Intolerance is always unacceptable

When this magazine appeared, eleven years ago, Brazilian spirit was passing through a troubled moment that we hoped would normalize over the years.

That's not what happened.

There is in our midst a stirring of ideas similar to what is happening in the national political scene.

Three facts that occurred in the last ninety days, involving prominent personalities in the spirit movement of Brazil, prove this thought. But the bad, unpleasant environment, incompatible with the spirit teachings, has actually settled, for a long time. According to some, a few months after Chico Xavier returned to spiritual homeland.

Spiritism, since its inception, has had to deal with ruthless opponents. The persecutions received from all sides resembled what happened in the phase that preceded the Reformation and in the years that followed, a theme of the special "The Protestant Reformation and Spiritism", one of the highlights of this edition, written by the confrere André Luiz Alves Jr.

Just to remember, one of the forerunners of the Reformation, the priest and professor Jan Huss (the last reincarnation of Hippolyte Leon Denizard Rivail, before returning as Allan Kardec), who fought for Christian truth and against corruption in the Church, was condemned to the bonfire, sixteen years before Joan of Arc was burned alive for the simple reason of "listening" to the Spirits.

Curiously, attenuated the external persecutions, the spirits seem to have decided to fight against each other, in tune with individuals who, being disincarnated or not, do not want spirit ideas and the movement that represents them to fulfil their goals.

The intensification of ideological positions and intolerance towards those who think differently are not in line with the Gospel proposal, nor, of course, with the thinking and recommendations of Allan Kardec, the codifier of the Spirit doctrine.

No one ignores this teaching from Jesus noted in chapter V of the Gospel according to Matthew: "Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you and pray for those who persecute you and slander you. "

As for Kardec, his recommendation expressly set forth in chap. XXVIII, item 51, of The Gospel According to Spiritism is that we should not only love but also pray for them, without excluding those who present themselves as enemies of Spiritism.

In this sense, the coder wrote:

"Of all freedoms, the most inviolable is thinking, which includes consciousness. To cast an accursed person over those who do not think as he is to claim this freedom for himself and to deny it to others is to violate Jesus' first commandment: charity and love of neighbor. To persecute others, for reasons of their beliefs, is to attempt against the most sacred right of every man to believe in what is good for him and to worship God as he understands. To compel them to external acts similar to ours is to show that we value form rather than substance, rather than appearances, rather than conviction." (The Gospel According to Spiritism, chapter XXVIII, item 51.)

Following these words, Kardec presents us with a model or suggestion of the prayer that we, Spirits, must do for those who persecute the doctrine we embrace.

Well (someone will surely say): How to be tolerant and affable with our enemies and, at the same time, intolerant and unfriendly to our own companions, just because at this or that point we think differently?

Is it not that a huge counter-claim?