But the “okay” sign hasn’t always meant “white supremacy.” It used to just mean “okay” – you know, as an innocent answer to a question. That got me to thinking. If its meaning had changed over time, what other non-verbal communication signals had changed as well? I don’t want to accidently signal that I’m a cis-gendered homophobe or something. I decided to do a little research.
Being tolerant is not possible if one’s religious views are grounded in a revelation that dismisses in the most heinous ways those outside that religious community. A centrally important part of tolerance is to be able to maintain a faithful skepticism about that which is revealed in one’s own religious tradition.
Sometimes the quest for spirituality can take bizarre – and even dangerous – forms. In another Internet group dealing with the intersection of medicine and spirituality, those same “New Age” ideas that appear to have taken over the religious section of bookstores seem poised to take a run at Western allopathic medicine as well.
It is accurate to say that Jews, Christians and Muslims all point to the same God in worship – the God of Abraham. The problem is that each group, and groups within each group, have varying interpretations of God’s activity in human affairs. The troubling issue is that all three religions consider themselves “revealed” religion, that God is “self-revealing” through the prophets and messengers.