Boycotts off target?

We live in a free country, or so I thought.  Free to express religious thought and belief without fear of intimidation.  Free to run our businesses and churches according to our understanding.  I thought we were grown up enough to understand that there would be people who interpreted faith matters differently, and that our Constitution would assure a safe space for differing opinions to exist and duke it out in the market place of ideas.

We may not live in a "Christian" nation, but no one can deny that the teachings of Jesus' are woven throughout the fabric of the Stars and Stripes.  We may not all attend our church every Sunday, but we know what Jesus said and did, and most of us still  want to be like Him.

That is why it is so hard to understand the criticism of organizations that simply make a statement about what they believe about the desires of Jesus for our lives, even if it presses a few of the "hot" buttons of social discourse.  Isn't that what Jesus' did when he stood up to the Pharisees?

And even worse, how is it American to suggest a boycott of such an organization for speaking out for its religious beliefs?  Speaking out for Jesus?

But let's try to have a Christian response to these ridiculous actions of the  NRA.  The National Rifle Association.  The national champions of the boycott.

Oh, perhaps you thought I was being critical of proponents of same sex marriage and their opinions in opposition to the Chick Fil A guy.  Nope. They are amateurs when it comes to boycotts, compared to the National Rifle Association.  So if you've been questioning the technique of boycotts, you should get after the NRA.

On its website the National Rifle Association maintains a list of businesses, organizations and individuals who have hinted that they may be in favor of limiting one of Jesus' most passionate tenets, the second amendment right to bear arms.  Please check out the list. You may be on it. Everyone from Art Garfunkel to the Church of the Brethren to Sprint to Sara Lee to the Kansas City Chiefs are named.

Ask Conoco Phillips, a huge corporation, or Primanti Brothers, a small local restaurant about NRA boycotts.

I guess it is ridiculous, anti-American, to suggest boycotts, unless you are defending something as clearly Jesusy as being able to possess an instrument of death in the name of protecting one's self or material possessions. I am sure Jesus was packin' when he stood with the outcast and oppressed. You can't be too careful with those types.

I will eat at Chick Fil A.  Or more accurately, I will drink the lemonade and the cookie dough milkshakes, which, by the way, are sinful in themselves.

I do not agree with the head guy's opinion, and will be glad to talk with him about it over one of the afore mentioned creamy delights. I will do what I can to understand.

But others may boycott.  That is as much their right as it was his right to take his stand.

Americans will disagree on very important issues.  But we must never suggest that one man's opinion has more right to be heard than another.  Even if you think the opinion is wrong, or crazy.  It needs to get out there and be tested.  It would be great if we could get to a place where opinions, rather than people, were being shot at.

This week has featured an exercise in the absurd.   One man in the chicken sandwich business expresses his heart-felt opinion about the nature of marriage of others.  Others express a heart-felt opposing opinion.  One is defended, the other is castigated.

Isn't it ironic?

Sort of like the last becoming first.

Doing good in secret.

Loving your enemy.

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