Churches of Christ -- Sermons; Sermons, American -- 20th century
The Catholic speaker was addressed in the panel discussion as “Father So
and So.” If I had been on that discussion I would have called him Mr.
Cleary. I suppose during a meeting advocating tolerance he would have
meekly tolerated my doing so. For me to call him father would be a
violation of my conscience and of the word of God. I couldn’t have
called Mr. Julius Mark “Rabbi Mark,” because my Bible says, “But be not
ye called Rabbi” (Matt. 23:8). I know Mr. Mark doesn’t agree with me on
that because he doesn’t accept the New Testament as his Bible. I know
the Catholic wouldn’t agree with that, because he says the Bible is not
the standard, that this man whom he calls father is the standard.
Just think how ridiculous it is for three men to pretend that they are
brethren when two of them propose to believe in Christ and the other one
doesn’t; one believes the New Testament and neither of the others do;
and one believes that the man whom he calls pope has all the authority
and neither of the others do. They haven’t yet agreed upon the authority
or standard to which we should make appeal in order to settle our
differences.
VII
Impractical “Tolerance”
During the few remaining minutes I want to talk about a different sort
of intolerance—or rather a different sort of so-called tolerance—the
kind that is being advocated generally by such meetings as we had last
Tuesday night, and by a great many folk whom I meet from day to day.
This particular type of tolerance simply means that we ought to agree
with everybody on everything and oppose nobody on anything. That is what
it amounts to. Its advocates pretend to endorse everything and everybody
and oppose nobody and nothing.
Let me make it clear that this is only a theory. Even the people who
advocate it do not practice it. Nobody practices it. If you are going to
take the attitude of opposing nothing and endorsing everything and
everybody, then you have to endorse intolerance. Such so-called
tolerance would cut off all evangelism. You couldn’t try to convert
anybody to anything if you put that into practice. You’d just have to
agree with everybody on everything. So you see it is mostly a theory.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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