and about being tolerant of others this is the big thing here in the u.s in north america
and uh over in europe you got to be tolerant you can't say jesus is the only way that's
being intolerant well let's look at that i want to present three answers for that first of all
this ethical objection to say it's unethical to say jesus is the only way the ethical objection
is inconsistent now greg koko has spoken the previous session he was talking about
you know the inconsistency of saying there's no truth right
there is no such thing as truth well is that the truth i can't speak a word in english what about
that that's self-refuting there are no absolutes all those things if they're true they're false
what about saying hey you're being an intolerant and i'm not going to tolerate it
um so it's inconsistent i remember several years ago i was on a no go back one please
i was on a previous slide yep i was on an elevator in norfolk virginia and i this woman got on and so
we're going down the elevator she ended up being a physicist from nasa and somehow i don't know
how it came up but we started talking about the origin of morals and she thought they were the or
they she thought they were part of the furniture of the universe so we started talking about
these things and um it lasted for a while now we weren't on the elevator the whole elevators had
their ups and downs you know but we weren't on the elevator the entire time we got off the elevator
we went out in the parking lot we were talking we probably talked for about 45 minutes and finally
i said to her do you and your husband really enjoy talking about these things oh yeah we do
well my wife and i we have a group over our house a couple times a year maybe three four times a
year my wife and i are the only christians but we have a couple and um you know one's a buddhist
the other is an agnostic you know we've got all different kinds of religious beliefs in world
view people who come to this we have coffee donuts we talk ab things very respectfully we enjoy doing
these things and we know we come to just to seek truth to talk about truth we get along very well
we know we're all going to challenge one another so um is this something you and your husband would
like to come to oh yeah yeah we would so we gave exchange contact information a couple months later
i called her up and her husband picked up the phone and so i introduced myself and he said oh
yeah i remember my wife telling me about you yeah we would love to come to your meeting because you
know what i don't like about christians well then i knew it was going to be kind of interesting
so i said tell me you got the floor tell me he says what i don't like about christians you guys
think you're the only way there is no other way and he just went on and on for about a good three
minutes and so finally he took a breath for a second i figured this could be place a good
good place to jump in and i said let me before you go and let me make sure i understand you correctly
you're saying that you don't like it when a jew says that she's right and everybody else
is wrong yep that's what i'm saying and you don't like it when a muslim says he's right
and everybody else is wrong yep that's what i'm saying that's exactly what i'm saying
and you don't like it when a christian says that she's right and everybody else is wrong
that's exactly what i'm saying everybody ought to have the right to believe whatever they want
and not push their views on anyone else and so i said well why are you pushing your view on me
yeah i mean you think that always can get you to heaven and it doesn't matter what you
believe and you can get to heaven well that's your view and you don't think that it's right
to try to convince someone of your view but yet you're trying to convince me of your view
by telling me that i can't practice my religious beliefs um you know jesus said that i'm to go out
and tell others if you don't like that well then you know i didn't make this up take it up with him
i'm just going by what he taught but see you're trying to push your view on me
it seems to me you're just as an intolerant and bigoted as those you abhor
well it got really quiet and then he had to go do something else at that point
and they never showed up for the meeting i don't know why but
but you can see that it's inconsistent the ethical objection is inconsistent second
is the ethical objection is insensitive culturally speaking now several years ago i
had a panel discussion with a muslim professor on the campus of old dominion university
um and it was what you know why i'm a christian or why i'm a muslim really a collegial discussion
between us warm discussion and at during the q a period there was a guy in the back and
he raised his hand he said now why do you guys hate each other i said hate each other
i thought we've had a pretty warm discussion i mean i i don't hate him i i love the guy and
i don't get the feeling that he hates me he was like sitting where you're sitting and he's going
it seems to me that in our posts our our post-christian our politically correct
western culture tolerance gets a new definition it's not a matter that you just have to allow
someone to have their own opinion you have to say that their opinion is equally valid and that is
culturally insensitive because he's middle eastern and if you hang around middle easterners you'll
start to find out that this politically correct stuff is a real turn off to them
you might think you're being nice to them they think you're a wuss and if i had said that your
view is equally val his view is equally valid as mine he would have said the only reason you could
say that mike is because you have no convictions about your own view and i don't respect you
so i said you're preferring your politically correct subculture over middle eastern culture
and you don't care about christian evangelical culture you're offending them either you just
care about your own culture and pushing your own views so it's culturally insensitive
third the ethical objection ignores truth now about three three and a half years ago my mom who
was in her late 60s at the time was in the shower she hadn't had a mammogram for over five years
and she felt a lump on her right breast she went to the doctor and they they took a biopsy they
called her back and they said joy that that's her name they said joy we have some very bad news for
you you have stage four breast cancer it has spread to your lymph nodes and it's in the bone
of your back this is very serious now here's what we are recommending for you we recommend
that you go through several months of chemotherapy and then we have surgery we remove your right
breast all your lymph nodes and then after that follow up with seven weeks of intense
radiation and then after that be on medication the rest of your life now this would be very difficult
for you your skin's gonna age prematurely your hair is gonna fall out you're going to feel
horrible you're going to feel weak you're going to just feel nauseous all the time
you're not going to want to eat anything everything's going to taste bad when you
eat it nothing's going to taste good so it's going to be bad it's going to be about horrible the next
year of your life if you choose to go this route is going to be perhaps the worst in your life
but if you want any chance of surviving at all this is what we recommend you do that's the truth
it's a hard truth but it's truth i think the worst thing that physician could have done is to say
that and then say but you know what that's just my opinion there are others that would say just eat
some chicken soup and take some extra vitamin c think positively and who am i to say they're wrong
that would be unethical and if we would say that that would be unethical when it comes to
a person's life isn't it much even more unethical to do the very same thing when we're talking about
the eternal destiny of a person's soul if jesus rose from the dead if christianity is true we have
the greatest news to give and some people aren't going to like that news but that's okay it's still
great news they can have eternal life if they reject it you go on you talk to the next person