Showing posts with label tolerance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tolerance. Show all posts

Friday, December 5, 2008

Love Without Tolerance

Today's Daily Soap {Scripture | Observation | Application | Prayer}
FOR TODAY'S FULL READING, CLICK THE TITLE LINK ABOVE.
0 Tolerance

SCRIPTURE:
And so I insist—and God backs me up on this—that there be no going along with the crowd, the empty-headed, mindless crowd. They've refused for so long to deal with God that they've lost touch not only with God but with reality itself. They can't think straight anymore. Feeling no pain, they let themselves go in sexual obsession, addicted to every sort of perversion. Ephesians 4:17-19 [MSG]
OBSERVATION: We do not need to be accepting to be loving.

APPLICATION:
I've been thinking a lot lately about tolerance, as it seems more and more that we're told that we should accept the differences of others. Not racial or ethnic differences, or gender differences, or differences in abilities, but differences in lifestyle choices. I could create an exhaustive list of Biblically inappropriate lifestyle choices that some today say we should be tolerant of. I won't.

The Bible, we're told, teaches that we should love everyone. That's the argument often used by those who would call for tolerance. But can we love a person without accepting his / her lifestyle choices? I do.

Just as God loves each and every one of us, but hates our sins, so can we love a person without being forced to accept his / her choice of lifestyle. The Bible says that we should not go along with the crowd. Don't settle for the sin that we know to be wrong. Love others, but be strong in our support for God and His Word. Tolerance is not the way to achieve harmony or peace. Tolerance will lead only to more tolerance, until we are in fact intolerant of those who are trying to follow Christ's teaching. I can love you without being tolerant of your sins. Christ showed me how.
PRAYER:
Father, help me to show Your love to all, without regard to anything. At the same time, help me to following the crowd and avoid falling in with the calls for tolerance of that which you teach is wrong.
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Monday, October 6, 2008

Tolerance and Acceptance

Today's Daily Soap {Scripture | Observation | Application | Prayer}
FOR TODAY'S FULL READING, CLICK THE TITLE LINK ABOVE.
  • S: "Be alert. If you see your friend going wrong, correct him. If he responds, forgive him. Even if it's personal against you and repeated seven times through the day, and seven times he says, 'I'm sorry, I won't do it again,' forgive him." Luke 17:3-4 [MSG]
  • O: God has commanded us to look out for each other and to offer correction to those who stray.
  • A: In a world where the buzz words are tolerance and acceptance, it can be easy to get caught up in the buzz and be confused by those who say that it isn't Christ-like to be intolerant. But Christ never taught tolerance. Christ taught us to keep watch over each other, to offer correction to those who stray, and to forgive them if they repent. Granted, He told us that we should forgive them as often as they repent -- just as He does for us -- but He never told us to become tolerant of their sinful ways or to accept those sinful ways as okay. Tolerance and acceptance are the devil's way of convincing us that sin is okay. Tolerance and acceptance have no place in the Kingdom of God. With love and forgiveness there is no need for tolerance and acceptance.
  • P: Father, the confusion that the devil has created with tolerance and acceptance has infected society so deeply that many have promoted it in Your name. Help Your people, Lord, to see through the confusion and to resist the devil's attempts to infect us with his talk of tolerance and acceptance. Help us to show love and forgiveness to all in Your name and to help others to find their way out of sin and into Your arms.
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