“…and the teachers of the law were looking for some sly way to arrest Jesus and kill him.” Mark 14.1

Doesn’t it say something in the law about murder?  Hmmmm!?!  Look and see that a tension usually arises between people’s rules, or belief systems, and being able to follow them logically.  Those who knew the law were intentionally looking to break it so that they could remain teachers of the law. 

The incident in Will Vill last week (see previous post) reveals the same problem.  In order for the council to be tolerant, they had to exercise strict intolerance.  It was also seen in the Miss America pageant incident.  Miss California didn’t win because she doesn’t agree with same-sex marriage.  So the ‘tolerant’ judges lowered their marks for her because she didn’t agree with them.  She is not free to express her beliefs without harsh judgment.  Tolerance means no other opinion is valid except mine and I will intolerantly enforce my view of tolerance.

 On campus this week another example occurred.  The campus tolerates the obvious law breaking marijuana fest of 4/20 on their premises (lack of funding for sufficient resources is an issue), yet couldn’t stand to have students singing to Jesus and praying on another part of the campus just 2 days earlier, even threatening police intervention if the offenders didn’t leave promptly.  Of course, no one is offended by the giant, joint smoking mob in the middle of campus!

Apart from Jesus and His way, life isn’t livable with consistency in any other system of belief.  People have to borrow from Jesus’ way to live in their way.  For example,  naturalism provides no basis for an inherent value of people’s lives - we are here due to meaningless forces for meaningless reasons.  But life can’t be lived practically or relevantly with this value statement.  We hurt when 9/11 takes lives.  We want to help oppressed peoples be free and have basic needs met.  We want to see slavery and sex trafficking abolished.  If we are here by a meaningless cause for no purpose at all, then life has no meaning and persons have no value, and none of these issues even matter.

Life is hard to live with a worldview that doesn’t allow you to live in it consistently – that you have to break in order to abide by it.  You don’t have to not live by a Christian worldview in order to live it.