Rony Tan has certainly not only caused a great rift among Christians and practitioners of other faiths with his comments on them, he has also caused a small rift within the Christian community itself with his remarks on homosexual people.
Whatever objection to the manner Rony Tan present his comments, I will take the matter up with him in person. I would not write a lengthly blog post condemning him, or ‘conduct a trial by social media’ – something which I have been against for a long time. While I will make no apology for Christianity saying that it is the only religion with the answer (to morality, the question of life and everything), I will admit that it is offensive for Rony Tan to ridicule how other religions present their answers. I do feel some shame and anger, because in spite of all the reminder from our own leaders to be sensitive to another person’s faith when evangelising, a leader of the Protestant Christian faith has done the exact opposite.
Other than with a few of my fellow believers, I have kept from discussing the matter with anyone from another religion. I would have kept it that way, until a chat with a non-Christian friend led to that topic.
With some apprehension I told this friend that Rony Tan has criticised two other religions, and that the remarks themselves were made readily available on the public domain. I told him my opinion that Rony Tan is not the first, nor would he be the last to make similar comments. I had expected nothing more than an angry reaction from him for my indifference to such a serious matter.
What surprised me was his reaction when he said, “I don’t really understand why are all these people upset. What he has said is something that a large part of the population would have considered as correct. All I could say was that he put it on the Internet so he ‘dai sei’ (Cantonese 抵死 – meaning ‘deserved to die’). What I meant is that all religions are somewhat closed in nature and I would find it news if a medium for a certain Chinese deity tells one of the followers looking for an advice to go seek a second opinion from Jesus Christ.”
Upon hearing his ‘second opinion’, we broke out in laughter. Though I doubt my friend was suggesting that all religions are intolerant of one another, he was simply pointing out that no religion (or someone of a certain faith) would actually suggest that another religion has a better answer. His comments hit me with the realization that those ‘crying for blood’ over Rony Tan’s comments suddenly don’t look very ‘open minded’ anymore.
Still, it is my opinion that an apology should go freely only to the Buddhists and Taoists. Anger will make them to close their minds to the message of Jesus Christ and they are lost to God forever. In spite of the Christian opinion of their beliefs, Christians do not deny that a large part of those beliefs also teach them to be morally upright people. In fact, I am in the opinion that these people ‘do by nature things required by the law (of God)’ (Romans 2:12).
However, on Rony Tan’s remarks on homosexuality, I cannot and will not stand with those who would go so far to spread a message of appeasement – especially in appeasing those who demand the right and the legal right to do what God has considered abominable.
The ‘message of appeasement’ masquerades itself as the Christian message of love. In some version of this false message, we are to close a blind eye even to sin – as long as it happens away in privacy and among consenting individuals or we should ‘leave them alone’ because they are ‘they simply seek to love’. The fact is Christians have always ‘left them alone’ and we only began to speak up when there is an attempt to legalised their deviant sexual acts or teach it as normal. Have pastors constantly preach against homosexuality before the furor surrounding the repeal of Section 377A and the fiasco at AWARE?
A brother-in-Christ once asked me this after reading another version of this false message, “Will you love someone so much that you will not tell him the truth simply because that truth might hurt him or offend him?” It is a question that those who spread the false message should bear in mind. The failure to warn someone from danger which could result in his death is a sin – the sin of omission. Do not forget that the Christian message is not entirely about love, it is also a message for us to repent, i.e. to turn away away from sin and seek the forgiveness of God.
In another version of the message of appeasement, someone has said we have failed to love our neighbours. And in explaining who our neighbour is, he cites Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25 ~ 37). The phrase ‘love your neighbor as yourself’ is first found in Leviticus 19:18. I would like to point out in Leviticus 19:17, it is written: ‘Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in his guilt.’ It is somewhat amusing that the proponent of the false message applies his definition of neighbour in Leviticus 19:17 only against fellow Christians, but not against the rest of the world. It probably also never occurred to the person abusing Jesus’ parable that the love referred to here simply means meeting the needs of one’s neighbours.
Based on the Good Samaritan Parable, which Christian has been like the priest or the Levite who refused to help the homosexuals in need? Is there any church which would bar a homosexual from just coming to church and listen to the message of Jesus Christ even though it may preach against their deviant sexual act?
What differs between Christians and homosexuals is the definition of needs. Christians believe that the homosexuals need to turn away from their deviant sexual acts and learn that it is considered sinful by God. While Christians have long lost the fight against sexual immorality, it does not mean that we won’t continue to fight when it threatens to expand its influence into our daily lives. After all, even non-Christians would stand up and resist when prostitution extends itself from its traditional strongholds into our neighbourhood!
If homosexuals disagree with the above perspective, there can be no compromise. Love does not extend into condoning or endorsing deviant sexual acts / sin. Do not expect Christians to give or calling us hateful because we are only defending the values that we hold dear. Homosexual activists make it sound like Christians are taking away some of their so-called ‘rights’ which never existed.
It is sad that even some Christians fall for that which I considered the greatest deception of our time and joined them in propagating that falsehood. Be warned, there are serious consequences in leading Jesus’ sheep astray.
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Well said. One of the issues is that Christian are called to spread the good words and this inevitably will infringe on other people’s rights and belief as we go about doing it. While I do not know much about the other religion, I think almost all of them do not have a similar exhortation. They are either born into the religion or it is considered a cultural religion. How do we balance the call to spread the gospel in a modern dynamic society? I don’t have the answer and I guess certainly Rony Tan also don’t have it.
I think one needs to take a helicopter view of this. This is certainly not a single, isloated incident that is the result of a one-off, spur of the moment mistake by a pastor. It is if anything, a reflection of the sorry state of many quarters of Christianity in our nation that have imposed a social system of increasing isloation that has led to a fertile breeding ground for these kinds of things to happen.
Rony Tan is not the problem, per say, he is part of a bigger problem affecting the Church in Singapore- which is the overwhelming attitude of anti-intellectualism and cultural and social isloation from the main populace, as well as the creation of an insular Christian subculture speaking their own lingo that is starting to miss the whole point of the Good News. His recent opinions, of course, brought these disturbing attitudes to the limelight.
In that respect, a critique of Rony Tan’s comments are not always an attack on the man himself (I can’t speak for everyone), if one uses his examples to point out a disturbing flaw that is affecting many christians, then indeed they have the right to do so. They are not making noise about him persay, they are making noise about the issue that he now unfortunately represents.
In context. Ultimately this issue affects Christianty as a whole in Singapore, it’s not just about Rony Tan. One realizes that Rony Tan’s attitude is not just something we should take to the man himself, but actually to each and every one of us, even ourselves.
Someone once said, Christians are like manure… spread them out and the land is fertile and things grow… cluster them together and all you get is one pile of dung that does little but stink. I wonder if the fact we have been raising so many stinks is due to us doing things right, or wrong?
Who are we expecting to raise the issue personally with him? Christians or non-Christians? In that case, Rony Tan would have to speak to a lot of people.
Unfortunately Rony Tan’s comments were public comments. Public comments will invoke public reactions. He put forward his point of view to be critiqued by others. It is another matter if he were making these statements in a private setting (a megachurch unfortunately, is NOT a private settling).
That said, Rony Tan may not speak for all of us, however many non-believers assume that his statements and attitudes are reflective of Christianity in general. This means that silence on the issue, without seeking to clarify with those offended that these attitudes are in fact, not condoned by Christians in general is important, given that the issue has gone beyond the affairs of a local church and affected the Singaporean public in general.
Well the issue with Rony Tan is not that he made a critique of Buddhism or Taoism… all religions, or any idealogy that claims it has a handle on the truth will of course often end up with exclusive truth claims. It is not wrong to believe in what you believe to be the truth
The problem with Rony Tan is that he grossly misrepresented Buddhism and Taoism in his efforts. Basically he didn’t do his research or homework at all. That is what makes it so offensive. It’s akin to a Buddhist monk having a sermon ridiculing Christians and blind leading the blind because we believe in Santa Claus- a misrepresentation of our position. Worse, not only did he not do his homework, he is actually feeding these views to his congregation, who don’t seem to know any better unfortunately.
Now the hoo-ha aside, this is worrying because it indicates a current trend in certain brands of popular Christianity towards reckless anti-intellectualism, ignorant action and a serious lack of understanding on anything that is not coming from the pulpit. We are raising a generation of believers who are uninterested in understanding other beliefs and cultures, and who are consquently largely unable to reach out to them. If you ask me, this is worrying. Are we becoming isloated and irrelevant? Are we making the gospel irrelevant with our ignorance? Contrast how Rony Tan handle the beliefs of others to how Jesus handled the beliefs of the woman at the well.
I think we are lacking something in our churches nowadays… namely a serious lack in raising up Christians who know how to honour God with thier intellect as well. What happened to our G.K. Chestertons and C.S. Lewises?