Sunday, February 18, 2007

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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4 comments:

Mike Messerli said...

who could ever be your enemy? you are so warm and fuzzy!

good post, man. good thoughts.

Unknown said...

Mike,

I don't think I personally have any enemies I am against,
but there are at least a couple of guys that let me know pretty regularly how they feel about me...

Yet, I know Who loves me...

Blessings,
iggy

Anonymous said...

You've got it iggy.

The Church in the western world preaches a gospel of love but forgets all about repentance.

Apparently God just wants us to know that He loves us and for us to accept His love, He'll then 'tolerate' everything and anything we do.

What a bunch of nonsense. Show me one place where Jesus practiced tolerance.

You are so right in what you say about tolerance.

We have become a very feminine society. Most of our school teachers are female and increasingly our role models are female. The result is that we learn a soft, feminine form of love at the expense of the hard, masculine love that is not tolerant but rather is prepared to lovingly admonish and correct people.

Let's be a little less tolerant and a little more Christlike!

Unknown said...

Peter,

Sadly we have lost touch with what it means to be a man. Jesus was humble, gentle, kind, yet minced no words to push someone... like the gentile woman who asked Jesus to heal her daughter... Jesus called her a "dog", more like a little house dog... she has to choose to press in or feel insulted and walk away... she pressed in and Jesus commended her for her faith.

to walk in humility takes strength, to choose to love someone and be gentle, and loving takes strength... yet you are right that we have become confused as to what love is. We think of it as some soft feminine thing... that has no strength, or like some twisted romance novel... (though I do see the salvation story as a love story!) Worse we confuse love with sex... we think it loving to let someone live "as long as their happy" and not push in to their lives to truly love them to get God's best.

As I have become a father, I can see God's heart toward myself in a clearer way. I see that God constantly "disciplines" me, yet He is never angry with me... He loves me and wants the best for me as I do my own son.

I understand that some are being loving as they are tolerating... they are being as loving as they can be on their own strength, yet we are called as believers, to love with God's love and to love as we have been loved... And God's love has met me where I was and tore me down to build me up to be who He desires me to be. i have in no way reached that aim yet, but I am sure closer than I was when God first found me! LOL!

Blessings,
iggy