Tolerance Doesn’t Mean Making Peace With Sinful Behavior — Sunday Thought For The Day

I’m reminded of two quotes by the late John Wesley: 1) “What one generation tolerates, the next generation will embrace;” and 2) “Vice does not lose its character by becoming fashionable.”

We’ve all heard that we must be tolerant, the problem with the idea associated with being tolerant is that those calling for tolerance are defining it as making peace with that which God calls sin.

All too often the demands for tolerance comes from those who bask in the darkness of their sinful behavior and their own self-righteousness. God shows mercy for the sinner, but He does not show tolerance for the sin. If God showed tolerance for sin, the wages of sin would not be death.

We are led to believe that tolerance means accepting the very thing(s) that God’s word tells us He hates. We are led to believe that unless we are willing to embrace in totality the very thing(s) that God calls sin and condemns, we are not behaving as Christians. When it is demanded of me to be tolerant, i.e., accepting of sinfulness — I ask what verse in the bible tells me that it is my Christian duty to accept and be tolerant of sinful behavior?

We are inundated with messages that every form of sinful misbehavior is acceptable. These messages tell us that sinful behavior is okay as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone. That is one of the great lies of Satan. Sinful behavior hurts the individual living in same the most. We overlook the fact that the wages of sin are death and that is specifically death for the individual(s) indulging in it.

One of the questions I hear most often is the jeremiad of “how did our country become as it is today?” The answer is because we overlooked the fact that: “Vice, [i.e., sin], does not lose its character by becoming fashionable.”

Instead of turning away from sin/vice we embracing it by allowing ourselves to be desensitized to it. We worried more about what people would say if we did not embrace sinful behavior than we concerned ourselves with Godly Christ-centered lifestyles. And the result is the condition we find America and the world in today.

READ:Proverbs 6:16-19 (KJV)
16 These six things doth the Lord hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him:

17 A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood,

18 An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief,

19 A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.