Charity Bible News

Below is a copy of a recent letter submitted by our Pastor to the Editor of the Times & Transcript newspaper:

Letters
Published Monday September 10th, 2007
Appeared on page D8Show grace, not tolerance

To The Editor:

I have been troubled by reading the recent attacks on Mike Wilbur and Ken Colwell for the views they espoused in letters to your paper.

To vilify a professing Christian acting as an apologist for the God, the Christ, and the judgments of the Bible, is the height of absurdity. “I did not want to believe that people in my home town held these views . . .” one writer responded. How strange that those who most vocally espouse “tolerance” are so intolerant!

I would like to propose an alternative to the inferior virtue of tolerance — I propose grace.

According to a Princeton definition, tolerance means to allow without restraint. In a world of increasingly violent activism, this is unworkable. In the tolerance model we are all supposed to surrender our values until we reach the lowest common denominator. That means that diversity is dominated by sameness.

Grace, on the other hand, means undeserved favour. The mandate of Christians is to raise awareness of the precepts of God’s word, and live a life consistent with those principles. If mankind chooses to ignore the consequences of rejecting God’s judgments, then Christians have grace to accept them as a person; regardless of the fact that they don’t believe like us. Grace preserves respect for persons of independent thought; politically correct tolerance does not. I would suggest it is time to moderate the rhetoric and have a more reasonable discussion.

Richard Doiron (Aug. 30, D8) wrote, “Indians of Canada were butchered by people carrying Bibles, and in various parts of the world it still happens.” Hate speech like that is incomprehensible in a day when cartoon images of Mohammed are suppressed out of fear of offending. Forced conversion is not a Christian value. The atrocities of burning heretics and religious crusades are repugnant to the Christ who said “My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight. . .” Jesus also said, “love ye your enemies, and do good, . . . and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil. Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.”

The God of the Bible revealed himself to mankind, clarified his expectations by giving explicit commandments, and illustrated his judgments by documenting 6,000 years of human history. He further preserved all of this in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. Unfortunately, many opinions of Christianity have been formed by people listening to someone quote authors of books about the Bible, but no one in the chain has actually read the Bible.

It’s all about perspective. From a Christian perspective, the Bible is authoritative in its entirety. For anyone to represent themselves as a Christian and ignore or disavow the Bible is the height of hypocrisy.

The word Christian means “a follower of Christ.” To be a Christian, a person must not only believe in the existence of a historical Jesus who died, but they must accept that he is God’s only begotten Son who rose again to pay our debt of sin. Grace extends the courtesy of a fair hearing, but does not feel compelled to abandon its own principles to accommodate everyone.

Reasonable debate calls for a respectful comparison of ideas in the light of the best possible evidence.

At the end of the day, grace still loves those with whom it vigorously disagrees; and that is why true Christianity still flourishes. The demand of tolerance however, is the sound of silence.

Pastor Phil Seely,
Charity Bible Baptist Church,
Moncton

Unfortunately this is not from the science fiction file. According to CBC News, “After months of consultation, British regulators have agreed in principle to allow human-animal embryos to be created and used for research.”  The article goes on to say that “The research focuses on a specific aspect of chimerism that would involve removing the nucleus from animal egg cells and replacing it with human DNA.”

One Canadian scientist bemoaned the fact that Canada is not joining the party. “‘There’s nothing like this in Canada,’ Mick Bhatia, the scientific director of McMaster University’s cancer and stem cell biology institute in Hamilton, Ont., told CBCNews.ca. ‘We’re falling so far behind because we don’t even have a process in place.’”

Students of history will remember another monster who thought it was OK to experiment with humans “for the good of science” - his name was Adolf Hitler! What is the next barrier to be broken down after the door is opened to human experimentation? [Daniel 12:4] tells us that knowledge will be of paramount priority in the last days. The only question is, “How much will man sacrifice in his quest for knowledge?”

We would like to welcome new members Martin and Stephanie Boucher, and Jason Cogswell to Charity Bible Baptist Church. Although all three have been coming for some time, they took the step of making this “their church” a couple of weeks ago. We are thankful for their confidence and trust and we look forward to serving Christ together with them.

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