firstly, to comment on tolerant religions - fair enough i'm sure there are, i was speaking of "christian religion" in that christianity is not a religion, it is not a set of rules, and any attempt to make it such, any attempt to make it so absolute has resulted in dire consequences. take catholicism for example, people used to have to pay to have their sins forgiven. ridiculously unjust wars were started from a catholic perspective of we are right and you should obey our teachings. while i'm sure there are many tolerant religions, i was wanting to stick within christianity, if you have any examples of this please tell me, though from my experience any relgion within chrsitainity, any attempt to bring an absolute beyond what jesus said himself summed up all laws - love god and your neighbour, is something which will result in many flaws, be imperfect, and cause damage to people. also, take the example of the countless people who when faced with a gun have claimed they love jesus, have stood firm in their face. the most popular example being the girl from the columbine massacre, can't remember her name, but she was basically tortured by the two boys until they said, are you still a christian? she said yes and they shot her dead. there are plenty more examples, proving that while some peoples' faith may not be very strong, this is not evident in all peoples.
my point on this, to go to almostatheists reply, was that jesus never judged anyone, and that when jesus came and gave us a way to come back to God, he didn't do this through people's actions, trying to justify your own way into heaven, etc. but through grace. u2's song called grace i think highlights many of the great things about this. the point being that no person can act in accrodance with what perfection (God) requires. however, our imperfection is forgivable, and as such if we repent (this being confess, apologise and turn away from our sins) we are reconcilable with God.
the point of this being that one person cannot turn to the other and claim to be better than them. no matter how good a person is, they will never reach God's perfection, and as such are ultimately in the same boat as the rest of us. this meaning that we cannot judge each other, indeed this is evident when it is written in matthew i think, that "judge and you will be judged", "you will be judged by the measure with which you judge". this meaning, to me at least, that if you judge someone on their imperfections, it is to judge your own too, for as no-one is perfect, we all have cracks in our personality, and as such if you are not complete how can you complain at others for being incomplete too?
perhaps it is relevant to relay another of u2's songs, peace on earth, to this argument. in one bit, bono sings "and you become a monster, so the monster will not break you". take the example of the woman who yelled "jesus loves you". to her, the monster is paganism. whether rightly or wrongly, she feels threatened, attacked by this. as such she will tend to respond defensively rather than actually listen to whoever she is threatened by. this is true of anyone who refuses to listen to the other side of any argument. indeed when faced with someone who is shouting jesus loves you, demanding your conformity, than the natural response to this attack, is to defend. the best form of defence being attack, you attack right back. it's an endless cycle of people attacking each other. in other words, the only thing that can break this cycle is grace. inded to go back to u2's song grace, "grace travels outside of karma". we can justify defending ourselves when we feel attack, but then how can we justify attacking someone else because we feel threatened? only grace can break this cycle. take for example a guy i know. basically in so much trouble with the police that he was nearly locked away. he'd go round to his grandmothers drunk just to shout at her, it got so bad that the police stationed someone permanently round there to protect his grandmother. someone comes along and shows the boy some grace, shows him forgiveness, and he changes. he sees something different, he isn't constantly threatened by this person, but sees a way out of the cycle. now he serves at a church, doing security and in so many other ways. he's been transformed, simply because someone gave him a chance.
my ultimate point, is that rather than judging each other, criticising each other, we should realise that in the end none of us are perfect, and we all fall short of God's requirements. rather than threatening others when we are threatened, rather than becoming a monster to stop the monster breaking us, perhaps we should try and understand why the monster exists, show the monster some love, how can you show love if you've never been shown love? how can you care for somene if you've never been cared for? perhaps rather than talking all the time, we should take marilyn manson's advice on this, that rather than trying to convince someone else all the time, never taking the time to listen to anyone else, we should listen to other people. indeed, if you've never been listened to, how can you listen? if you're judging all the time, how can anyone break your prejudices if you wont let them? in the whole of the gospels, jesus directly answered 3 questions. perhaps from this we can take that rather than trying to answer questions and sticking to an absolute answer, we should discuss, we should talk and listen to each other. "he who has not sinned cast the first stone". indeed if this was followed i don't think there would be much conflict going on.
