Toleration & Neutrality

The demand for religious neutrality reached new heights last Christmas: one town council who had no Christmas lights up last Christmas so as not to offend citizens of other religions! 

…Let me offer some ideas to cope with this stuff.  First, in matters of religious faith there’s no such thing as neutrality.  Religion, by itself, is about the way we express our beliefs - some of that may well be a matter of opinion.  But faith is about whatever we allow to rule our sense of what is good and bad, right and wrong, ugly or beautiful, true or false, worthy or worthless - what the Bible would call our ‘gods’.  ‘Atheists’ are not people who have no god; they are people who serve things in this world as gods, - like Reason, Science, Self-fulfilment, Progress, power, wealth, sex, popularity.  Even religion itself can be a god...  In this, none of us is neutral; we are just tolerant over things that don’t matter.  As Viscount Samuel once said, it’s easy to be tolerant if you have no principles. 

A second thing is that there is no human activity that is not affected by such ‘gods.’  It is often claimed, for instance, that science is ‘value-free’, there’s no such thing as Christian mathematics!  True, but you might be shocked to discover how mathematics has developed under the influence of religions - our measurement of time and space came from the ancient Babylonian star-worship; our concept of zero is Hindu in origin; ‘set theory’ has theological implications.  If you want more ask me for books...  A third thing is this: that Christianity has its own equivalent for tolerance: not silence or sweet agreement, but respect.  This is what the Bible means when it says ‘honour everyone’.  So it means caring about people’s wellbeing, at least enough to offer them another way of looking at life, without force or manipulation.  Claims to neutrality are false; what we need is honest profession of bias.  Forgive my bias, but I can’t find this idea anywhere but the New Testament!  As the Americans would say, Have a nice day!                                               

John Peck