No, I'm not going to talk about how we need to turn the other cheek. We already know that. I'm going to suggest that others should be tolerant of Christians. What would that look like? Would the Christian body actually be able to join together to become a force to be reckoned with? These are important questions in this day where we are being asked to tolerate everything from a persons right to have processed sugar to a president who refuses to obey the very law he swore he would obey. Why is it okay to trample on the beliefs of the Christian if it's not okay to trample on everyone and everything else. Okay, I just have to say it. I love butter. Both as a Christian and just a content man. Butter is wonderful! I prefer salted but like unsalted also. Butter goes with just about everything. The powers that be have, over the years, tried to vilify butter as the enemy of mankind. Huge amounts of private and public money have taken butter to task. Guess what, butter is still there. Many people I know would defend butter until they removed it from our cast iron skillets! But then I digress.
I read a missionary story quite a few years about the underground church in Russia. In a certain town the members of the underground church were concerned about what would happen if the KGB came to take away all of their Bibles. They did something radical to oppose this intolerance by the Russian powers. They took apart the Bible giving each member a section to memorize. This even applied to the children. When they were done the church had a memorized version of the Bible! Now, who could take that away? You see, that is what tolerance and intolerance is all about. How do I survive when people are intolerant of my love of butter? How about my belief in the Bible, God and salvation through Christ only? It's not really that different because of the application of the principle. I am intolerant of lots of things. You are too even if you won't admit it. We are intolerant of those who are intolerant of us. Because this is a big world, you can go pretty much anywhere you like and be whoever you like (unless it's illegal). You can hide in the mountains of Alaska or you can hide in Times Square. Hiding is, like tolerance and intolerance, first an internal determination. I have chosen to believe in Jesus as my Savior. It was an internal decision that has a external expression.
The analogy of the frog in water comes to mind. If you take a live frog and put it in a pan of water that frog is content. If you turn on the heat under the pan the frog adjusts to the heat to the point where it will boil to death not having made any attempt to jump out of the pan. When people tell me I need to be tolerant because my intolerance might hurt someone's' feelings they are telling me to just stay in the pan and quietly die. It's not okay when the world does this to the Christian AND it's definitely not right when the Christian community does this to their members. When someone tells me to be tolerant of who or what they are that is being intolerant of who and what I am. Our actions and inaction's impact not only our world but other peoples worlds as well. I cannot and will not change the way you think, live and believe. Get the hint! You cannot change the way I think, live or believe. You can impose laws, make prisons to hold me, or even kill me but you will never kill what is inside of me. You can never take the word of God from my heart and you can never take away my salvation in Christ. I will be in Heaven one day regardless of what you do or don't do to me. Can you say the same about what you believe in? Who in the world are you going to give up yourself to so that they can feel comfortable? Practice Christian intolerance.
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