Is "Coexist" anti-Christian?

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richard_wang said:
Can’t we love someone all the way to Hell?

Isn’t the road to Hell paved with good intentions?
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If the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, I wonder what you suppose the road to Heaven is paved with?
 
Calgar said:
The rewards of tolerance are treachery and betrayal.
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Tolerance might be a weak word. But I’ll take it one word stronger. Love! This is about loving our neighbor and working together in a society towards common goals. Yes, maybe a Adventist, Catholic, Orthodox, Luthernan, Episcopalian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, Hindi seem to have no possible cohesion, yet here we are living in a common community and here we can agree on joining hands in common goal. We can agree to love life at conception! We can agree to cherish life. We can agree to show respect, give voice, and give equal rights, protection, and due process to all within our community, even the non-believers. Rather than argue on what we don’t agree on let’s focus on removing sin from our own actions.

Christ’s actions were indeed far more scandelous than your friends bumper sticker. He associated with prostitutes and dined with tax collectors, and he spoke openly about salvation to women, he laid his hands on those with lepersy and posessed by demons, he rejected wealth, he fought against profiting within the temple, and he rejected sin–yet he never rejected his neighbor. Gentiles and pagans flocked to Christ if only for the scraps of the salvation Christ offered through the living word of the Father.

The reward of this tolerance, as you put it–and love, as I put it–on earth may be treachery and betrayal, afterall, Chirst himself showed great tolerance to Rome and Herod and the Zealots yet he too was betrayed and crucified–and he was perfect. Imagine what they will do to us? But in the end, the reward is eternal salvation!
 
couponfit said:
Tolerance might be a weak word. But I’ll take it one word stronger. Love! This is about loving our neighbor and working together in a society towards common goals. Yes, maybe a Adventist, Catholic, Orthodox, Luthernan, Episcopalian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, Hindi seem to have no possible cohesion, yet here we are living in a common community and here we can agree on joining hands in common goal. We can agree to love life at conception! We can agree to cherish life. We can agree to show respect, give voice, and give equal rights, protection, and due process to all within our community, even the non-believers. Rather than argue on what we don’t agree on let’s focus on removing sin from our own actions.

The reward of this tolerance, as you put it–and love, as I put it–on earth may be treachery and betrayal, afterall, Chirst himself showed great tolerance to Rome and Herod and the Zealots yet he too was betrayed and crucified–and he was perfect. Imagine what they will do to us? But in the end, the reward is eternal salvation!
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👍
 
Calgar said:
The rewards of tolerance are treachery and betrayal.
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No, the rewards of tolerance is peace. What you are referring to isn’t tolerance but relativism. Unfortunately too many people today think that tolerance means to accept differences as truth “in another point of view,” and conclude that all religions are equal, betraying their own faith (or lack of faith) and treacherous to those who proclaim “Correct Teaching, absolute truth.” True tolerance is acknowledging the difference of morality, ethics, beliefs, etc, acknowledging in your heart something there is wrong, but putting that aside for the time being for the sake of maintaining peaceful relations in a growing secularized, god-less, world. Proper evangelization comes after.

This describes better true tolerance, and this shows the fruits of relativism.
 
I find those “Coexist” stickers always land on the cars with the “Prop-H8”, teachers union, rainbow, and Obama 08 stickers. Clearly, the intent is that we should all coexist by holding uniformly leftist political views. It is leftist shorthand - nothing more.
 
I’m sure all of you already know it was originally an artwork displayed at the Museum on the Seam, a socio-political art museum in Israel. One of the works on display for the Coexistence exhibit was similar in symbols of the different faiths, just not in bumper sticker form…lol

Personally I don’t care for it even though the original intent was not relativism, that seems to be what the bumper sticker represents to those who display them on their billboards of the highway
 
AlexPetrosPio said:
True tolerance is acknowledging the difference of morality, ethics, beliefs, etc, acknowledging in your heart something there is wrong, but putting that aside for the time being for the sake of maintaining peaceful relations in a growing secularized, god-less, world.
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So you tolerate abortion to “maintain peaceful relations”? Do you keep quiet so as not to offend a homosexual activist? Do you stand aside for the muslim who preaches that Jesus is not Christ?

Love is very powerful and I love everyone, but I will not back down from what I know is right.
 
Calgar said:
So you tolerate abortion to “maintain peaceful relations”? Do you keep quiet so as not to offend a homosexual activist? Do you stand aside for the muslim who preaches that Jesus is not Christ?

Love is very powerful and I love everyone, but I will not back down from what I know is right.
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I’m going to take it you didn’t read my article I posted. If you did, you’d have your answer.
 
I despise these bumper stickers and think the people who put them on their cars are like spineless jellyfish - PICK SOMETHING and commit to it!!

:rolleyes:

“coexist” what a weak word.
 
“coexist” reminds me of that other watered-down catch word: “tolerance”. It does smack or relativism but it also denies that there is such a thing as absolute truth.

In an inane attempt to establish commonality-which usually in these circumstances means the lowest common denominator- it ignores the serious and contradictory claims represented by the symbols within the sticker.

It also mistakes love and goodness for “kindness”. Allowing someone to believe something that is not true is not loving them, it’s not even “kind”, it is in fact cruel. The sticker is basically an exercise in that which is the polar opposite of love: indifference.

I think that is really what she was feeling but just lacked the ability to articulate it.
 
JHow said:
I find those “Coexist” stickers always land on the cars with the “Prop-H8”, teachers union, rainbow, and Obama 08 stickers. Clearly, the intent is that we should all coexist by holding uniformly leftist political views. It is leftist shorthand - nothing more.
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:amen:
 
seeker57 said:
Last weekend, I was speaking with a neighbor and the subject of bumper stickers came up

She has a sticker that states,“Coexist” on it, with the letters shaped in the form of symbols from a number of the world’s religions.

My neighbor, who is a teacher, said she was at work when a coworker became very upset with her because of that bumper sticker.

The coworker, another woman, became quite upset and vocal about the message the sticker sent, and said she was a “Christian” and could not accept any challenges to her “true” belief, my neighbor said.

The coworker also said that only her Christian beliefs, which my neighbor said were Protestant of some sort, were the sole true beliefs and that she considered the bumper sticker an affront against them.

OK, as a Unitarian Universalist, I cannot wrap my mind around the coworkers thought processes on this subject.

But I was not alone, My neighbor said she was completely baffled by the outburst, and my neighbor is not Unitarian.

I could probably understand the coworker saying she didn’t agree with the bumper sticker based on her beliefs. But this woman became quite adamant and very emotional about it.

Surely not all Christians harbor such beliefs.

My own thoughts were this woman simply has gone off the deep end. What I would like to ask her is whether her faith is so fragile that she cannot weather any non-conforming views?

I was just wondering how others her might respond to the coworker.

Peace,

Seeker
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Seeker,

The only way to figure this out is to recognize that the bumper sticker is words and pictures and have patience. A direct question to the coworker would have gone like this…

I understand that this upsets you.

What is in particular that upsets you?

I understand that.

Is there more?

After a series of questions I would have left it at thank you for your insight and be done with it.
 
Calgar said:
I will not back down from what I know is right.
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I know you believe you know you are right. And you “know” with 100% absolute certainty you are right by :hmmm: what? Faith. 🤷 I’m of course assuming that’s what you walk by. Rather than by sight. Beginning of course with faith in a Creator God unless you were actually present in Eden. Faith in the New Testament story of Christ. Unless you actually walked the earth in Apostolic times with Him. Faith in what your church teaches and in how it interprets. With any faith whose believers believe they are right, it first takes a lot of faith steps to reach the point where they believe they are. So without faith being able to be 100% absolutely proven without faith itself, might as well coexist with others who have a different faith than you do in the meantime. Peace.
 
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