Yes and no. If all that is meant here is that people should not be coerced or forced to believe something or follow a certain religion—then I wholeheartedly agree. Religious liberty and freedom of conscience are extremely important principles to defend. The Manhattan Declaration captures this well: “No one should be compelled to embrace any religion against his will, nor should persons of faith be forbidden to worship God according to the dictates of conscience or to express freely and publicly their deeply held religious convictions.”
In his excellent book The Case for Civility, Os Guinness articulates a vision of what we should be after in public discourse about our various religious beliefs:
The vision of a civic public square is one in which everyone—people of all faiths, whether religious or naturalistic—are equally free to enter and engage public life on the basis of their faiths, as a matter of “free exercise” and as dictated by their own reason and conscience; but always within the double framework, first, of the Constitution, and second, of a freely and mutually agreed covenant, or common vision for the common good, of what each person understands to be just and free for everyone else, and therefore of the duties involved in living with the deep differences of others.
This is an example of what true tolerance is. True tolerance is where we extend to each other the right to be wrong. False tolerance, on the other hand, naïvely asserts that all ideas are created equal and this must be rejected. Not only is this obviously false, it’s unlivable. Unfortunately, “The ideal of religious tolerance has morphed into the straitjacket of religious agreement.” Contrary to what is commonly believed, the height of intolerance is not disagreement, but rather removing the public space and opportunity for people to disagree.
However, true tolerance is usually not what people have in mind when they say people should be free to believe in whatever God (or no god at all) they want to. Here is the simple, but profound point to grasp—merely believing something doesn’t make it true. Put differently, people are entitled to their own beliefs, but not their own truth. Belief is not what ultimately matters—truth is. Our believing something is true doesn’t make it true. The Bible isn’t true simply because I have faith. Truth is what corresponds to reality—telling it like it is.
The bottom line is that we discover truth; we don’t create it. Reality is what we bump (or slam!) into when we act on false beliefs. Spending a few minutes fondly reflecting on your junior high, high school, and college years will bring this principle vividly and painfully to life.
Question: How would our culture–and educational system–be better if took this to heart? Leave a comment below!
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