Cross Ministry - Wake Forest, NC

Pick up most any newspaper and read the editorials and letters to the editor. Watch a TV talk show. Listen to the dribble of callers to radio talk-shows and you get one or two distinct impressions. Either Americans are suffering from a massive epidemic of biblical illiteracy or special-interest groups are deliberately using grammatical contortions in a major effort to reinterpret Jesus Christ's "tolerance level"...or both.

In a letter to the editor, a man wrote in response to a woman's previous letter, "And regarding gays...I regret that her god is so small and exclusive. I suggest she consider Christianity–Jesus was very open and tolerant, and I do not doubt that He would welcome her with love, as he does everyone." ( Raleigh News & Observer 11/11/98)

The Biblical Recorder , North Carolina's Baptist paper, ran a story titled "Baptist-affiliated university bans discrimination against gays" The story said University of Richmond had added sexual orientation to its non-discrimination policy. Trustee Clint Hopkins, retired Southern Baptist pastor, voted for the policy. He said, "Jesus never made sexual habits an issue with His followers. We want to be as much like Jesus as possible, so it is not proper for us to give too much attention to sex in deciding who is in and out of the kingdom." (April 3, 1999 p.6)

Am I mistaken or was it Jesus who told the woman taken adultery to, "go and sin no more." From his words, it sounds as if Hopkins reads the previous quote as "go and sin some more."

Daniel Taylor in his article "Are You Tolerant? Should You Be?" writes "The charge of intolerance has become a potent weapon in the culture wars, all the more useful because it carries a lot of emotional firepower without requiring a great deal of evidence or logical consistency." ( Christianity Today January 11, 1999, p.45)

After the full-page newspaper advertisements of 1998 claiming homosexuals could change, Tracey Canaty of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force told CNN, "The bigotry, hatred and intolerance that this ad represents is the real perversion." In response nationally syndicated columnist Betsy Hart wrote, "But what ‘bigotry, hatred and intolerance' is she talking about? It seems to me that those who say we should be tolerant of all lifestyles themselves have a responsibility to tolerate someone who simply and genuinely wishes not to be gay–whether or not gay activists think that is possible." (The Kinston [NC] Freepress ; July 1998; "Tolerating those who quit gay life")

What righteously angers me is the attempt to reinterpret Jesus Christ as one who never spoke a harsh word and tolerated everything. Is this the same Jesus who, on seeing the temple court turned into a Wal Mart (the day after Thanksgiving), overturned the moneychangers' tables and drove out the buyers and sellers of animals? (Mark 11:15-18) The number of animals in this court would have had to have been in the thousands. For Christ to have performed a noticeable act would mean he had to do so with great force. This was a divine display of intolerance!

And note the end of the passage, "The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill [not tolerate] him..." John 2:15 says Jesus made a whip from a cord to clear the temple. Jesus comes across as, well, intolerant!

The fact is that intolerance can be a virtue. I've finally found an appropriate rejoinder when I am labeled intolerant. I tell them "I know I'm intolerant, but I can't help myself; I was born this way. It's genetic."

A few years ago Lisa and I stumbled into a "church" where the opening solo was the show-tune "when you're smiling, when you're smiling, the whole world will smile with you." After this unusual "call to worship", a lady gushingly referred to the soloist as "one step away from Broadway." I leaned over and whispered in Lisa's ear, "yeah, broad is the way that leads to destruction." (Matt 7:13-14) Jesus said that the gate to eternal life was narrow, not broad. Jesus does not tolerate an "anything goes" mentality.