PC

These are days of PC – I don’t mean Progressive Conservatives, or President’s Choice, or Personal Computers, or even Physically Challenged – but rather the dreaded Political Correctness. Hand in hand with Political Correctness (“PC”) goes tolerance. We are told that we need to be tolerant of others and their choices of faith, lifestyle and culture.

What I’ve been thinking about lately is the degree to which I am tolerant of others. How tolerant am I of people who choose to follow a different faith, or for that matter, no faith at all? How tolerant am I of people who choose to live by a different set of lifestyle rules? How tolerant am I, in general, of other people?

I wonder what tolerance means and what it looks like. For me, I think it means being a friend and trying to show love, even while I may not agree with viewpoints or choices.

I would describe myself as a conservative and a Christ-follower. I work with someone who is liberal and refers to certain Christians as “born-agains”. This person is quite opinionated and is firm in her belief that she is right and anyone who disagrees is misguided and wrong. Some days it’s challenging to like this person, and most often I try not to engage in any kind of political or faith-based discussion with her. I’d like to think that I am being tolerant of her and her views.

It seems to me there is becoming less and less of a tolerance for people of faith. Recently there was an effort in a US town to change the name of “Good Friday” to “Spring Celebration” or something silly like that. The effort didn’t get off the ground, thank goodness, but I’m sure someone will try again next year. How many years has it been now that retail employees have been told they can’t wish a customer “Merry Christmas” but to say “Season’s Greetings”? And our schools no longer have Christmas Concerts but “Winter Concerts” to celebrate the season. But what season is being celebrated?

So while we’re being called to be tolerant in the name of Political Correctness, is seems to be acceptable to be intolerant of people of faith. Perhaps PC should stand for Persecuted Christians.