Perhaps culture is not your measuring stick. Maybe it’s tradition. Maybe it’s your own upbringing or experiences that shape your belief system.
My point is not so much that you should accept the God of the Bible as the best arbiter of right and wrong as I do. My point is to help you see that, like me, you too have a system of right and wrong. You draw the line somewhere. And you base it on something, a set of core beliefs.
You may not like me saying you have a set of core beliefs, but you have a set of core beliefs. I know at least one of those core beliefs: Thou shall not steal my iPad. Am I right?
The question is to ask yourself and for me to ask myself: Who determines who makes the rules? Who determines where the line should be drawn? What constitutes good and evil, sin and charity? What shapes our definitions of these things and how justice is served?
All of us are making judgements, whether we realize it or not. To declare someone intolerant is, in it’s own way, a judgement about someone’s values. It’s a statement based on some kind of belief system.
As a sinful, fallen, gospel-loving Christian saved by God’s grace, I choose to anchor my value system to something timeless: God’s unchanging revelation of Himself in His Word. I may not always interpret the Bible clearly because I “see through a glass darkly,” but I’ve found that it’s a more reliable standard than the changing whims of human emotion, popular culture and social science.
All of us are planting our flags somewhere, whether we admit it or not. I’m planting mine here.
