The Anti-Tolerance Movement

Today Eric at Evangelical Underground has a spot-on post: "Redefining Tolerance." Most importantly, he addresses the frustrating notion that Jesus was "tolerant" in the way that it is used today - "respecting the beliefs or practices of others". Here are the final two paragraphs:

We don’t have to look any further than Jesus’ dealings with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well. Now if Jesus met the criteria in the definition above for being tolerant, would he have even brought up the woman’s sin of having five husbands? Of course not. He would have respected her beliefs or practices and went along his merry way. But He did not do that did He? Instead we see the Savior witness to the woman, exposing her sin and offering her a solution. Not very tolerant on our Savior’s part now was it?

Although we have this perfect example of Jesus’ lack of intolerance, (along with many others) we still see progressives and liberals spinning away the actions of our Savior in the hopes their agenda can only day be a bit more palatable for the evangelical crowd-and there are clear indicators that it’s working. Again I’ll state that Jesus clearly taught love, and there is a big difference between love and tolerance.

Eric's absolutely right to use the example in John 4 of the woman at the well. That story is a great example of Jesus forgiveness in spite of the reactions of the rest of society. That woman had to go the well in the middle of the day when it was the hottest because she didn't want to see other people, she was shocked that Jesus would even talk to her. He did talk to her, but not to simply look the other way when it came to her sins. His tolerance of her and love for her showed itself in exposing her sin and encouraging her to "go and sin no more."