Irreconcilable Differences

The Church in a Tolerance-Driven Society

Alden Swan, August 2, 2005

A few months ago I was driving my then 13 year-old son Isaiah home from his fencing class. Isaiah is a deep thinker, and occasionally he will take these rare opportunities when we are alone to discuss some of these things. On this particular occasion, he was wondering how anyone could go about solving the world’s problems. Then, he surprised me with, “Do you know what I think the world’s biggest problem is? Tolerance;” and he proceeded to elaborate on his theories. Besides being incredibly impressed by his perceptiveness, I was also amazed by his timing, as I had recently been thinking along similar lines. We do live in a tolerance-driven society, and the church needs to learn how to deal with it (be in it, but not of it).

Tolerance (aka diversity) is the new Big Lie, and it is all around us. It is preached in the workplace, the media, the government, and in the public schools. For example, I recently read an article about “No Name-Calling Week,” a new middle-school program offered nationwide (on a voluntary basis). Not surprisingly, the program was developed by some outfit called the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, and focuses on the tolerance of gay middle-school children. The System has for the most part believed the Big Lie, and we are being conditioned to be “tolerant” on a daily basis.

Tolerance, to those who have apparently achieved a higher level of consciousness, is the earmark of a sophisticated, highly-evolved society. Frank Knox, Secretary of the Navy under FDR, once said, “I believe with all my heart that civilization has produced nothing finer than a man or woman who thinks and practices true tolerance.” (However I’m not really sure what he meant, as he doesn’t appear to have been tolerant in the same way as it is interpreted by those who preach it today.)

Tolerance certainly seems like a positive value. Aren’t we all supposed to love our neighbors, and for that matter, even our enemies? Shouldn’t we as Christians be the most tolerant of all? (You’d think so, by listening to everyone else.) The problem, however, is that tolerance has absolutely nothing to do with love. Oh, it may look like love on the surface, but in reality it is love’s evil twin, smirking at us behind the backs of those it has duped. Yes, tolerance is evil – make no mistake about it. Its smug pseudo-rationality is more insidious than any terrorist threat. (Remember that bit about our warfare not being against flesh and blood?)

Here’s the deal: tolerance is a fraud, an imposter, a deception. It is snake oil of the worst kind. It is an angel of light, as it were. Tolerance is not even a close approximation for the Real Thing, the love and acceptance that comes through the Gospel. Tolerance lowers the bar, to lower people’s expectations to the point that they are satisfied with something as trite as tolerance. To be merely tolerated is an insult. The thing with tolerance is that its only real goal is to preempt what people really need. You see, tolerance really has no concern for people; its only concerned is for tolerance. Look around you at the people you work with, your neighbors, the people you deal with every day – do any of them want to be merely tolerated? Is that what you want? Do you wake up in the morning and think, “boy, how nice it would be if people tolerated me today?” If you do, that’s really sad… it shows how low your expectations have become. This is, by the way, the lowered expectations of our current culture.

For most of history, God’s people have had to deal with pluralistic cultures, pitting the One True God against the lesser gods of the world. Many Christians today, however, have a very hard time dealing with what they perceive as a new pluralism (somehow believing that the U.S. is or was ever a Christian nation), and for a very good reason: we do not necessarily have a pluralistic culture. What we have instead is a tolerant culture, and that’s a lot, lot worse.

Case in point: Australia has a law called the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act. Seems innocent enough, until you hear that two Christian pastors who have taught against Islam have been convicted of violating this law for criticizing Islam, and have been ordered by the court to publicly apologize for their teachings and promise not to do it again (or apparently face a jail sentence). Apparently some folks in England are now trying to pass similar legislation, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the ACLU jumped on the bandwagon at some point. It’s a perfect set-up: destroy freedom of speech and freedom of religion, all under the guise of tolerance.

We, the church, need to figure out what it means to be The Church in the midst of all this.

Give me pluralism, or give me death

Okay, perhaps not death; and, I’m not saying pluralism is heaven on earth, either. However, considering our current culture of tolerance, I think I’d welcome a truly pluralistic society where Christianity, with all of its intolerance, would be accepted and even possibly slightly understood – or at least recognized as following a powerful God. However, the ideals of tolerance are in themselves intolerant and are intent on keeping a truly pluralistic society from forming. The tolerance that the tolerance-mongers are pushing is very selective – it is only a tolerance of relativistic value systems, or “a tolerance of tolerance.” The tolerance-mongers are extremely and proudly intolerant of any value system which is intolerant.

This alleged principle of tolerance is in reality an intolerance of absolutes, which boils down in our case to a complete opposition to Christianity and the gospel as presented by both Jesus and Paul. In other words, it’s evil, and in this regard, this “gospel of tolerance” is nothing more than a demonic smokescreen for what I suspect is Satan’s real agenda: to oppose (by diverting people away from) the Gospel. Tolerance is an “angel of light” – it sounds good and acceptable. After all, who could ever be against tolerance, except for evil people like Hitler and other right-wing extremists?

There is another very different faction whose goal is also to prevent a pluralistic society from forming: the ultra-conservative right. I won’t mention names, you know who they are. I suspect that they are motivated at least in part by a fear that Christianity can’t really hold it’s own against humanism, or science, or whatever else, so they resort to various political tactics to gain power. It’s just a modern-day Crusade. Not to brag, but my faith is larger than that; or, perhaps I should say, the truth I believe in is larger than that. I think truth will prevail if the lies are allowed to be brought to light.

So, it seems both extremes are working to prevent a culture where we can say “Bring it on. Let my God show you what He can do.” And, with what I perceive as a failure of the Western Church to be a true “city on a hill,” the culture of Tolerance is allowed to grow.

So, what’s the Church to do?

First, we must understand that we have a very intolerant Gospel. We simply cannot, as Christians, tolerate Tolerance. Christianity is inherently and absolutely, in the most absolute way possible, intolerant. Paul made that abundantly clear in his letter to the Galatians. You try to alter the Gospel in any way, and you don’t change it or water it down – you lose it completely. If anyone preaches anything but the true, unadulterated Gospel, Paul says, “… tell them to go to hell.”

Jesus, too – the same Jesus who ate and drank with sinners – did not allow anyone to touch the Gospel. In Matthew 16, right after the story where Jesus nick-names Peter “the Rock,” we see Jesus rebuke Peter with, “get behind me, Satan!” Peter, you see, had dared challenge the Gospel-in-progress, the plan for Jesus to die for the sins of the world. There’s no room for error here, not even well-meant sentimentality. In other places, we see Jesus saying things like, “no one comes to the Father but by me.” How intolerant can you get?

Consider, however, that Gospel may be intolerant, but it is not unloving. Love, of course, is central to the Gospel, inphileo as well as agape forms. That is, Christian love has a practical, feed-the-poor, love-your-neighbor aspect, as well as the “spiritual.” The story of the Good Samaritan is a perfect example: intolerance of sin means more than just preaching against it – sometimes it means actually rescuing the victims and getting involved in their lives. You see, love itself is intolerant of pain, of injustice, and of sin.

Furthermore, the Gospel is not intolerant in the way that many people think. For some, Christianity includes a set of rules and standards that demarcate the tolerable behaviors from the intolerable behaviors and therefore separate the sheep from the goats. It’s about who’s “in” and who’s “out.” The reality, of course, is that the Gospel is actually intolerant of this line of thinking. If you hold to any behavioral criteria for deciding who’s “in” or “out,” you’ve lost the Gospel. Remember, “For God so loved the world …” (not, for God so loved the fundamentalists…). The Gospel is, at its very core, invitational and inclusive. Everyone is invited (even if you’re ultra-Calvinist).

This is not to say that Jesus tolerated sin, or that he tolerated sinners; in fact, the Gospels show him as just the opposite. Jesus was so intolerant of sin, that he died to defeat its power. He died to eradicate sin, and he loved and accepted and forgave sinners. Toleration had nothing to do with it. Tolerance is not love, and tolerance is no substitute for love and acceptance. Again, if the Gospel is anything, it is inclusive. As Jesus demonstrated by eating and fellowshipping with them, sinners are included and accepted. Women are included. Gentiles, for Heaven’s sake, are included, as well as Jews, even without having to keep the Law! What a concept.

Absolutely.

The next thing the Church needs to do is come to terms with the “Absolutes,” Christianity’s non-negotiables. What are our Absolutes? What do we know for sure? What might we be willing to compromise? What are we absolutely willing to die for? I don’t think many of us know, or have really honestly considered the question.

I’m guessing that if we were to ask a random group of Christians to sit down and write a list of what they believe to be the Absolutes of Christianity, it would start out to be a fairly long list, and no two people would have the same list. I suspect that most of us have been so indoctrinated with our particular brand (or a mix of brands) of Christianity that we have a hard time separating out the true Absolutes from the non-essential doctrines that may have accepted as absolute. This is not a new issue; many Christians have been burned – both literally and figuratively – over often silly things (such as a monk’s proper hairstyle) that someone decided was an Absolute.

This is, in my opinion, why some Christians are driven to control, both in the church as well as in the world; there is simply no other way for them to protect their list of absolutes. You see, it is because they are not true absolutes. The Tolerant, on the other hand, have to be tolerant because they, too, cannot tell, or perhaps suspect but don’t want to know, what the absolutes are. Because they do not know, they don’t want to take the chance that someone else might know; therefore, let’s be tolerant of everything (except of course, intolerance).

What are the Absolutes? Is baptism by immersion (or water baptism at all)? How about speaking in tongues? Or, pre-trib rapture (or rapture at all)? I don’t think any of these qualify. Some Christians, however, have made these absolutes, and have actually severed relationships with other Christians over these non-absolute issues. What about loving your neighbor? (Now, I think we may have found an absolute.)

If you were to take a good long look at the Bible, without the filters you’ve been given that interprets what you are reading for you (we all have them), I think you’d find that many of the true Absolutes are directed primarily to believers. The Gospel Absolutes are not weapons for the Church to use to assault the world! Some of the Absolutes, such as the claim that Jesus is the only way to the Father, will certainly be offensive to some non-believers. However, many of the true Absolutes – things like “love your neighbor (even those outside of your culture)” – will not be offensive to most of the world, especially the poor and down-trodden world, and especially if we will truly see them as “neighbors” instead of enemies. This is, however, offensive to much of the Church (it simply offends our human nature, mine included).

Consider, for a moment, what we know as the First Commandment, “Have no other gods before Me.” First, we must recognize that the statement was made to a group of people who had already been identified as God’s chosen people (as were the other 9 commandments). This Absolute, then, is directly primarily to those of us who have chosen to make God our only God. Undeniably, this statement is also a banner that is confrontational and offensive to the world – it says that our God is the only God, and therefore, yours must be an impostor.

But what is our attitude to be in all this? If we have grasped that our call is to be “lovingly intolerant,” we can also grasp that “have no other gods before Me,” is the foundation of the gospel message. This is, in other words, Good News! There is One God! The others, who demand your service, your money, your sacrifices, and hate you anyway, are fakes! This will be offensive to the world, in spite of it being good news, especially to those who profit from the false religious systems, but also to those who have invested so heavily in these other systems. However, this does not give us the right to use this message to sit in condemnation; rather, it offends us first. It says, “How will you have to change, in order to represent the truth of this message to the world?”

The Absolutes, then, are not a list of behaviors that the Church is called to shove down the world’s throat; they are not mandates for the world, but mandates first for the Church. What does the Gospel mean for us? How are we called to change? What are we called to do? Once we start looking at the Gospel in this light, we may be able to understand how to be “absolute” in our tolerant culture.

To Be the Church in a Tolerant World

As The Church, as the New Covenant People of God, we have a mission. Our mission is not, as you have probably figured out by now, to merely tolerate anyone. Our mission is also not to condemn people, or to use the Absolutes to classify them as sinners. I think they’ve already got that nailed.

Our mission is to follow Jesus’ example, and love people – all of them, whatever that means for them. Jesus didn’t tolerate anyone, he loved them. He was “lovingly intolerant.” Sometimes he embraced them, sometimes he healed them, sometimes he said, “go and sin no more.” Sometimes he confronted them, challenged them, and frustrated them; but, he always loved them and he always accepted them. People may have rejected Jesus, but no one walked away feeling rejected by him.

The Gospel has sometimes been characterized in terms of acceptance and change. We are accepted, and we are acceptable, only because of Jesus. And, the rest of the Good News is that we don’t have to stay in the state in which Jesus found us. Jesus empowers us to change, and he empowers us to bring change to others.

If we only tolerate someone, we say, “yes, you may be weird, strange, wacko and smell bad, but you’ve a right to exist and I will allow you to exist just as I found you.” But, if we embrace the Absolutes and Jesus’ model, what does that mean? Do we tell them their sin will kill them? Do we need to invite them to dinner? What does it mean to love them, to be their neighbor? That, indeed, is the Big Question.

When Worlds Collide

One way in which to view the Bible is to see it as the historical record of worlds colliding. The Prime Directive given to the Israelites was “you shall have no other gods before Me.” Sometimes it meant war, sometimes death, sometimes a long hike in a desert. Noah, Daniel, Elijah, Abraham – all had to deal with the Absolutes in their own situation. Later, to say “Jesus is Lord” – the updated version of the afore-mentioned Prime Directive – had very radical political implications, not just spiritual ones.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor during WWII (who, among other things, studied pacifism with Gandhi), came to the conclusion that to be faithful to Christ meant becoming involved in the German resistance movement, which for him meant smuggling some Jews out of Germany as well as participating in several plots to kill Hitler – and being hanged as a result. Not everyone would come to the conclusion that assassination (yes, that qualifies as physical violence), even of Hitler, is an option. For him, this was the working out of what he saw as the Absolute of obedience to Christ; in other words, this was what it meant for him to say, “Jesus is Lord.” He could not be tolerant; for him, being lovingly intolerant had implications.

Whether we’re talking about 1^st Century Israel, Germany, or modern America, we have cultures that are in opposition to the Absolute, “Jesus is Lord.“ When I look at the conversations being held in our culture, my internal response is, “I can’t participate in that; I can’t play your games. I can’t even accept your ground rules.” But, at the same time, I am “imbedded” in the world. This is where I have been put, at Jesus’ request, to be “in the world, not of the world.” How am I to be lovingly intolerant – to say “Jesus is Lord” and love my neighbor – in this culture of feigned tolerance?

I am still thinking these issues through, and I don’t have any bottom-line answers. What I think I am discovering is that in holding to Absolutes in a tolerant culture, or any culture, the implications are not primarily for the world. The implications are first for us as Christians and as members of the Church community. The question is not how we can change the world in order to live as the Church; the question is, “How do we change, to live as the Church in this tolerant culture?”

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