The Intolerance of the Tolerant

Phyllis McGinley wrote a famous poem called “The Angry Man,” describing a man who saw it as his business to stamp out intolerance. Walking around with a banner marked “Tolerance,” he condemns everyone who disagrees with him:

And when I asked him why he strode

Thus scowling down the human road,

Scowling, he answered, "I am he

Who champions total liberty —

Intolerance being, ma'am, a state

No tolerant man can tolerate.

The political world is filled with people like this—those who carry around the banner of “tolerance,” but wield it like a weapon.

The most recent victim of the intolerance of the tolerance lobby is a Christian school in Louisville, Kentucky, in which, the Louisville Courier-Journal reported, an assignment was given to students asking them to respond charitably to a homosexual friend concerning the Christian strictures on sexual activity.

The story attracted a crowd of Angry Men on social media condemning the school as being “intolerant.” Several news stories have been written on the seeming crisis, and several opinion pieces have been run in the local paper (all of them against the school).

The school assignment was first publicized on social media by JP Davis, whose only connection with the school seems to be that he has a friend who sends his child there. Davis was outraged by the assignment. “I know it’s a Christian school, but that’s not my Christianity. That’s not my values.”

In other words, Davis’ problem with what the school is doing is that it isn’t teaching his own values. Davis apparently believes the school has some obligation to abandon its version of Christianity (the one that’s been around for over 2,000 years) in favor of Davis’ more recent version—but it’s not clear exactly why, other than that it bothers Davis.

Anyone can have his own personal view of Christianity. You can even take a pair of scissors to the Bible and create your own version of that, too. But when you want to force that edited version down other people’s throats, you shouldn’t be surprised when they prefer the original, unedited version.

This is the “tolerance” agenda at its worst: belligerent, unempathetic, and completely lacking in self-awareness regarding its inconsistency with its own message.

https://intellectualtakeout.org/2022/05/the-intolerance-of-the-tolerant/

[TBC: A conviction that there is a definite way to heaven (and only one) is not tolerated in this day of professed tolerance because it insists that all roads don’t lead to the same place, that truth does exist, and that there is a distinction between what is right and what is wrong. Instead of such old-fashioned convictions, ecumenical broad-mindedness is the new wave for the new millennium. We are expected to set aside the rational necessity of being certain about our eternal destiny in favor of a mindless tolerance that promises only to avoid religious arguments in this life but offers no sensible assurance for the next.

Tolerance sounds like a virtue, and at times it may be. On the other hand, an attitude allowing a parent to be tolerant of behavior that is harming a child or the police to be tolerant of criminals who prey upon others turns virtue into the vice of aiding and abetting evil. Should doctors be tolerant of disease, or public schoolteachers tolerant of any answer on an exam, no matter how wrong? And to be tolerant of a false hope that has deceived multitudes and will lead them to destruction can hardly be the stance of one who truly loves others. This is why Paul said, “Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men…” (2 Corinthians:5:11Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men; but we are made manifest unto God; and I trust also are made manifest in your consciences.
See All...). --Dave Hunt, Seeking and Finding God, pages 50-51.]