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Does love entail tolerance and acceptance?
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Among Christians there seems to be an interesting trend in sermons of pastors and in conversation about faith and spirituality. A lot of people appear to be angered about the "media's force of tolerance and acceptance of immorality on Christians."
A pastor named Greg Laurie who speaks out of Riverside, California (writer's note: I generally consider Laurie a very good pastor with strong moral views) asks, in defense of Christians being labeled intolerant, "Have you ever noticed that the most intolerant people are those that say they are tolerant?" He goes onto exclaim that those people want to shut Christians up and that they should be more tolerant of Christians. While it's true that picking on Christians is considered media-acceptable while singling out any other groups is considered absolutely abhorrent, what Laurie doesn't understand is that many people have a reasonable beef with Christians who are intolerant and can't accept the existence of people different from them.
What Laurie also fails to do in his accusation of the supposed tolerant being intolerant is offer an actual rebuttal. All he is saying, in so many words, is that "it takes one to know one" and it further encourages people to just be more intolerant and close out the outside world without trying to reach it. Many Christians like to simply stay in their inner circle and judge everybody outside of it, but in Mark 2:17, Jesus says: "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." How is any Christian going to reach anyone if they simply steer clear of potential "bad influences?" People are so worried about their own salvation that they've forgotten about the salvation of others.
That is where tolerance and acceptance come into play. The greatest commandment, after loving God with all your heart, is to "love your neighbor as yourself." (Matthew 22:39) There is also a very good correlating scripture with that commandment from 1 Corinthians 13:4-5: "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs." Considering that we are commanded to love our neighbors as ourselves and love is patient and keeps no record of wrongs... It seems that love cannot exist without tolerance and acceptance.
The very next verse in Corinthians 13 says "Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth." So it seems as though Christ has posed a difficult task on His followers. How does one love and tolerate those that are different, and perhaps less morally stable, without delighting in evil and/or encouraging it? It's simple: Be an example. Jesus was the ultimate example, He preached and told people to stop sinning and what-not (something we cannot do without judging), but the strongest trait that He conveyed was His example. People that were around Jesus wanted to be with Him and be like Him. They felt utterly unworthy of being in His presence, not just because of His teachings, but because of His perfect being. He was tolerant of everyone no matter what they had done, He accepted everyone no matter who they were--Yet here are all these Christians who are trying to disassociate themselves with tolerance because of the fickle incoherence of the media.
Now, nobody will ever be perfect, but the ultimate goal in a Christian's every day life should be trying to be as Christ-like as possible. Tolerate people. Accept them. That will be about a billion times more effective than excluding people that are different from you or protesting somebody's lifestyle. God loves, so should we.
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