What’s Wrong With Tolerance?
What’s wrong with tolerance? Nothing.
Tolerance no longer means being patient with other people, recognizing and respecting their beliefs.
Today it means: considering everyone’s beliefs as being equally valid.
“Because our nation is composed of people from widely diverse cultural and ethnic groups, each having its own unique value system or ethical code, we must conclude that there is no such thing as "truth" or moral certitude. In the final analysis, "anything goes." Somehow, the existence of many different standards proves that there is no standard. For obvious reasons, amoralists and atheists are attracted to that position and promote it with vigor. Nothing, they say, is really right or wrong. What is true depends entirely on one’s point of view. The highest form of good, therefore, is tolerance to anything and everything except traditional Christianity, which is the chief source of what they call "intolerance." James Dobson
Judge Not?
Matthew 7:1 “Judge not, that ye be not judged.”
What did Jesus mean by this verse?
He was not forbidding us from making moral evaluations about things.
See Matthew 7:15 – If we interpreted verse 1 the way the world wants us to, we couldn’t obey verse 15 the way Jesus expects us to.
We are to make sound moral judgments, but we must be humble and loving in our attitudes as we do.
Two Objections
First: Our belief in moral absolutes.
“Everything is right somewhere, and nothing is right everywhere.” Sociology textbook 72% of Americas between the ages
of 18-25 do not believe in absolute truth or in moral absolutes.
"(Relativism) takes the clearly observable fact that we have a multitude of views and values and practices in the world--pluralism--and draws the illegitimate conclusion that there is no justifiable way of choosing among them. Truth is merely opinion, goodness only what the majority says it is." Professor Daniel Taylor, Bethel College
There is right and wrong.
Second: Christ is the only way of salvation.
"We have to honor diversity. We believe that God's call through Jesus is universal and that other people know God through their religious traditions." Wall Street Journal, Rev. Bruce Robbins UMC
The whole message of the Bible is that God loves us all.
Acts 4:12 - No other name by which man can be saved.
Matthew 7:13-14 – Jesus was narrow-minded on this point.
Mt. 7:21-23 – Jesus didn’t assume everyone was going to Heaven.
It isn’t a matter of outward profession, but inward faith and obedience that saves us.
John 14:6; Rom. 3:10ff; 1 Cor. 3:11; 1 Tim. 2:5, 6; Heb. 2:3
Exclusively Power
We are to be tolerant of others.
There are moral absolutes.
Only Jesus can save men and women from sin and give them eternal life.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
