Intolerance

There is one thing I cannot tolerate.  OK, there's more than one -- anyone who hurts children and animals, spiders, zucchini, harmonica music -- but there's one really big one, and that's lack of tolerance.  It drives me crazy.

A friend pointed out a post today on the blog of someone who's rather well-known in the adoption-blogging world.  She's one of those blogging adoptive moms who's very in-your-face with her religion, the kind who might smugly wield "I'll pray for you" as a weapon.  And she also apparently believes that anyone who doesn't share her particular brand of religion is going straight to hell.  I suppose I'll see quite a few of you there.  It'll be like an eternal girls' night out!

How did Christianity become so perverted?  Honestly, how did it go from a shared belief in tolerance, love and charity toward one's neighbors to being a belief in "My way is the only way?"  I have some close friends and relatives who are devout Christians, and for the most part, they seem to respect my decidedly secular spiritual beliefs.  But there is a subset of Christians who do not.  They adhere so closely to the dogma that they seem to fail to understand the broader philosophies that lie beneath it.  Sadly, these people seem to be the face of modern American Christianity.  They preach hatred toward Muslims and believe that hundreds of millions of people are wrong about their spiritual beliefs.  How can they not see their own arrogance?  How can they believe that Jesus would endorse this kind of intolerance?

I don't understand it, and I cannot tolerate it.  I am compelled to point out bigotry when I see it, and this kind of thinking, my friends, is bigotry disguised as Christianity.