I find it odd that Isaac Chan and Will Lavy call society's supposed intolerance surprising, especially since the subject of their Nov. 4 guest editorial, "First and foremost, Christianity is about Christ," Jesus Christ, had predicted that his faithful followers would be persecuted.
Any group that claims to be saved among so many fallen, to know what no others have grasped and to have a monopoly on the true form of God cannot be shocked when the "unsaved" begin to notice the dichotomy the group itself is trying to enforce.
The truth is not as the guest editorialists would have us believe. Christianity is not just about Jesus Christ. It was a skillful move, however, to make our disagreement with a likable dead man, rather than with modern believers who are, apparently, just following his orders.
However, a practitioner who lived by Jesus' words alone would be different from and perhaps unrecognized by modern Christians, since he would lack the earlier history in Judaism and later theological developments that Christians now take as clearly evident and fundamental.
Christianity is not as they say, but rather is about Jewish and Pauline sexual ethics being forced into our bedrooms. It is about theistic creeds, written long after Christ, being recited by not necessarily theistic children. It is about the Decalogue, which far predates Christ, in our courtrooms.
Christ might be the theoretical core of the religion, but modern practice is far more complex than the comlumnists pretend, and to blame their intolerance on him is to shame the good teacher's memory.
Justin Davis
Trinity'05
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