Tolerance, Acceptance & Love (pt 2)

[The following post is part of a brief series on tolerance, acceptance and love - three concepts that are tossed around as much as they are misunderstood in our culture. For healthy relationships it's important to understand the difference. In marriage it's essential. All of the posts in this series come directly from our third study guide which you can purchase here.]

The Superiority of Love over Tolerance

My wife has a close friend who couldn’t be further away from us in matters of spirituality, morality and politics. One time she had a dream about this friend in which she was discussing one of the many issues upon which they disagree. In the dream, Julie recalled her friend saying they needed to be tolerant of each other, but Julie told her “No! I don’t want to tolerate you. I want to love you.”

If your loved one is living contrary to the clear teachings of scripture, you can’t really accept them the way they want you to accept them. You can accept them as a child of God (or as your mom or your friend or your brother), but you can only tolerate the immoral behavior.

Here’s the crux of the matter. The world says that “tolerance” can unify our culture, but what the world really wants isn’t “tolerance,” but “acceptance” – not just of differences, but sin. And what the world is really dying for is love.

Love may tolerate evil (God’s love apparently does), but it can never accept evil. If I had an addiction to heroine, it would be cruel for my wife to accept that. How could she say she loved me and yet enable me to carry on a habit that would slowly destroy me? Love would demand she help me in any way she could; not only for my sake, but for the sake of our relationship and our children.

So when we talk about making peace with our loved ones, we are not called to accept the sinful choices our loved ones make, just the different ones. Further, we are not called to tolerate those differences (that’s getting along apart from them instead of getting along with them). Instead, we are called to accept them out of love for them and awe of our God who delights in diversity.

[The previous is part of a brief series on tolerance, acceptance and love - three concepts that are tossed around as much as they are misunderstood in our culture. For healthy relationships it's important to understand the difference. In marriage it's essential. All of the posts in this series come directly from our third study guide which you can purchase here.]