I see three tests a leader can use when evaluating the concept of tolerance: 1. Is it taste or is it truth? I wrote a friend recently, "You're tolerant in your taste, but you're intolerant in your truth." It was a compliment. Christ said, "I am the truth." In matters of taste, we should be tolerant. Too often we ritualize our tastes into orthodoxy. I cannot worship in an atmosphere of contemporary music, even though many times the words are actually more scriptural than some of those in favorite old hymns that feel so necessary to satisfying worship. It is a matter of taste, not of truth. It is preference, not principle. Therefore I should not criticize the young people who find in contemporary music their worship, so long as it contains truth. Recently I was in Quebec attending an Episcopal service. The three priests were ecclesiastically clad, the young man reading the Scripture from the pulpit was in shorts and the young lady who took the offering was wearing jeans. Their taste was different from mine. So long as the truth remained, I had to agree with their truth while differing with their taste. Many times I have been tempted to refuse a perfectly good load simply because it came in an unattractive wagon. The wagon is not the focal point, the load is. I've always admired the admonition of the minister who said that when we are feeding on truth and run across a thorn that we do not believe, we should at least have the sense of a mule, which, while eating hay and discovering a thorn, doesn't stop eating the hay; it simply pushes the thorn aside and keeps on eating. 2. Is it preference or principle? Our preferences can vary; our principles cannot, because our principles must be scriptural. In controversial matters I have to be sure I'm not practicing my preference rather than biblical principle. Style and cultural habits are largely preference, not principle—forms of worship, translations, vestments, rituals, and the like. When I first became chairman of Youth for Christ, I began meeting a lot of young people who shocked me with their long hair, jewelry, and clothes. As I got to know them, I found they were much deeper Christians than many of my friends with short hair, less jewelry, and three-piece suits. Our spiritual life doesn't depend on the barbershop. Once I was listening to a jazz group from South Africa that was being interviewed on television. The leader was asked if they had racial problems, since half of them were white and half were black. He said, "No, we got over the racial issue a long time ago. We still have our cultural differences." That was illuminating to me. I may have preferences, which I want to maintain, but they are not matters of principle. 3. Is God tolerant in this area? I think we can be tolerant where God is tolerant, and we cannot be tolerant where God is not tolerant. In my study of Scripture, I've not found God to be tolerant. He is patient, merciful, kind, loving, and forgiving—all qualities that handle our human problems so much better than tolerance. His judgments are always the same. That is why Christ died, that he might have mercy and grace with justice.
Three tests of tolerance
By Fred Smith
