Louie Giglio and Thought-Crime

In my opinion, one of the late Christopher Hitchen's most compelling arguments from the debate video Collision is on the unfairness and injustice of God judging our thoughts, or "thought crime", as he brilliantly put it.

"There is no Big Brother in the sky. It is a horrible idea that there is somebody who owns us, who makes us, who supervises us waking and sleeping, who knows our thoughts, who can convict us of thought crime, thought crime - just for what we think, who can judge us while we sleep for things that might occur to us in our dreams, who can create us sick (as apparently we are) and then order us on pain of eternal torture to be well again. To demand this, to wish this to be true, is to wish to live as an abject slave. It is a wonderful thing, in my submission, that we now have enough information, enough intelligence, and - I hope - enough intellectual and moral courage to say that this ghastly proposition is founded on a lie, and to celebrate that fact, and I invite you to join me in doing so."

Today, Louie Giglio withdrew from giving an inaugural prayer, as controversy arose about him calling homosexuality a sin in a sermon 15 years ago. It was initially reported that it was the White House that rescinded the invitation, but it really doesn't matter either way. This isn't really surprising, as politics is politics.

What I am riled up about is the public outcry for something against he believes - not about a public policy that would force others to live under his standards, but a personal belief. In other words, Giglio has committed what many would consider a thought crime. He thinks and believes something wrong, and it is so wrong that he ought to be put to shame for his belief. In fact, he is a lesser human being, intellectually and morally, for being in this perpetual state of thought-crime, and he will not be released from this penitentiary and deemed a "good human being" until he reforms his "out-dated" thinking.

If it is unfair, unjust, and plain wrong for God (if He were to exist) to convict human beings for thought-crime, why should mere mortals have the ability to convict one another of thought-crime? If not even God has the right to judge thoughts, what right does anyone have to say that anyone else's beliefs are right or wrong or better or worse?