I love my cousins!  Three of them are brothers, PK’s (preacher’s kid), in seminary and/or youth pastors, and great men of God.  I love being their friend on Facebook because they make me think.  One posted today this question  “Is tolerance love?”  Now, he and I don’t exactly agree on the definition of tolerance, I think, but it was a great discussion and now I want to know what you think!

Here is my response:

If it’s in reference to sin. Nope. Love is patient, kind, etc. nowhere does it say tolerant. Dictionary.com says: to tolerate is to allow the existence, presence, practice, or act of without prohibition or hindrance; permit. It’s that "without prohibition or hindrance" part that does a disservice to others and ourselves.

And then later in response to a question about discipline and the assertion that God tolerates us:

Absolutely the level of "maturity" intellectually and spiritually has to be taken into account for discipline. I’m just picking on the word tolerate really. I despise the use of the word "tolerance" by the society in general – it isn’t used correctly in most cases. We all sin, and in Christ we must all strive to love the sinner and hate the sin in ourselves as well as others. The person and their behavior are not the same thing. To the original question of "is tolerance love," my answer is still no. Tolerance is permissiveness of behavior and love is acceptance of the person.
So in that vein I will quibble that God doesn’t tolerate us – He LOVES us. It is very much more and better than mere tolerance. He allows us free will and to make the choice to sin, but He will discipline us, therefore He is not "tolerating" us. I’ll stop arguing for the sake of argument now. (Can you tell I crave adult conversation!!!!!)

I know, I’m really picky about precise use of language, but I feel very strongly about “tolerance.”  I feel that tolerance (including within the church) has brought society to its current woeful condition.  I read an article recently that very bluntly stated that Christian parents shouldn’t blame the fact that their children aren’t Christians on the word of God having failed, because in many, many cases the word of God was never taught.  “Christian” churches around the world preach love but not discipline, the idea of Christ’s sacrifice, but not the truth of it.  We tolerate little things because they are harmless and then as we become desensitized we tolerate more and more until we are surrounded by sin which we tolerate and hardly recognize as the sin it is.  We don’t want to call behaviors what they are (sin!) because we might offend someone because of our lack of tolerance.  We are called to correct one another in love, not tolerate!  It applies to ourselves as well.  Do we take a good look in the mirror?  Do we excuse our own sinful behavior because “everyone else does it?”  I sometimes imagine our heavenly Father rolling his eyes and sighing in exasperation as I sin repeatedly voicing feeble excuses as choose to behave in a way I know is wrong. 

My cousin called the point to question though, should the same level of discipline apply to everyone regardless of their age or spiritual maturity?  My answer to that is above – no.  A person needs to know that something is wrong.  That is why we cannot tolerate sin.  We must tell them that it is sin.  We must immerse ourselves in God’s word and develop friendships with like-minded believers in order to be constantly aware of our own sinful nature and behaviors.  We need to recognize that God loves us, but it is against His nature to tolerate sin.  We must share God’s love with others, and in order to do so I think we must share His intolerance of sin.

This might sound legalistic, but what I am trying to do is emphasize the fact that love is so great, huge, all-encompassing, it is strengthened by truth and the refusal to tolerate sin.  Tolerating sin, to me, is not an act of love.  Now, if we’re talking about tolerating socks on the floor, that is an entirely different story!

So what do you think?

I just HAD to share this excerpt… can’t wait to use the quote in “discussion”!

"Historically the Southern Baptist Convention has been rather joined at the hip with the public school system," Shortt contends. "But this proposal by Dr. Chapman, I think, represents the realization that the public school system is, in reality, the youth ministry for the state church of secular humanism."

The SBC and public education – what’s next? (OneNewsNow.com)

Amen!

Today I am thankful for Mennonite ladies with discontinued Bosch mixer models!

Making homemade bread from fresh-ground flour seems to be helping Boo, and it really doesn’t hurt the rest of us any (except maybe the Dad and I’s waistlines since we are gobbling down warm bread on baking days..).  So on average I am making 4 loaves of bread every week and will continue to do so probably forever.  While I enjoy making bread from scratch including the kneading part, it presents a problem when we run out of bread and we have something on the schedule for the day.  You see, from grinding the flour until the dough goes in the oven to bake it takes about 3-3 1/2 hours.  So I began researching mixers that knead bread.  My first choice after researching carefully was this one.  It carries a hefty price tag to go along with the hefty motor that everyone seems to love for making multiple loaves of bread.  With Bug’s braces, a mouthful of dental work for me, and the medical bills for Boo, plus the fact that we just splurged on the Vitamix, an Electrolux Assistent was obviously not something I could just order spur-of-the-moment.  Disappointed with the fact that we are not independently wealthy, I began to research cheaper options.   I ruled out pretty much everything including the Bosch Universal machines which are almost as expensive and take up more room on the counter.  Plus, I certainly don’t need the blender attachment!  I reluctantly resigned myself to saving up my pennies and begging my entire family to pitch in on my mixer for my birthday/Christmas present.

Well, Friday was our state’s curriculum fair so like a book-crazed good homeschool mom I headed over with a friend to pick up as much loot as possible a couple of books for next year.  There in the middle of the largest building was a lovely Mennonite family selling grain mills, wheat, and Bosch mixers.  Since I have been researching those very things, I began chatting with the nice lady behind the table.  Come to find out this nice lady had one Bosch Concept 7 mixer which she had originally bought to try out herself and never got around to and then Bosch came out with the new Universal machine and she started selling that one instead.  Apparently there are rules about being a Bosch distributer which limit you on what prices you can advertise etc., but because it was a discontinued model and we were at a homeschool show with no “advertising” she offered me the Concept 7 for $219.  I called the Dad to discuss it, and his response was “Don’t you think for less than half the price of the other one you could TRY to like it?”   Remember, this is the husband who cannot stand kitchen gadgets!  After hanging up I went back in and told the nice lady I’d take it!  It struck me at how good God is.  He is providing the way for me to feed my family well and to ease the burden on me at the same time.  It is amazing to me that with all the other “big” things God has to worry about that he cares about my convenience!  Now I can make bread, and batches and batches of cookies, pumpkin bread, banana muffins…

Now I have a lovely new gadget sitting on my counter and I have made one batch of bread so far.  There is a learning curve apparently since I ran the dough on low for 5 minutes (which I usually knead for about 15) and it was a little over-kneaded, but the bread was definitely edible, and it only had to rise once cutting my bread making time in half!  God is Great!

Believing in wrecks as a matter of principle (OneNewsNow.com)

Amen.

I received a link to this blog post through one of my favorite blogs last week.  I found it interesting that the sermon at church that day was about faith that causes us to step out and do something radical.  Like Abraham taking Isaac up the mountain to sacrifice him and Esther risking her life to go before the king.  (I absolutely love this movie by the way.)  Then in Sunday school we talked about how churches in general and THE church as a whole has fallen into the trappings of society.  Even though we try to set ourselves apart as Christians, most of us (myself included) do not take steps every day to live out our faith by making decisions that are completely Christ-centered.  In an excerpt of the book being reviewed, the author says this about his work:

“It is written for anyone who is dissatisfied with cultural Christianity and who longs for greater unity in the whole Body of Christ. Its plea is that we get serious about following Jesus.”

There have been so many times when God has pulled at my heartstrings and shown me very clearly that certain things of this world are not for me.  Not the big scary things that are obviously insidious, but small very accepted in the church sorts of things like certain TV shows, what my children see and listen to, what they wear, who they play with.  I am not saying that my choices are right or better than anyone else’s, but I honestly have no idea what goes through the mind of professing Christians who vote for people who clearly announce that their goals are to make abortion available to the entire world, remove parental rights regarding education, and to enact so-called hate crimes legislation which will obviously make any mention of our beliefs prosecutable.  Its as if we have re-defined Christianity to mean going to church, participating in church ministries, and a general superficial set of activities that have very little to do with a relationship with Christ. 

What if all professing Christians actually did get serious about following Jesus?  How would the ratings suffer on some of those funny but definitely unwholesome shows on t.v.?  What if we really paid attention to who Jesus is and what He is calling us to stand up for and refused to vote against our beliefs?  What if we actually paid attention to what is going on around us and (prepare yourself) did something about it instead of shrugging our shoulders and shaking our heads?  What would it look like in our homes, our neighborhoods, and, yes, in our churches if every decision we made was based on Jesus and not ourselves?