Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Redefining Tolerance; Gritting Our Teeth Through Intolerance

          The cliche of "tolerance" has made a few more rounds in Christian circles again, perhaps due to the mockery of Tim Tebow, the political campaigns, events with the LGBT community and Disney, etc. D.A. Carson even wrote a recent book on the subject, which I might take a look at.
          Myself, I still remember reading a short by Greg Koukl, which was actually abridged in the Faith and Culture Devotional (I'd recommend that book to anyone), because it has a concise proverb for Christians striving for tolerance from Boston College prof Peter Kreeft:


          Be egalitarian regarding persons.
          Be elitist regarding ideas.

          The latter challenges us, as Christians, to look to the biblical soundness of ideas and think things through. Aside from the occasional struggle with anti-intellectualism, I think Christians do this fairly well. It's the former that needs work.
          The former reminds us of the biblical call to love our enemies, no matter how disagreeable, even if we're not being as "tolerated" as they are. Let's strive to follow the call to biblical love and Kreeft's advice on tolerance.

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