The Definition of Tolerance

By Lisa Cherry, CP Guest Contributor Tuesday, February 04, 2014

When I was a girl, Mama taught me her meaning of the word "tolerance" when she bought my kid sister and me matching twin-sized, blue-ruffled bedspreads; coordinating white French provincial furniture; and proceeded to move us into the same bedroom.

"Lisa, I expect you to love, honor, and respect your little sister," she would say.

Never mind that my sister, who was a massive twenty-one months younger than I, was childish, immature, and messy-at least in my eyes. I-the "mature" one-was required to "tolerate" her.

I am so grateful for Mama's lesson. From her I learned to tolerate-and even love-others, even when I was sure they were wrong. So when my sister and I retired our little blue bedspreads back in the 1970s, we both thought we had tolerance figured out. Unfortunately, we did not understand back then that we were already in the midst of a strange silent war that would cause us to think twice about our bedroom-lesson beliefs.

Fast forward forty years and Mama's word "tolerance" has become quite the buzz. The only problem is that the word has totally changed in meaning. Tolerance used to mean something along the lines of respecting or honoring people and their individual views, opinions, or actions.

"Today the definition of tolerance more closely resembles giving everyone and everything equal space to be right; acceptance of all views and actions as equally true; and lack of any judgment toward one another."¹

Tolerance is no longer a sweet little character trait that promotes interpersonal peace. It has become monumental and powerful. Frightening and condemning. (Have you ever looked at some of the self-appointed hate watch-group sites?^{2) In fact, the word's opposite, intolerance, is diagnosed at the heart of most every social issue hurled around in our daily news-from school bullying to transsexual bathrooms, to gridlocks in Congress, to duck-calling reality shows, to Christmas carols sung in Veterans' hospitals.}

However, if intolerance really were at the heart of our challenges, then wouldn't you think we could at least agree on what the word means?

If tolerance just means being nice and kind and respectful, like it meant in my pretty little blue bedroom, then what is all the fuss?

I propose that tolerance/intolerance is not the real issue we are debating. It is only the politically-correct, easy-to-argue smokescreen disguising the deeper problem we don't really want to address-the issue of truth, absolute truth as found in the Bible. (There. I said it. As scary as it is!)

While we are flinging our tolerance/intolerance accusations back and forth, our real enemy is laughing. He snuck in long before my 1970s childhood and launched an invisible, spiritual, culture war that most of us did not even know we were fighting. Love. Freedom. Morality. Truth. He had us opening our hearts and minds to whatever new wind of philosophy he could throw our way.

"This war masqueraded itself as political bantering, ideological debating and philosophical musing, but make no mistake about it. It was a war with real weapons, real battles, and real casualties." ³

I don't know about you, but we are personally acquainted with many friends and families who have fallen on the battlefield of this deception.

Thankfully today, we are seeing evidence of an awakening to the reality of this invisible spiritual war. Many are shaking off the odd cultural notion that to be smart, cool, loving, and a Christian, one has to be "open minded." They are now coming back to the biblical truth that people's minds are supposed to be renewed! (See Romans 12:1–2.) Some are now stepping out of the pack to ask the tough questions and those questions demand more than just emotional placations and culturally cliché answers.

Here are a few questions to ponder:

Is God's Word still to be trusted?
Is it our final authority in every area of our lives-including the area of sex, which has become the god of our modern culture?
Is it really true that all judgment should be deemed wrong?
Finally, what are we to think about the fact that Jesus said we would be hated by all men on account of Him? (See Matthew 10:22.)

I don't know about you, but I am ready to shake off this dead-end notion of tolerance for a little while. I say we press past its emotional land mines. I'm thinking underneath its prickly facade is the truth that, when embraced, will set our families and our world on the path to spiritual healing. (By the way, my little sister and dear friend agrees.)

^{1 Lisa and Lucas Cherry, Not Open: Win the Invisible Spiritual Culture War (Sapulpa, OK:
HonorNet Publishers, 2014) 41.
^{2 "Hate Speech Watch List," No Hate Speech Movement, accessed June 17, 2013,
http://www.nohatespeechmovement.org/hate-speech-watch/report .
^{3 Cherry, Not Open, 15.}}}