Tolerance

I wasn't sure if I was going to write about the latest controversy in the NBA. Donald Sterling, owner of the Clippers allegedly made some racist remarks reflecting his deep seated beliefs.

The sports world has responded and many are calling for him to lose his team.

Wow.

It's very hard to live in America today. We can't even agree on what's wrong. Or if something is wrong, how severely said offense should be punished.

Let's take a step back and examine morality as a whole. There's a large group of Americans that believe there is an absolute standard for right and wrong that isn't determined by the law of the land or majority opinion. Those people are not in the majority and they believe that God and his Word means more than our ever-vacillating rules of order. At the same time, they realize that man-made laws are to be followed unless they clearly contradict what God has stated to the contrary.

The Bible is their standard. It teaches love and respect of others, but also punishment for the unrepentant. In a society where words have often lost their meaning those two words, "love" and "respect" sadly have to be defined. Love means desiring God's best for them. You want for everyone what God wants for them. Respect means that you will never think of yourself as better than someone else.

Even many so-called Christians don't understand these simple concepts. A demonstration of love is realizing we're all in the same boat. We aren't better than anyone else. We never were. We never will be.

That's why we are instructed not to steal from others, or lie to them, or to kill them. We learn that hating them is, in a very real sense, equal to killing them.

The Bible summed it up in what has been commonly called the golden rule. We are to love God with everything we have (heart, mind, soul, spirit, possessions) and to treat all others as well as we already treat ourselves.

Where we're different, as Christians, is that we accepted God's gracious offer of repentance. To demonstrate that we understand THAT concept we have to be willing to forgive others if they ask for forgiveness.

I'm afraid that concept of forgiveness is quickly forgotten when it comes to judging others. And that's how I see the situation currently.

The media and player representatives are demanding the stiffest of penalties (Sterling losing the team) in a quick rush to judgement without even determining guilt or giving him an opportunity to change his way of thinking.

In effect, they are rushing their condemnation of him because they can. They aren't giving him a chance to change.

America doesn't even have a law against being racist in thought. And I think that's a good thing. Our laws punish actions not beliefs. That's why there are lots of laws against discrimination. We CAN punish inappropriate actions. We SHOULD NOT punish thought. That's the slippery slope I don't want to be involved in.

IF Sterling used his inappropriate beliefs to discriminate against those in his organization (in the legal sense of the word) then he should be punished according to the law of the land. Safeguards are already in place for that.

If anyone wants to take it further than that, I feel like those outraged are merely forming a lynch mob of epic proportions. America's had enough lynch mobs.

No one is preaching love and tolerance and respect in this outrage.

They should. Even people who are wrong deserve a chance to see where they are wrong.

God gave me that chance.