Dear Christians, Now Is The Time For Intolerance

You may have noticed that progressives have zero tolerance for apostasy.

If you blaspheme their gods or deny their dogmas or commit any sort of heresy against what they hold sacred, they will punish you. They will boycott you. They will rally against you. They will scream and shout and hang labels like "bigot" and "homophobe" and "transphobe" around your neck. They will destroy your reputation, if necessary, and your career, and your entire life if they can. They do not believe that non-progressive ideas have a fundamental right to exist, nor do they think any form of non-progressive expression should be excused.

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They will challenge everything. They are unforgiving and unrelenting. They do not suffer blasphemers gladly; they would much rather make the blasphemer suffer. In that way, they are strikingly similar to jihadists, which might partly explain why progressives seem to understand and sympathize with that group.

Now compare them to Christians in this country. Contrast how we react to blasphemy to how they do. There's certainly quite a bit more of the anti-Christian type to go around, and it's always significantly more vicious, targeted, and intentional. Just last week, for instance, the hit ABC show "Scandal" aired an episode where the protagonist got an abortion. It was meant to be an inspiring, climactic, even festive moment. During the procedure "Silent Night" played in the background.

Did you get that?

Maybe I should pause here.

A major network prime time show set an abortion to a song about the birth of Christ. That's not just inappropriate or in poor taste -- it's outright sacrilege, and done for no other reason than to promote baby-killing, offend Christians, and mock our Savior. It was essentially the televised version of Piss Christ, but more repulsive.

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These sorts of moments are not especially rare on network television, particularly on ABC. This is, after all, the same channel that produced a show called "Good Christian Bitches" a while back. Its sister network, ABC Family, has a show called "The Fosters" about a biracial lesbian couple that fosters children. I've never watched it (because I'd rather stick my face in a blender) but you can tell just from the description that it was basically designed for no other reason than to flip the middle finger at Christians. That's literally the only reason it exists.

Recently, it earned the distinction of being the first show to depict a pair of 13-year-old boys kissing. Showing young boys kiss on camera should be a crime punishable by several years in prison, but in this society, it's a relatively routine entertainment event. "The Fosters" may be the first to feature homosexual exploration between pubescent children, but their "gay teens" plot line follows in the footsteps of many others, including "Glee," which had two gay kids lose their virginity in an episode a few years back.

As if Hollywood isn't sending the message clearly enough, in the coming months we'll be treated to a new comedy series on Fox called "Lucifer." It centers around the exploits of the biblical Devil -- a charming, decent, witty, good looking, well-intentioned guy who comes to Earth in human form and helps the Los Angeles Police Department solve crimes.

Around the same time that Fox debuts a show blatantly glorifying Satan, AMC will be offering up a similar spectacle called "Preacher." Based on a comic book read by immature, semi-literate men, the show will follow the adventures of a Christian minister who's been possessed by the lovechild of an angel and a demon. The protagonist now roams the countryside killing people, battling the evil Church, and hunting for God, who has cowardly abandoned the world and must be held accountable by a half-demonic Hellspawn.

Now, imagine. Imagine ABC released a show called "Good Muslim Bitches," or AMC made one about a demon-infested Imam whose main antagonists are orthodox Muslims. Imagine the central plot is the Imam's quest to find Allah and bring him to justice for his dereliction of duties.

Imagine Fox made a program called "Iblis" -- the name of the Satan figure in Islam -- where the Muslim devil is portrayed as a funny, smooth talking Arabic dude who comes to Earth, has sex with Muslim women, and fights bad guys.

Imagine, in an analogous situation for progressives, that an ABC show aired a spectacular finale episode where the uplifting, climactic moment is a gay man undergoing gay conversion therapy. Or perhaps even more comparable, imagine an exhilarating, cheerful scene where the protagonist murders a homosexual while "Same Love" plays in the background.

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Just imagine. Just imagine that a giant, mainstream media company curb-stomped Muslims or progressives and then spit in their face and defecated on their idols just for fun. Imagine what would happen. To start with, Fox and AMC headquarters would be blown to pieces or invaded by armed assailants. ABC, for waging such a brutal assault on gay rights ideology, would be boycotted by millions, its executives subjected to harassment and death threats, its advertisers targeted, its CEO exposed in front of the world and all of his deepest and darkest secrets revealed. Dozens would be fired. ABC would be forced to issue several graveling apologies, and every ABC owned property and affiliate and associate would have to publicly condemn the network and sign contracts promising to air pro-gay propaganda videos three times a week in perpetuity as restitution. And that would just be the beginning.

But what happens when Christianity is desecrated; Christians slandered; Christ mocked; the Devil sexualized and glorified; and unholy abominations like abortion promoted on prime time television? Well, petitions. Live Action started one demanding that ABC commit to never promoting abortion again. That could be a fine start, but it never leads to anything. Many Christians will continue watching these shows, and there's no doubt many more will continue watching the networks that produce them, not to mention buying products from companies who advertise with them. All the while, we'll trumpet our "tolerance" for speech that defames our Lord, ridicules our faith, and advances debauchery and hedonism, as if we somehow deserve credit for it.

I'm not saying we should do what the Muslims do in these situations. I'm not even saying we should do what progressives do. But I am saying we, as Christians, ought to be totally, completely intolerant of evil and blasphemy. We should neither respect it nor dismiss it as mere "entertainment." When someone mocks our God, we ought to oppose them forcefully and relentlessly. Shouting it down might not always be the answer, but shouting is at least better than whispering or saying nothing.

There are too many "offended" whiners in our culture who get their feelings hurt over the smallest perceived slight, so I am not recommending mere offendedness at personal insults. Those we must endure and often ignore -- a skill many of our nation's college students need to learn. But Christians ought to be outraged, incensed, and infuriated by heinous attacks against God, faith, and virtue. Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek when someone slaps us, but He makes no such recommendation when someone slaps God or His commandments.

Jesus flipped tables and physically accosted people who made a mockery of the temple (John 2:13). He fashioned a whip out of cords and drove them away, and Scripture tells us His disciples recalled the passage from Psalms: "Zeal for your house will consume me." Remember, Christ is now the Temple (Matthew 12:6). So when Christ is defiled, sneered at, belittled, and degraded, it is not our responsibility to look the other way and carry on with our day like it's no big deal. Christ is the Temple. He is the Lord. He is our Master in Heaven, and His servants ought to be flipping tables to defend His Name.

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In Medieval times, if some heretic produced a stage play along the lines of what so often comes out of Hollywood or the recording industry, he would have been swarmed by a furious mob and thrown in the stocks or stoned to death in the street. Christian societies believed that nobody had a right or a privilege to insult God. They treated the crime of blasphemy like we treat treason. Only instead of betraying your country, you are betraying your God, and that was the highest crime of all.

I'm not suggesting we adopt those old school techniques -- I quite like the First Amendment, and I do believe everyone should have the legal right to say what they want -- but we should feel the same fury deep inside us. The same indignation. The same primal anger that would be provoked if someone personally demeaned our mothers or our spouses. The same dogmatic and consuming zeal that Jesus felt when he committed what would now be considered first-degree assault against the money changers in the Temple.

Our culture, particularly our pop culture, routinely profanes our faith, debases our God, and makes a travesty of goodness and virtue. As Christians, we've long tolerated it, and for many of us, that tolerance has turned into apathy, and that apathy into participation. Indeed, these networks -- ABC, Fox, AMC, many others -- wouldn't exist, they couldn't stay in business, if not for the patronage of supposed Christians. If every Christian was consumed with a insatiable zeal for Christ, if every Christian had no tolerance at all for blasphemy, pornography, and sacrilege, then our entertainment in this country would look and sound very different. In fact, it used to look and sound very different, and that's precisely because the population would have revolted against the anti-Christian slime and sludge Hollywood vomits out these days.

We are not victims of this heathen culture. We are drivers of it.

As Christians, nobody in our culture hesitates to smear our faith and slap our Savior in the face, because they don't respect us. They know we might get a little peeved about dumb things like red cups at Starbucks, but when it comes down to it, we'll guzzle the same filthy, blasphemous, pagan garbage as everyone else. We'll eat whatever they shovel into our faces. They can create shows where the literal Devil is a sex symbol, or where Jesus Christ has sex with married women, and, while we might not watch those show (but often we will), we'll still support the network that distributes it, so long as it airs others shows that only exalt Satan and befoul Our Lord in understated and indirect ways.

Other groups and their false gods are not savagely insulted as a form of mainstream entertainment, because they will not stand for it. Granted, the manner in which they refuse to stand for it can often be evil, and besides, their protests aren't as legitimate to begin with because their beliefs aren't true. Even if "Zoolander 2" makes fun of "transgenders", that's not nearly as outrageous as making fun of Jesus Christ, because Jesus Christ is Lord whereas "transgenderism" is a silly, absurd, perverse charade. Still, progressives defend their silly, absurd, perverse charades with more vigor than we defend our eternal Truths. They often do so unethically or even sadistically, but that doesn't make the deafening silence and shameful inaction of Christians excusable by contrast.

Here's what should happen: every Christian -- myself included -- should perform an inventory of the media, music, and entertainment they support, fund, and consume. Anything that is offensive to God, who created us to glorify Him, should be abandoned immediately. Any network that glamorizes evil, sells debauchery, and degrades the Lord God, should be permanently boycotted by every Christian in the country. Christ called us to cut off our hands if they cause us to sin, so I think, at the very least, we should be able to cut off TV channels. Their attacks against the Lord should be punished by a dramatic, crushing loss of profit. We should force them to weep and apologize desperately for their offenses. Progressives get apologies even when the offender has done nothing wrong. Christians, on the other hand, get apologies for nothing, even when the offender has spit in the face of God Himself. Christians in this country are weak and emasculated, and our enemies are happy to take advantage of that fact.

When our Faith is mocked for entertainment, we should respond in protest. We should get angry. We should break out the whip, as Jesus did. We should demand that our beliefs be respected. We should be offended by anti-Christian, blasphemous material, not because it attacks us, but because it attacks Our Lord. In no other society in the world is the supposed predominant religion constantly mocked and belittled on their TV screens and in their schools and everywhere else. If only the Christians here chose not to indulge in anti-Christian entertainment, and chose not to give money to anti-Christian companies, and chose to live by Biblical precepts, and chose to speak out with righteous anger whenever Jesus Christ is jeered at and taunted by these bigoted clowns, we would magically become a Christian nation that looks, sounds, and acts like one.

We are hypocrites, you and I. We lack the courage of our convictions. We disguise our cowardice in "tolerance" and "respect for free speech," but, really, we either don't care about defending our Lord or we're too afraid. If we had courage, this culture would still be ours, and if it were ours, it would be God's, and if it were God's we could turn on the TV at 8pm on a Tuesday and not have to worry about our kids being exposed to smut and Satanism. We are where we are because we have gone along with it.

"Hey, well you know, we need to be in the world!" 

Stop it. Stop rationalizing. Yes, obviously we are in the world. But we are not only in this world. We are also in the spiritual, eternal world -- our citizenship is in Heaven, as Paul taught us -- so we should act in this world as people who are extremely aware of the other on. Praying to His Father, Jesus said:

I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world.My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.They are not of the world, even as I am not of it.Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.

If we lived like this, rather than living like "our god is our stomach" (Philippians 3:19), we would be fierce warriors ready to defend Our Father against any attack, and certainly ready to amputate from our lives any form of "entertainment" that heaps shame on us and our faith. But we are not fierce warriors, are we? We are far too tolerant for that.

Tolerance. Horrible, shameful tolerance. Enough of that. These days, tolerance is for the weak.

I think it's about time for some determined, decisive, glorious intolerance.

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