Tolerance — What is the Christian’s Response?

I identify as intolerant and you must affirm me in that.

No? Why not?

The woke left loves to use the word ‘tolerance.’ Within a materialist worldview, it seems to be the only virtue. How tolerance can be good if good and evil are merely social constructs is beyond me, but nonetheless that is how they’ve set the game. You boo abortion or transgenderism and you’re intolerant. Or, in other words, bad.

On the other hand, if you let everyone be who or what they want to be — no, if you respect their choices — nay, affirm them, then you are good. That is how the left defines tolerance.

But hang on there. If you stand for tolerance, would you have tolerated Hitler killing Jews? Or, to make it a bit more relatable to the woke left, why won’t you tolerate Israelis killing ‘poor Palestinians?’ Never mind that those ‘poor Palestinians’ are terrorists who started the war. If you take a side in this — heck, in anything, you’re intolerant. You should just step back and let everyone do as they please, and affirm them in it. There is no good and evil. There’s just people, and ideas, and if you can’t condemn any of them as bad, well then they’re either good or they just exist.

Clearly, the Christian can see what a ridiculous tangle ‘tolerance’ leads to. And if we believe in a just God and a standard of righteousness, we cannot buy into the message of tolerance. It’s simply impossible if we hold to objective truth. There is good and there is bad. Abortion, gender surgeries, euthanasia, theft, rape, and so on and so forth are bad. You wouldn’t affirm a murderer, would you? So why affirm your friend who is trying to transition? There might be a hierarchy of bad — for example, the difference between petty theft and rape, but nonetheless they all fall under the category of evil, and should be condemned.

The left loves accusing us of intolerance. But this isn’t something we should feel ashamed of. The Christian is not called to tolerance. He or she is called to love.

We ought to love everyone — even our enemies. We can love the unbelievers we interact with even if we don’t agree with their choices. And loving may mean pointing out their error.

Parents, if they love their children, punish them for their good. Children need to understand good and evil and be kept from doing things that might harm them. The same goes for all people. If you love your gay friend, you’ll do your best to help them see that what they’re doing is only harming them. After all, if someone you knew was planning on comitting suicide, you wouldn’t just step aside and let them live out their choices, right?

But it does get a bit tiresome to be called intolerant all the time. In fact, our world likes to equate tolerance with love, and if you aren’t tolerant, well then, you’re a hater. It makes one feel as if the rest of the world sees us as thick-headed, unintelligent clods or awful, wicked people.

However, I’d like to think of it as discerning. Tolerating everything is sheer nonsense. I think this quote from Johann Hari sums it up nicely, if we take respect in the Christian sense of treating others as valuable and loved by God:

All people deserve respect, but not all ideas do.

You can love and respect your confused acquaintance, but certainly do not respect the ridiculous idea that a man can become a woman, or vice versa. In fact, if you do love them, tell them the truth. Truth may hurt at the time, but witholding it will hurt far more in the long run.

The world, however, will not settle for us loving the sinner and hating the sin. It would have us affirm the sin. Support the sin.

I’ve seen this happening in book series’ that are still in the process of being written and are evolving as they get influenced by the culture. They started out with straight characters, but right about the time when all this LGBTQ nonsense surged into poplarity, gay characters started popping up in books that had hitherto been solid. It’s sneaking into culture — this idea that you can’t just simply abide but encourage. This even happens in innocent middle grade adventures, like The Bookwanderers. It’s both sad and ridiculous. As if, in Sanderson’s rigorously structured culture of the Stormlight Archives with highly-defined gender roles, a gay character could be introduced and everyone would treat it as if it were perfectly normal. Plausibility is set aside for the sake of pleasing the culture. Virtue signaling, if you will. (Another ironic term that highlights how materialists have a set of virtues whether they claim to or not.)

Do not join the culture in its virtue signaling. Love — but stand against evil. To my writers, you are blessed with a pen and an audience. Use them to boldly declare truth. Truth is not always pleasant to hear, and not everyone will be happy about you proclaiming it, but don’t let that change a thing. Truth isn’t dependent on feelings. Speak out and make it known that while we love our neighbors and even those who disagree with us, we do not love their behavior.

 “To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands. I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary.”

Revelation 2:1-3 NIV

Note that the church in Ephesus is specifially commended for not tolerating wickedness, and wicked people. The Greek there behind ‘tolerate’ translates more literally to ‘bear.’ (Source) We shouldn’t bear with wickedness. We shouldn’t let it stand.

Now this isn’t to say that we should be bullheaded. We should have tolerance in the way it used to mean — patience. Patience is part of loving. But don’t take things too far. Don’t let yourself end up accepting wickedness. Whether you write or not, let your actions, your life as a whole, be a representation of Christ. Christ loved the worst of the worst — tax collectors, prostitutes, the demon-possessed. But He also didn’t hesitate to flip tables in the temple or rebuke the wicked and hypocrites. We, of course, are not Christ, and we should keep in mind that our judgement is not perfect and that it may not be our right at times to go in and flip tables, so to speak. We should exercise discretion, but we know right from wrong and we need to help others know that too.

“Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly.”

John 7:24 NIV

You will be pressured. You may be persecuted. But so be it.

“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”

― Winston Churchill (debated)

Don’t hesitate to stand for truth. And it needn’t be proclaiming it from the rooftops in every situation. If you can live out truth in your day-to-day life, people will see. If objective truth is respected in your stories, it will have an impact, even if it is not noticed, for storytelling is wonderfully subtle.

Do not budge an inch. Do not accept or affirm evil, even if it is small. Bad habits always begin small. Be it one cigarette or one more drink, the pattern holds. Stand firm, and help the rest of the world to see how utterly ridiculous a world without objectivity is. If any of my writers enjoy humor, there is plenty to be found in the concept of no absolutes.

²⁶ Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. ²⁷ In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

²⁸ Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. ²⁹ They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, ³⁰ slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; ³¹ they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. ³² Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

Romans 1:26-32

John Wesley once said, “What one generation tolerates, the next generation will embrace.”

G.K. Chesterton called tolerance, ‘the virtue of a man without convictions.’ We have convictions. We have the Holy Word of God. We have truth.

Let’s make sure the world knows it.

Cheers!