Do you remember when people were courteous? That was before the Internet.

Now we have blogs and mean trolls who express hatred that could get them arrested, or assaulted, in a public place.

Hatred of Christians is one popular theme. If you wait long enough, everyone gets hated by someone on the Internet, and I don’t think we are special victims. But the experience is painful for a Christian.

“Yesterday lunchtime I walked past a street preacher who was yelling through a bullhorn that there can be no morality without an imaginary friend. I felt it to be my moral responsibility to tell him that not only was he wrong, but that he is also a complete idiot.”

Other comments are like: Have you had a conversation with your invisible friend lately? How is Jesus different from a pink unicorn? Children have imaginary friends, the rest of us have grown up. If one person believes in something invisible, that is insane; if many people believe together, it’s religion.

There is more, and worse, but I don’t want to repeat it.

Those crude insults are out there. The Internet has turned polite disagreement into mean verbal assaults, and the problem is growing. Brace yourself.

If it helps, there are some very good sites for understanding the arguments of militant atheists.

Rude trolls don’t convince anyone. If atheists are crudely judgmental and intolerant, no one will want what they have, and the same is true for Christians. We don’t see farther when we pull someone else down. We can’t believe with negative references to other beliefs; we should all be a force for good.

I am a Christian, and I never refer to the errors of atheism when I say that.

To be fair, I have met some atheists who didn’t constantly attack Christians and other believers. Some are good friends.

On the other side, constant opposition to Christians is a core value of militant atheists. The American Humanist Association is dedicated to persuading the younger generation that belief in God is wrong. They have “a site for the millions of young people around the world who have embraced science, rejected superstition, and are dedicated to being Good Without A God.”

I don’t believe in Santa Claus and I told my kids that; I wanted the credit when I bought the presents. Every year, in December, I took my kids to those fat men in red suits in the mall. The kids loved the free stuff and I enjoyed their happiness. I am definitely not a Santa hater, and I don’t feel threatened. And the Easter bunny was delicious. My devout Christian parents used to buy me chocolate bunnies at Easter. I usually started with the ears, and I never believed.

Living with ideas that are different from ours makes us civilized.

The root problem is modernism, the belief that we should all be the same. Don’t be fooled by the name, it’s an old idea. Post modernism has replaced it with the idea that we can each find what works best for us.

Remember those magazine articles about how we would all live in the future? We would ride rocket roller skates in Star Trek uniforms, and eat food in pill form. We are now in the future, and it didn’t happen. None of those predictions came true. OK, we did have flip phone communicators, just like Star Trek; but we moved on, or our kids did.

The problem is the word “all” as in “Why be you when you could be me?” Intolerance disguised as progress.

The world is done with the insecurities of Hitler, and Fascism, and Communism, and any other system that tells us to be all the same. That flock of sheep thing never works.

Jesus called Christians to be different from the world. That’s how we build better things.

Do not be mismated with unbelievers. For what partnership have righteousness and iniquity? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? (2 Corinthians 6:14)

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in him. (1 John 2:15)