For years we were taught the cardinal virtues. They are Prudence, Justice, Temperance or Restraint, and Fortitude or Courage. A new virtue has come forth in our time and has risen above all the others. It is Tolerance.
Tolerance is the buzzword of the day and appears to be the supreme virtue. Today’s tolerance is not the tolerance of your fathers. That tolerance meant to put up with a lot and be patient. Today’s tolerance started out as live and let live, but that has too much of a 60’s ring to it. On the surface it means to accept me for what I am and what I do, no matter what that is. But it means much more than that as well. Essentially it means that nothing is wrong, except of course intolerance (which is evolving a new meaning itself).
All religions and belief systems are the same. All lifestyles are equal and to be celebrated. Value systems are left to the desires of the individual and nothing is an absolute. Not even tolerance is an absolute, we are discovering. The traditional Christian belief system is becoming less and less tolerated – ironically in the name of tolerance. A Christian expresses their belief in the Christian view of marriage and they are a hater and homophobe. So tolerance has an exception. A belief in absolute right and wrong as inherited from our Creator is not to be tolerated because it violates today’s idea of tolerance.
As much as tolerance is lifted up as a lofty value, today’s tolerance is anything but lofty or value. Behind this new idea of tolerance is something more sinister, put in our ears by our enemy and accepted by a society weak in holiness. Today’s tolerance is nothing more than a worldview of leave me alone, there’s nothing wrong with me. But God says, yes there is something wrong with you and I have the cure, I am the cure. God’s motive for saying this is something much greater than tolerance. It is love. Yes, it is love that causes God to tell us something is wrong with us, all of us. Love doesn’t sit by and watch someone continue down a path to destruction without warning and pleading with them to change course; tolerance does.
Our enemy deceives and leads us astray little by little. He can take the song ‘Just as I Am’ and turn it into a lesson on tolerance. We are convinced that God accepts us just as we are, so that must mean we are fine just the way we are. True, God does accept us just as we are and because He loves us He continuously works to change us, conforming us to the image of Christ. What a difference we see in the last two sentences if we will look. God cannot tolerate sin in our lives if He loves us becasue sin destroys. Does love allow you to just sit by and simply watch someone die?
God said, “For the greatest of these is love”, not tolerance.