tolerance or love

Tolerance. It is the war cry of postmodern ethics. Tolerance for preferences. Tolerance for choices. Tolerance for us and everything we believe we want to be. What are we really asking of society when we beg to be tolerated?

(From dictionary.com) Tolerate: 1. to allow the existence, presence, practise, or act of without prohibition or hindrance; permit. 2. to endure without repugnance; to put up with.

Is that all we really want from other human beings, to be allowed to exist? Do we just want to be endured by an indifferent world? Tolerance is such a dismal standard on which to hang our ethical reality. There is nothing so admirable in tolerating another person.

If my husband came home, threw down his backpack and muttered, "Babe, I can't wait to put up with you for the next 60 years," he would not draw another breath before we were in the car driving to marital counseling.

Tolerance is not enough. We are designed for love.

1 Corinthians 13:1-7
If I speak with the tongues of men and angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Tolerance allows. It is passive, indifferent, unremarkable. It does everything expected, nothing brave, nothing sacrificial, nothing hopeful.

If I am labelled intolerant I hope it is because I love too much like Jesus Christ. He did not allow sin to continue. He would not tolerate spiritual disaster in human lives. He was never indifferent to [insert the adjective you just can't put your finger on]. The poor. The sinner. The rich. The priest. The criminal. The prophet. Love and tolerance do not co-exist. Love gives too much to leave people unchanged. Love hopes too much to stay far away and safe.

Why cleave to a mediocre standard? Why settle for tolerance? Why not aspire to be like our God?

Are there people you can show love to, when the world declares they are only worthy to be tolerated?