POSITIVE
TOLERANCE by PASTOR WILLIAM HEINRICH
In a day when absolutes are scoffed the absolute of "Positive Tolerance" is almost reverenced. I was taught that tolerance means to recognize and respect beliefs and. practices of others without the necessity of agreeing or sympathizing with them. We would often say, "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion."
Today the meaning of tolerance taught in our schools and by the media is vastly different. They are teaching a tolerance that requires everyone's beliefs, values, life styles and truth claims as equally valid. It goes beyond respecting a persons rights, it demands endorsement of his beliefs, values and truth claims.
It is changing views of tolerance that is responsible in part for the cry of "Intolerant and "Far Right" made to and about those who speak out against homosexuality, abortion, and other moral issues. It is not so much against the truth of the moral message but our right to give it. Expressing your unwillingness to consider their views of equal value is seen as intolerant and therefore unacceptable.
True Christianity will always oppose "positive tolerance". All beliefs, values, life styles and truth claims are not equally valid. The Christian's Bible says, let God be true, but every man a liar, Romans 3:4. The Christian knows God is the only true God (I John 5:20); That God's word is the only certain truth (John 17:17); That the life style pleasing the Lord and taught in his word is the only acceptable one; And that values are not attained by man, but by God through the Word of God. All roads or ways do NOT lead to God, for Jesus says something very intolerant, "lam the way, the truth, and the life and no one cwnes to the father but through me".