I had no trouble with Bob Neal’s Sept. 23 column (“Strong words from north of the border“) about the political firestorm between India and Canada surrounding the murder on Canadian soil of a Sikk activist who was advocating for a Sikk state in India.

But how Neal got it in his head to then compare India’s Prime Minister Modi’s party’s Hindu “superiority” with “the Republican Party’s dedication to fundamentalist Christian superiority” floored me.

No Bible-believing Christian can ever claim superiority in his or her standing before God when “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).  God’s grace and mercy, to say nothing of election, contradict any such sense of privilege when God shows no partiality toward anyone (Acts 10:34, Romans 2:11).

Now, it is true that God the Father is absolutely partial toward those who have placed their faith in his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and perhaps this exclusivity (Psalm 2:12; John 3:36, 6:44; Acts 4:12) is what Neal is confusing with superiority. And, unfortunately, some fundamentalists have allowed legalism and its appearance of superiority to besmirch biblical truth, just as liberalism’s “love has no boundaries” has erased it.

Still, this exclusivity is available to everyone, because the Church is a clinic, not a club (John 4:10-14; Rev. 7:17). The problem is too few want treatment on God’s terms. (Jeremiah 2:12-13).

But fundamentalists do not write the rules, and neither does anyone else, not even Republicans.

Mark Wood, Poland