The Lie of Tolerance

The Lie of Tolerance

Yes I believe tolerance is a lie… now I am sure if one goes back and reads every single thing I have written in the past 2+ years will find somewhere I said we must be tolerant… but as of RIGHT NOW I believe to be tolerant is not being a truly loving believer.

Tolerance sounds good… we tolerate things… like heat or cold… we don’t like being too hot… or too cold but we tolerate it… we also tolerate working long hours at time and as a salary paid person, this cuts into my bottom line yet, for some reason I tolerate it… I don’t like it, I don’t love it in fact I complain and often express how much I hate it… yet I tolerate it… and do it.

We tolerate people… you know those annoying idiots that just get in your face at times and you would rather rip their heads off and spit down their necks… yet we tolerate them.

We tolerate and think that it as being loving… it is not.

In fact tolerance in its sick little design lies to us and tells us we are BETTER than the person we are tolerating. It tells us that the other is lesser than ourselves. It actually demeans the other to tolerate them…

The bible teaches us to LOVE. Tolerance is not love. Love has at its core the expressed idea that what we do will better the other… and even more that the other is of greater worth than ourselves. Love in its design hopes and works toward the best for the other. It is as 1 Cor 13 4-7 states:

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”

The bible also tells us something we often do not connect. That God is Love. I truly appreciate this passage in 1 John 4:7-11:

“Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”

God does not want us to settle for tolerance, but to strive to Love the other person… be that person Gay, Lesbian, a drunk, the kid next door, the punk, the Goth, the preacher… in other words, your neighbor. There are numerous examples in scripture where Jesus shows us by example the difference between tolerance and love… the story of the Good Samaritan is one of the most heard stories… I am not going into that as I have before in past posts.

So, dear friends, and even to those who call themselves my enemies. Do not settle for the cheap second best of tolerance, nor do not stoop to hate, but always strive to Love. For we are being conformed to His image, and the clearest image of Love is Jesus in whose image we are being conformed to.

Blessings,
iggy

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