Tolerance, The Christian Virtue That Isn’t

Revelation 2:1 “Unto the angel of the church of Ephesus write; These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks;”

Revelation 2:2 “I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil: and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars:”

So many wonderful things to write about which God has filled my heart with… and I just had to go with something “negative”!

Heard the word “tolerance” recently?… people are somewhat obsessed with it, and it has even become a flagship Christian virtue of our times… if you’re not tolerant, you’re not really loving, you’re not caring, you’re not like Jesus was supposedly, you’re not “Christian”.

If the heathen educate you on who Jesus is and how to serve him, something’s gone pretty badly wrong. But hey, they’re writing Christian songs, and running most churches now.

… back on topic! Tolerance has become a favorite instrument by which Christians compare themselves to other Christians… which is not wise to compare anyway “but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise”… but it’s even worse to compare ourselves using the wrong measuring tool! That’s the kind of judgment Jesus was warning about in Matthew 7:1, a verse we all keep near at hand to ward off any judgmental Christians right!

But so many Christians pride themselves on their tolerance… but is it a virtue to congratulate oneself on??? … or is it a vice that is produced by the curse of wanting to be like and liked by everyone else and heaven forbid take up your cross to follow Jesus Christ?

If you look for tolerance as a Christian virtue in the Bible… you won’t find it, in fact tolerance of sin is rebuked, not commended. Tolerance of sin ruined Lot’s testimony in Genesis… it will ruin yours also, with far reaching consequences in your seed also.

It’s a serious topic. We are warned to watch out for seducing spirits and doctrines of devils, and the doctrine of tolerance does not come from the Holy Bible and Holy Spirit, not at all.

Jesus Christ… remember him? The LORD Jesus Christ… he commends the church at Ephesus in the book of Revelation for “… how thou canst not bear them which are evil.”

… so the church at Ephesus wasn’t tolerant of evil and wickedness, doing as Paul had commanded them in his epistle to them “And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.”

Whoospy, such a beautiful book in the New Testament, replete with magnificent truths of the Christian faith, sullied by intolerant overtones!

But not just this… but back in the book of Job, and a guy that we know for sure had true integrity and righteousness… because God said so! … and first verse into his book says this…

Job 1:1 “There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil.” … you cannot get past the first verse of the book of Job without learning of his intolerance!

If you missed it, it’s in the word “eschewed”… and seeing as the King James Bible language is obviously impossible to grasp yet while we all perfectly understand Hebrew and Greek, complex climate change theory, the world of crypto and the Australian tax system and all the rules and loopholes that can be exploited around negative gearing, debt recycling, yeah all that…

… think of eschew as shoo! shoo! Get away!… Job wanted nothing to do with wickedness, because he loved God, and he loved righteousness, as the Bible says Jesus does also “Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.”

Look, if the Bible doesn’t say what you think it should say, or want it to say, and if what the Bible says and the image of Christ it presents conflicts with how you otherwise conceive (conceit) and imagine it to be… then you need to change, because Jesus Christ isn’t “ Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.”

All your arguments about “that was back then” and “that’s Old Testament”… did you know the entire Old Testament is only understood in and through Christ because it’s all about him? If you cannot see him there, then you have the same problem that the Jews did that crucified Christ while sincerely thinking they were serving God. Could you be that far off the mark while thinking “thy matters are good and right”?

Look, yes, all truth in the Bible is balanced, and the Bible does teach longsuffering and goodness to all men, and that’s a great topic as well, because it’s God’s goodness to us that leads us to repentance… but the Bible does not teach tolerance.

Fact is. Sin is not ok. Not in my life. Not in your life. And God’s not ok with it either “God is angry with the wicked every day.”… did he really say that?

And reality is, you even really know and practice intolerance, unless you think tolerating murder, rape, pedophilia etc is ok? No it’s not, and yes that’s an extreme case, but all sin is pretty extreme.

You may not recognize envy, greed, bitterness, and pride, not just in others, but in your own heart as extreme, but it is pretty bad, look at what envy in Joseph’s brothers produced… and Jesus didn’t come to tolerate sin, he came to save us from it, and he’s that intolerant that he doesn’t overhaul our flesh, instead our flesh is crucified and he begins a new work in our lives through the birth of a new person inside us, totally separate from that old body of sin.

And so tolerance is a vice, not a Christian virtue. It’s a veneer for moral weakness, not Christian strength.

And the word virtue itself is quite amazing, because it’s not just qualities that people have, but the power that those qualities have to influence and affect… and no tolerant Christian ever won a lost sinner to Christ by tolerating sin. Because there’s no power in tolerance.

If you want someone to come from darkness to light, it won’t be achieved through you joining them in the darkness, or attempting to reconcile two irreconcilable factions “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all”.

Yes, you will be called self righteous and hateful blah blah, big deal… tolerant people are the most intolerant, we all know that. And you won’t have to do anything extreme, just do right in your life and don’t go along with, participate in, accommodate and enable sin and wickedness, and they’ll split from you before you ever do them.

There was a guy called Joab in the Bible who king David gave a direct order to. He said, do not touch (kill) Absalom my son. Everyone heard and knew it. But Absalom obviously knew better, had his own reasons and disregarded it, and as he went to kill Absalom, the Bible says a “certain man” refused to go along with it, because of what David said… and Joab said “I may not tarry thus with thee.”

It’s okay to say you cannot and won’t go along. Who knows, that may actually may make a bigger difference in someones life than you think. This world needs to know that Jesus offers something different, not just more of the same with a fake religious facelift. There are two sides of a dividing line, and that is between saved and lost, life and death, heaven and hell… if you love someone, show them you’ve got something different and something better. No, not different as in weird, different as in, separated and consecrated UNTO Christ, dedicated to him.

Tolerance isn’t taught in the Bible. Have enough love for people not to go along with sin, it doesn’t mean you hate them, it may mean you finally care about them more than you do yourself! … because at the heart of it, tolerance is more self love than it is neighborly love. You know it’s true!

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