Over the last few weeks I read Ted Dekker’s Sinner and Saint. Both were great reads, as is typical with Dekker books.
The books are a continuation from an older book, Showdown. In a nutshell, some monks come across some “magic” books that have the power to turn whatever is written in them into reality. The start Project Showdown as a well-meaning attempt to raise completely innocent children – free from evil.
However, the project goes horribly wrong when one of the students discovers the books and creates a man who embodies pure evil. This man goes on to wreak havoc on a small town in a struggle of good versus evil. But I digress.
The premise in Sinner reminds me an awful lot of the world we live in today. Tolerance is the buzz word of the day in the book. People have to be tolerant of anything and everything, except that is, of Christianity. Eventually a woman with supernatural powers of persuasion convinces the US government to make a change to the First Amendment to the Constitution in order to make it illegal to defame someone’s race, religion, etc.
The catch comes when it’s discovered that claiming Jesus is the only way to Heaven is actually a crime, because you would be saying that all other religions are wrong. A very interesting concept to say the least. Just as in Showdown, the struggle between good and evil comes to a tension-filled end.
It’s funny how many people who preach “tolerance” today are not tolerant of people who feel or believe differently than they do. Christians are many times labeled as “narrow-minded” and “judgmental.” So, we end up tolerating everything except Christianity, because it’s not “tolerant” because it chooses to call a spade a spade – to call sin sin.
Jesus taught His followers to love others, but loving and tolerating are not the same thing in my mind. It’s been said a million times that God, “loves the sinner, but hates the sin.” I think that’s a good way to describe the difference between loving and tolerating. I’m called to love people I don’t agree with, but that doesn’t mean I have to tolerate the choices they make.
I know it sounds confusing, but it makes sense if you take the time to think about it.