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The Christian Virtue of Intolerance
By Daniel LaLond Jr. | August 27, 2008
Popular opinion in these early years of the twenty-first century has assailed our minds with “politically correct” sentiment. In keeping with this viewpoint a garbage man ought to be dubbed a “sanitation engineer” and a short person is not short he is “vertically challenged.” Even the term thief might offend so we should adopt the more tolerant “ethically disoriented.” This paradigm bares its true farcical colors when traffic signs are marked in Braille so the blind aren’t offended!
Politically correct extremes can even creep into the evangelical Christian church under the scriptural banner of “judge not lest ye be judged.” That is, it’s easy to think that Christian “love” excludes intolerance. Though no Christian should desire to flippantly judge, when we tolerate what God does not we have imbibed the culture we ought to affect.
Many Christians oppose divergent moral behavior (at least in theory). In the name of “grace” or “mercy,” however, these believers will tolerate doctrinal divergence. Though the apostle Jude admonished first century Christians to “contend earnestly for the faith” perhaps most of us prefer to comfort rather than to contend. In tune with Jude, however, Paul also implored the church to be intolerant toward doctrinal divergence:
Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them. For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple (Rom 16:17-18).
Regarding Romans 16:17 James Strong explains that the term mark them means “to take aim at.” Now, could the gracious and merciful apostle Paul possibly mean that Christians are to “take aim at” leaders inside the Christian church? Such a concept seems offensive and extreme when considered through today’s post-modern, “tolerant” mindset. Paul, however, plainly demonstrated the lost virtue of Christian intolerance when he warned Timothy about Hymenaeus and Philetus whose teaching “will spread like gangrene.”
How do you think a preacher in our “tolerant” culture would be received if he insisted that another Christian’s teaching “will spread like gangrene?” If you are at all like me maybe you’re tempted to believe that Paul’s intolerance was only aimed at some fringe heretic. Please note, however, this example of Paul publicly criticizing the most preeminent leader of first century Christianity:
When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them all, “You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs (Gal 2:14).
In Galatians 2:14 Paul critiqued Peter because when trusted preachers proclaim errors others are mislead. Being intolerant toward doctrinal deviations isn’t sympathetic with modern live and let live ideology, but it is biblical. Even the Christians at the church of Pergamum in Rev. 2:15 did not need to guess about whose teaching to avoid. “You have some there who hold the teaching of Balaam,” warned the Lord, “who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, that they might eat food sacrificed to idols and practice immorality.”
In stark opposition to the practices of modern Christianity where tolerance at the expense of doctrinal purity is considered a virtue. In scripture though, Jesus expects His church to exercise the virtue of intolerance toward errant teachers and their dangerous dogmas. By merely being tolerant of an errant teacher within the church at Thyatira the Christians there earned an open rebuke in the eternal record:
But I have this against you, that you tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and she teaches and leads My bond-servants astray, so that they commit acts of immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols (Rev 2:20).
As Jezebel (and even Peter) were tolerated though they misled many early Christians, teachers who occupy mainstream, popular pulpits today are tolerated though they too lead the children of God astray. And in contrast to the just coexist secular slogans which can seem so “Christian” the only item on the menu is biblical intolerance as our modern pulpits are polluted and our spiritual cisterns are dry.
Topics: Religion |
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