We can love people without approving of their behavior or life style! There is nothing intolerant about such love. In fact, we are commanded to love our neighbor as ourselves. Why the pressure to approve and accept behavior or lifestyles that are directly opposed to our own? Why the demand for such acceptance? One has to ask what underlying need prompts this desire for approval.
Loving our neighbor does not mean accepting and excusing any and all behaviors or lifestyles. Because we love, we hold true to our own moral standards. To compromise would render us merely tolerant and not loving at all. To tolerate someone or something means to acknowledge reluctantly or to endure. Does that sound loving to you?
Tolerance is not the highest virtue, love is. Merely being tolerant means one is willing to endure anything and everything and has no set values or moral standards of right and wrong. Every opinion is correct and truth does not exist, except that which one wishes to accept. I like the quote from G. K. Chesterton, “The tolerant man is one who has no convictions at all.”
Only recently has tolerance had a positive connotation. Now it is being promoted as a fine and noble thing, but it is not. Without strong moral convictions and beliefs many people in today’s culture, including our youth, are confused and left to fend for themselves. When they search inwardly, they find little encouragement or affirmation. If they seek and find so- called self fulfillment they may become exactly that – filled with self - having a very narrow and stilted view of life and an open, undiscerning mind. Only loving our neighbor can really be considered helpful and positive. Mere tolerance offers nothing to our fellow man in the end. Doma
