Error Has No Rights
Stacy L. Harp
November 17, 2008
There is an editorial on the Dallas News website that I found very interesting. The following paragraph I found especially interesting.
When competing religious truth claims clash in America, we typically agree to disagree. But throughout human history, and in much of the world today, religious conflict often turns violent. Religious tolerance cannot exist if one believes that to tolerate another's faith is to diminish one's own by accepting an untruth.
Is there a way out? In the 1960s, the Roman Catholic Church, which had long denied religious freedom to non-Catholics with the teaching that "error has no rights," reconciled religious orthodoxy with modern pluralism. The Second Vatican Council declared that indeed error has no rights, but humans do. In other words, people have a God-given right to be wrong about God.
I look at this and think to myself, God doesn't want robots. It's why He gave us free will and minds that search for Him and the truth. The beauty of "being wrong about God" is that if the person is truly seeking God, if the person is truly seeking TRUTH, I believe God honors that search. I have heard of a revival among Muslims, for example, who have recently seen visions of Jesus. Although we in America don't get these visions, I can see that God uses the Islamic need for visions and reaches them in that method -- because that is their point of need to find Him. This is why I believe that if the person's heart is right, true and pure, God will get to that person, no matter what. God reaches down and hugs us when we don't even know it's Him. So yes, although the writer of this editorial probably didn't have the intent of demonstrating the love of God with his or her words, he or she did just that -- and I am in agreement.
Posted by: Heidi Rafferty | November 17, 2008 at 02:08 PM
This must show that Christ shall soon return.
Posted by: Jonathan Wells | November 17, 2008 at 02:34 PM
It's starting to get more ugly, and not just in distant countries and past histories. A real bad sign is the extreme apathy. Article "When Martyrdom is Meh" has some references at my blog
Posted by: Rick Warden | November 18, 2008 at 05:49 AM
Religion and violence do go hand in hand, but not just so because of the people themselves, but the war of spiritual realm too.
Posted by: Christian Blog | November 21, 2008 at 07:29 AM