Tolerance just ain’t what it used to be.

Besides Lord and Savior, We’ve heard Jesus called many things.  Some say he was a prophet, some say he was a post-modern hippie in pre-modern times, some say he was just an ordinary guy who thought love was a good idea, and many more.  But I never heard Jesus called this name before.  The police in the UK think that Jesus was a hooligan.  That’s right.  A hooligan.

What other conclusion can you come to after hearing this story. Dale Mcalpine, a part-time Christian preacher in the UK was handing out leaflets on the street when he got into a conversation about homosexuality with a passer-by and a police officer.  He told them that he believes as the church has always believed, that homosexuality is a sin.

For the offense of being Christian in public, Dale Mcalpine was arrested and charged with hooliganism.  The crime with which Mcalpine is charged was originally designed to address drunken enticements to riot frequently seen after soccer games.

The fact that some people heard Mcalpine say that homosexuality is a sin is supposedly, in the minds of the police there, an incitement to riot.  Absurd.

Slippery slope arguments are typically regarded as uniquely unconvincing.  However, I think that the case holds more merit when argued from the bottom of the slope.  The inevitable ride down the slippery slope proceeds from Christian to post-Christian to anti-Christian in very short order.  There is no stopping at some happy Lennonesque post-Christian secular state where everyone is loved and respected without religion. Rather,  the real world flies right by “imagine” and into violently anti-Christian.  Not so much peace and love as hoped and probably many more dead bodies than anticipated, mostly Christians.  Much of Europe is on the way down and now the UK is apparently nearing the bottom of the cultural slip-n-slide.

So what would happen if that ordinary and accidentally deified teacher of yore happened to be wandering the streets in the Cumbrian town of Workington, today he would not be viewed as the rather milquetoast sin-endorsing teacher of love that so many post-moderns would have us believe.  Nope, he would be seen as a riot provoking hooligan and dealt with accordingly.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.