Tolerance?

In an old comic strip Charlie Brown and Linus are disagreeing about their beliefs in Santa Claus and the Pumpkin man. Linus walks off saying: “It doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you are sincere.”  Linus’ line which was comic absurdity forty years ago has become reality in the modern age, that if people are sincere, their ideas and values must be valid and therefore should be tolerated. 

But while tolerance is always good, ideas are not. Jesus was tolerant of all. He never shouted anyone down but when they were deceived or misguided, He let them know. That is just the right thing to do.

In the old days tolerance simply meant “To allow without prohibiting or to permit”?  For most of civilised history people allowed others to think and say whatever they believed to be true.  Of course, people could still disagree.  Tolerant people in days gone by were free to inform or even seek to persuade the other person to their viewpoint.

 Then it changed.  Tolerance came to mean that people had no right to try to persuade another to their belief, because that suggested that they deemed their belief to be superior.  The “postmodern” believes that there is no truth, only opinions, and because no opinion can be better than another, we must all “tolerate” each other without disagreement. But let’s face it, some beliefs are superior. “I believe the tooth fairy will come for all”, verses “I believe that death will come for all” are not equally true or equally important.

 But the world has moved on even further since then. In the last few years, the word tolerance has been redefined by those who seemingly have been educated beyond common sense.  Today when the vocal mob demand tolerance, they are not asking us to tolerate their point of view but are asking people to compromise, change or deny our own beliefs. They are not just asking us to concede that their beliefs are as true as ours, but that their view is “truer” than ours and that we must not hold any view contrary to theirs!   They are not asking people to tolerate the views of the “disordered Alphabet”, but to change our beliefs to agree with theirs.

 Rather than being tolerant, they are in effect demanding that all people convert to their own position. This is something that Muslims, Christians and most thinking Kiwis will never do, nor ever agree with. And should be free to say so.

It seems lost on the protesters that if Posie Parker can't stand up and state her opinion that it is good to be a woman, they have no right to promote their opinion either. If she can’t say what is true for her, then nothing they say can be true either. When they say that Christians are "intolerant" for accepting divinely revealed Truth, they show profound intolerance as they demand acceptance of their mental and moral fabrications.  Human arrogance can lead people to the conclusion that we can decide for ourselves what is truth and that no one can ever be wrong about what they believe.

But Linus was wrong.  Some people may think that they can fly, or that politicians always act in the best interest of the people, or that they were born in the wrong body. They all may be sincere in their belief but are all sincerely wrong.  I am not saying that they don't feel pain in their lives or that they don't really feel as they do, but to demand or expect that everybody else uncritically accept their belief, ideology, and sex and gender theories as true, would have only been asked in a comic strip a few years ago.