There was a preacher in front of the library at Boise State today who was preaching with the aid of amplifiers and a speaker. In front of him was a sign that read “There Are No Lukewarm Christians In Heaven.” This man spoke in a manner that was forceful, dogmatic, strident, and arrogant. He had the posture of someone who believed he was certainly right and that anyone who dared to disagree was in league with the devil. I did not spend much time listening to this man. His position is incommensurable with mine, but I was really offended that this religious bigot had the effrontery to assert his doctrines in such a loud and offensive manner. I do believe he had the right to express his religious views in the manner that he did on the campus of a public university, but I object to his loud and bombastic manner. And I refuse to let the matter pass without offering a rejoinder.
When this man asserted that “There Are No Lukewarm Christians In Heaven,” he was assuming that there is a heaven, that he knew who was excluded from heaven, that he knew what a “lukewarm Christian” was, that he knew who was and was not a lukewarm Christian. I suppose that he also believed that he was not a lukewarm Christian, but rather that he was a wholehearted Christian and would, therefore, go to heaven. These are a lot of bold assumptions for any person to be making and to be using as a basis for the outlandish claim “There Are No Lukewarm Christians In Heaven.” The preacher only asserted his position. He offered no reasons for adopting it.
This man, perhaps, believed that he was proclaiming a profound truth. To their credit, the vast majority of students paid him no mind, and quietly went about their business. Crackpots deserve to be ignored, but it would be a mistake to think that because they deserve to be ignored they always will be and that their ideas aren’t harmful. Bad ideas have wreaked untold misery throughout history. What begins as a small fringe group of looney tunes who embrace crazy ideas can grow into a large and influential movement, if left unchallenged. In a society of rampant anomie, unmoored individuals can desperately cling to an irrational movement that offers them direction, purpose and meaning that goes beyond the pablum presented on TV or the vacuity of being a part of the corporate team. Let the preacher rant and rave about his nonsensical beliefs. That’s his First Amendment right, but I’m going to challenge the veracity of his claims. That’s my First Amendment Right.
Carl Norman
Nampa, Idaho
USA
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