Intolerance

That's what we're all about these days -- tolerance. Oh, wait, which version? The dictionary says it is a "willingness to accept behaviour and beliefs that are different from your own, although you might not agree with or approve of them." The problem with the dictionary is that it changes its definition. So in deference to the "new tolerance" as I'll call it, Merriam-Webster now says that it is "sympathy or indulgence for beliefs or practices differing from or conflicting with one's own." A slight shift? Perhaps. In the original it was to allow something you disagree with; in the new it is to "sympathize with" something you disagree with. Or, in today's standard usage, it is to agree with and wholly embrace something you disagree with ... which, of course, makes no sense.

Okay, so we are in favor of tolerance in some form. Got it. But while the cry is for "tolerance" and bemoans those who don't "tolerate" what "we" do, there is an apparent double standard in that they won't tolerate those who don't tolerate what they demand must be tolerated. (The practice, to me, is as confusing as that sentence was.) "You must tolerate what we tell you to ... or we will not tolerate you." So, the problem I'm pointing out is not that they're "wrong," but that it's a double standard.

The premise, then, must be that we must tolerate what they say we must because what is not tolerated is that which is intolerable. See? Clear as mud. That there are things that should (versus "must") be tolerated and things that are not to be tolerated should be patently obvious. So what it comes down to is not the question of tolerance, but the question of what is intolerable.

Ah! Now we're getting down to the nitty gritty. Our current society will tolerate sexual immorality in most (not quite all) forms and unscientific concepts (like "you can choose your own gender" or "an unborn child is not an unborn child") as long as these things are popular. They will not tolerate the intolerable like the notion of the Bible as God's Word or the people who believe it is. By simple deduction, if God said those things, He is intolerable as well. Thus, by implication, all those who have gone before who believed such things are also intolerable. "Look," they are telling us, "we are happy to embrace those who have sex with the same sex regardless of what your Bible says about it and we're glad to honor those who think they're the opposite gender than what they were born despite what science might argue in that regard, but you people, your rotten old Bible, your lousy God, and your attempts to live by all that are intolerable and we will not put up with it."

Ah, tolerance. It's a lovely thing.