I do not struggle with the idea of people having faith in an almighty being. In fact, I will defend anyone’s right to believe in the God of their choosing. We deserve religious freedoms and a choice to worship any deity we choose… or don’t choose as the case may be. Religion can be a powerful force of good in the world. I know a few very religious people, and they use their faith as a cornerstone for their integrity. They are honourable, respectable, good natured friends, neighbours, and citizens to their core.

I also see religious fanaticism as a significant problem in our world. A problem which fosters hate, and forces people into indoctrinated, evil beliefs. Beliefs which permits them to do unspeakable acts that are not only extremely harmful, but also an embarrassment to humanity.

Both of these can coexist simultaneously, across multiple religious beliefs. It’s not necessarily the religions themselves but misguided humans choosing to blindly follow interpretations of doctrine that bring out the worst in faith and humanity. And so the paradox of intolerance comes into play… we need to have intolerance for bad faith actors, while insuring we are remaining tolerant of good people of all faiths, even if especially if they are different than ours.

And this leaves me with two things for which I find myself less and less tolerant:

1. Uninvited preaching

There have been a few very public examples recently of people preaching their gospel on airplanes. They take advantage of a captive audience and without invitation decide that they will evangelize. I have the utmost tolerance and even acceptance of them believing what they want to believe, and I think they have every right to evangelize inside the confines of their church. But I’m intolerant of this idea of evangelizing to a captive audience who did not choose to listen but are stuck doing so.

Solution: Sing a song like ‘Row-Row-Row Your Boat’. Almost everyone knows the lyrics and people who don’t want to listen to preaching can easily join in and drown out the preacher (who is ultimately being rude). I understand that the singing wasn’t invited either, but I truly believe this is a lesser of two evils. The video examples demonstrate that even trying to complain permits these people to continue to evangelize, and then even claim religious persecution… making themselves out to be the victim rather than the social delinquents that they are. You can’t argue with fanatics, so just drown them out so no one can hear them.

2. Proclamations of God’s work

I’m not going to share the sources of the next examples, because like many of the commenters, (who are the reason these came across my feed), I have nothing kind to say about these posts. A reverend shared the image of a lone green house that withstood the horrific floods in Nepal, caused by the breaking up of a large glacier. His caption with the image said, “This house withstood all the flood challenge in Nepal. It’s all about the mercy of God and not necessarily the ingenuity of the Architectural work.”

What an ignorant and hateful thing to say.

Here is another example, this one came with a video showing the devastation all around the same green house, “I believe God decided to save them. It wasn’t because of the engineer who built the structure or because the structure was strong enough to protect them. I believe it was simply God’s intervention that kept them alive.”

So cruelly insensitive.

Thousands of people dead, many with no opportunity to escape the impending floodwaters. So many lives ended, so many more will continue to suffer in the coming months, and you brag about your god being merciful and saving one family, one house? It’s embarrassing that in a tragedy of this scale, this is where you see your god! The insensitivity is at a scale that can best be described as horrific. Imagine a Nepalese neighbour, who survived the flood, but lost family members, reading that post. I shudder to think of how hurtful it would be to see people praising their god for this.

Solution: I’ve already seen this in the comments. Ridicule anyone who praises the ‘God of the gaps’… call out the hypocrisy of thanking god for a shimmer of compassion in a river of devastation. If your all-powerful god is so selective in his mercy, he is vindictive, mean-spirited, and hateful. And if you are going to spew hurtful ignorance, you deserve the backlash that you get.

I struggle to not sound upset and angry when I share these ideas, but that’s the nature of the paradox of intolerance. We cannot extend tolerance to the intolerant, and religious zealots uninvitedly proselytizing or people seeing the hand of god amongst hurt and devastation is cruelty disguised as mercy. This is unacceptable, and we can’t sit by and let it happen. It’s not contributing to our society in any positive way… and it’s not what any kind, loving god would want.