by Daniel LaLond Jr.
Popular opinion in these early years of the twenty-first century has assailed our minds with “politically correct” sentiment. In keeping with this viewpoint a garbage man ought to be dubbed a “sanitation engineer” and a short person is not short he is “vertically challenged.” Even the term thief might offend so we should adopt the more tolerant “ethically disoriented.” This paradigm bares its true farcical colors when traffic signs are marked in Braille so the blind aren’t offended!
This paradigm might even slip into evangelical Christian thought if biblical truths like “judge not lest ye be judged” are misunderstood. That is, many feel as though to “love” means that we should never be intolerant. Certainly no believer should want to needlessly offend, but when we tolerate what God judges we have capitulated to the society we should engage.
Many Christians oppose divergent moral behavior (at least in theory). In the name of “grace” or “mercy,” however, these believers will tolerate doctrinal divergence. Though the apostle Jude admonished first century Christians to “contend earnestly for the faith” perhaps most of us prefer to comfort rather than to contend. In tune with Jude, however, Paul also implored the church to be intolerant toward doctrinal divergence:
Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them. For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple (Rom 16:17-18).
Regarding the term mark them in the preceding passage esteemed expositor James Strong notes that the phrase means “to take aim at.” Is it possible that Paul, the gentle apostle of grace, wanted believers to “take aim at” leaders within the Christian faith? When considered through the lens of modern “tolerance” notions such an idea does indeed seem offensive. Paul, however, demonstrated the lost Christian virtue of intolerance when he cautioned Timothy regarding Hymenaeus and Philetus whose doctrines “will spread like gangrene.”
Can you imagine the reaction a preacher today might receive if he said that another Christian leader’s doctrine “will spread like gangrene?” It’s easy to believe that Paul’s intolerance was probably always directed at some fringe teacher. Kindly consider, however, another example of Paul openly rebuking the most prominent church leader of early Christianity:
When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of them all, “You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs (Gal 2:14).
Paul openly criticized Peter in Galatians chapter two because when popular teachers are teaching error others are set adrift. Intolerance toward doctrinal blunders isn’t harmonious with modern “coexist” dogmas, but it is biblical. Because of Jesus’ manifest intolerance of errant doctrine the believers at Pergamum didn’t need to guess as to whose teaching they should avoid. “You also have those who hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans,” warned Jesus, “which thing I hate.” (Rev 2:15).
In stark opposition to the practices of modern Christianity where tolerance at the expense of doctrinal purity is considered a virtue. In scripture though, Jesus expects His church to exercise the virtue of intolerance toward errant teachers and their dangerous dogmas. By merely being tolerant of an errant teacher within the church at Thyatira the Christians there earned an open rebuke in the eternal record:
But I have this against you, that you tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and she teaches and leads My bond-servants astray, so that they commit acts of immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols (Rev 2:20).
As Jezebel (and even Peter) were tolerated though they misled many early Christians, teachers who occupy mainstream, popular pulpits today are tolerated though they too lead the children of God astray. And in contrast to the just coexist secular slogans which can seem so “Christian” the only item on the menu is biblical intolerance as our modern pulpits are polluted and our spiritual cisterns are dry.
