Misplaced Compassion and Truncated Tolerance...more

Misplaced Compassion and Truncated Tolerance (Don't miss this!)
...The perversion of compassion is part and parcel of the perversion of tolerance. We have bought a fundamentally flawed understanding of tolerance, and run with it just as any non-Christian will. Instead of thinking clearly and biblically, we simply embrace whatever mental and moral mushiness the world is dishing up at the time.

It is time to get biblical here, and say no to the world’s falsehoods and deceits. Some people were aware of all this decades ago. For example Bishop Fulton J. Sheen penned a terrific piece back in 1931 called “A Plea for Intolerance”. It is an absolute winner of an essay, and we all should have a read of it. You can read the whole article here: www.northamericanmartyrs.org/pdf/Plea-for-Intolerance.pdf

Let me offer a few snippets from it. He begins:

America, it is said, is suffering from intolerance. It is not. It is suffering from tolerance: tolerance of right and wrong, truth and error, virtue and evil, Christ and chaos. Our country is not nearly so much overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded. The man who can make up his mind in an orderly way, as a man might make up his bed, is called a bigot; but a man who cannot make up his mind, any more than he can make up for lost time, is called tolerant and broadminded. A bigoted man is one who refuses to accept a reason for anything; a broadminded man is one who will accept anything for a reason – providing it is not a good reason.

And one more great quote:

What is tolerance? Tolerance is an attitude of reasoned patience towards evil, and a forbearance that restrains us from showing anger or inflicting punishment. But what is more important than the definition is the field of its application. The important point here is this: Tolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons. Tolerance applies to the erring; intolerance to the error.

Others have also sought to give us some clarity on these vital matters. For example, in his 1992 volume Uncommon Decency Richard Mouw wrote:

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!

John Stott put it this way:

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?

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