Anonymous Asks (244)

“Is freedom of speech a biblical value?”

There is no such thing as a right to free speech. Jesus Christ didn’t have one. The apostles certainly didn’t have one. What they had was a divinely authorized responsibility to engage in costly speech. They walked out into the public square with a message almost nobody in positions of authority wanted to hear and inflicted it on the world in spite of all efforts to silence it.

As a result, the Lord Jesus was tortured and crucified. The apostles were delivered over to courts, flogged in the synagogues, dragged before governors and kings and, like Stephen, stoned by their own neighbors and kin.

The Right to Costly Speech

Douglas Wilson is hard at work making the case for the right to free speech from a Christian foundation, and I give him full credit for grappling with the abstract with all the enthusiasm of Don Quixote tilting at windmills.

But in explaining his position, Doug is making an undefended assumption — or at very least one he does not attempt to defend in this particular post — which may sound perfectly reasonable to many Christians: that biblical law ought to serve as a foundation or framework for modern society.

The Cost of Doing Business

Aids to a very effective
ancient form of censorship.

Internet censorship is coming, and it’s coming fast. Thanks, Mark Zuckerberg.

Numerous media sources reported last week that Facebook, Twitter and Google have all agreed to cooperate with the German government in removing hate speech from the internet. Special teams in each company will determine whether content violates German laws and remove it within 24 hours.

Under German law, “hate speech” is speech that “incites or instigates harmful action”. So a mechanism is now in place where quite literally anything may be censored provided it can be said to potentially cause “harm”, as defined by German lawmakers.

Today, that means anti-immigration sentiment. Tomorrow, it could mean anything perceived as homophobic, misogynist or religious. Effectively for Germans it means an end to whatever level of free speech they may have previously enjoyed.

The Violence Inherent in the System

Increasingly, we are being told that it is no longer acceptable to discuss things that are plainly taught in the Bible. To dare to subject the ears of the delicate flowers among our family, friends, neighbours and peers to the word of God — not to mention those who might come across our views on the internet or elsewhere — is to engage in an act of abuse.

The current generation of post-secondary students accepts this as inarguable dogma:

“... if the popular Christian notion of abstinence is wrong, we have been mentally and emotionally abusing quite literally millions of people.”

— Student, to Jerry Walls

Richard Dawkins makes it explicit. You’re not only being repressed, you’re being outright damaged:

“But if your whole upbringing, and everything you have ever been told by parents, teachers and priests, has led you to believe, really believe, utterly and completely, that sinners burn in hell ... it is entirely plausible that words could have a more long-lasting and damaging effect than deeds.”

— Richard Dawkins