulling someone into a lifeboat is self-righteous. It’s what you do, when you care.

On a per capita basis, Christians will probably send more money to Hait–unconditionally–than any other group, with the possible exception of Jews. When the critics can match that performance, I’ll listen to their tolerance spiel.

No, not even then.