TOLERANCE
The church at
Ephesus faced a culture characterized by immorality. We, too, live in a culture
tolerant of sexual immorality. It is popular to be open-minded to many types of
sin, calling them personal choices or alternative lifestyles. But when the body
of believers begins to tolerate sin in the church, it is lowering the church's
standards and compromising its witness. Remember that God's approval is
infinitely more important than the world's. Use God's Word, not what people
around you are willing to accept, to set the standards for what is right or
wrong.
"Tolerance"
gives me room to say, "I think you're wrong, but I'll defend your right to
be wrong." "Pluralism"
suggests, much more strongly than most folks admit, that there isn't such thing
as right and wrong – and no such thing as truth and error. As it is practiced
more and more in America, pluralism tends to require that you not only leave
room for your neighbor to believe what he believes, but that you also refrain
from disagreeing with it. There's a world of difference between the two
perspectives. Tolerance promotes civility combined with clear thinking.
Pluralism promotes civility combined with mushy-headedness.
Joel Belz
World Magazine, November/December,
2001.
Once upon a
time tolerance was the power that kept lovers of competing faiths from killing
each other. It was the principle that put freedom above forced conversion. It was
rooted in the truth that coerced conviction is no conviction. But now the new
twisted tolerance denies that there are any competing faiths; they only
complement each other. It denounces not only the effort to force conversions,
but the very idea that any conversion may be necessary. It holds the conviction
that no religious conviction should claim superiority over another.
John Piper
World Magazine, November/December,
2001.
Tolerance is
the virtue of men who don't believe in anything.
G.K. Chesterton
Although
Christians cannot cherish religious pluralism, they must tolerate it… By
tolerance I mean allowing other people to hold and to defend their own
religious convictions. Tolerance does not mean that everyone has to agree with
everyone else. That would not be tolerance at all. The word tolerance
itself assumes disagreement, that there is something that must be tolerated.
Tolerance thus applies to persons, but not to their errors. It does not require
me to endorse your worldview. If you are not a Christian, I do not endorse your
worldview. In the context of a friendship I will even try to talk you out of
it… Yet it carries out these arguments with humility and civility.
Philip Graham Ryken
Is Jesus the Only Way? Crossway, 1999, p.
29-30.
It's
unpopular to take a strong stand on anything (these days) except tolerance.
John Piper
The
[world] redefine[s] tolerance to mean not only respect and forbearance with
regard to disagreement, but approval and acceptance of others’ moral and
religious beliefs.
Alexander Strauch
Leading With Love, Lewis and Roth, 2006, p. 160, Used by
Permission.
If you let
culture make tolerance the preeminent virtue, pretty soon you won’t have
anything else.
George Marsden
Christian History, issue 55, v. XVI, n. 3, p.
43.
In
the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair, the sin
that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with
nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for
nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.
Dorothy Sayers
The
fact is, no one is tolerant of everything. Tolerance itself is a neutral word. It
is what one is tolerant of that makes it good or bad. Even those who cry the
loudest for tolerance claim to have “zero tolerance” for sexual child abuse, rape,
and racial discrimination – and so they should. Despite their assertion that
they are moral relativists, they do have moral absolutes, and they are prepared
to fight for them. They are more than willing to take strong disciplinary
action in the workplace and in government agencies against those who violate
those moral absolutes. Ironically, the so-called tolerance of secular
relativism is quite intolerant of those who disagree with its philosophy of
truth and ideological commitments. Numerous books and articles, from both
secular and religious perspectives, have exposed the arrogance and hypocrisy of
the relativist’s tolerance.
Alexander Strauch
Leading With Love, Lewis and Roth, 2006, p. 162, Used by
Permission.
This
new tolerance sees the specks of intolerance in the eyes of others, but can’t
see its own logs of intolerance, dogmatism, pride, absolutism, discrimination,
authoritarianism, and lack of love.
Alexander Strauch
Leading With Love, Lewis and Roth, 2006, p. 162, Used by Permission.
I can tolerate my atheist neighbor by
being charitable and friendly toward him, respecting him as a person, and
seeking to understand his views honestly rather than some caricature of his
ideas. But there is a distinct difference between toleration and affirmation.
We have embraced affirmation and not toleration if toleration means that I
cannot tell my atheist friend that he is mistaken regarding God’s existence.
Robert Rothwell
A
Brave New World, Tabletalk, June 2008, p. 11, Used by Permission.
Were our culture to practice
toleration authentically, they would not attempt to silence [Christians] even
if they could not embrace our position. It is clear therefore that the
so-called “tolerance” our society embraces is actually the most insidious form
of intolerance.
Robert Rothwell
A
Brave New World, Tabletalk, June 2008, p.12, Used by Permission.
Western culture at large freely
“tolerates” any worldview as long as that worldview does not claim that other
views are false. The only exclusive claim one can make is that no one can make
an exclusive claim.
Robert Rothwell
A Brave New World,
Tabletalk, June 2008, p. 12, Used by Permission.
In our postmodern
times, “tolerance” is valued over truth, and truth, like beauty, is in the eyes
of the beholder and as such must be extended to everyone, except those
disagreeable and critical exponents of truth who hold to absolutes, or, to put
it into theological language, those who seek to maintain historical orthodoxy.
Tragically, many professing evangelicals are embracing in celebratory fashion a
distinctively non-doctrinal mentality when it comes to defining their faith…
Christians who end up buying into this idea fail to recognize that by doing so
they are violating the apostle Paul’s admonition in Romans 12:2: “Do not be
conformed to this world.” Despite the fact that this kind of neutralism accents
diversity, it does so in name only. Conformity is actually what drives it.
Gary L.W. Johnson
Deeds Over
Creeds, September 2009, Tabletalk, p. 64-65. Used by Permission.
As a result
of the loss of “true truth,” the defining value of our culture has become
tolerance. If there is no truth, then everything should be tolerated.
Joseph Stowell
This We Believe, John Armstrong and John
Woodbridge, ed. Zondervan, 2000, p. 211.
Christian
civility does not commit us to a relativistic perspective. Being civil doesn't
mean that we cannot criticize what goes on around us. Civility doesn't require
us to approve of what other people believe and do. It is one thing to insist
that other people have the right to express their basic convictions; it is
another thing to say that they are right in doing so. Civility requires us to
live by the first of these principles. But it does not commit us to the second
formula. To say that all beliefs and values deserve to be treated as if they
were on a par is to endorse relativism – a perspective that is incompatible
with Christian faith and practice. Christian civility does not mean refusing to
make judgments about what is good and true. For one thing, it really isn’t
possible to be completely nonjudgmental. Even telling someone else that she is
being judgmental is a rather judgmental thing to do!
Richard J. Mouw
Uncommon Decency, IVP, 1992, p. 20-21.
A new
Decalogue has been adopted by some of our day, the first words of which reads,
“Thou shalt not disagree,” and a new set of
Beatitudes too, which begins, “Blessed are they that tolerate everything, for
they shall not be made accountable for anything.” It is now the accepted thing
to talk over religious differences in public with the understanding that no one
will try to convert another or point out errors in his belief. Imagine Moses
agreeing to take part in a panel discussion with Israel over the golden calf;
or Elijah engaging in a gentlemanly dialogue with the prophets of Baal. Or try
to picture Jesus seeking a meeting of minds with the Pharisees to iron out
differences. The blessing of God is promised to the peacemaker, but the
religious negotiator had better watch his step. Darkness and light can never be
brought together by talk. Some things are not negotiable.
A.W. Tozer
Tolerance is
not a spiritual gift; it is the distinguishing mark of postmodernism; and
sadly, it has permeated the very fiber of Christianity. Why is it that those
who have no biblical convictions or theology to govern and direct their actions
are tolerated and the standard or truth of God's Word rightly divided and
applied is dismissed as extreme opinion or legalism?
John Stott
Corporate Worship for the Church? Chevrolet and the Word of God, An Open Letter to the CCM Community.