It Matters What You Tolerate

I know I am not supposed to "covet" (envy might be a better word choice) things I do not have, but sometimes, darn it, I just can't help it. I envy and covet the kind of intellectual prowess of some of the men I read frequently. One of these men is Pastor Doug Wilson, somewhere off in the hinterland called Moscow, Idaho.

He wrote an article about tolerance recently which touches on areas I had never considered. Here is one quick quote:

[...] tolerance cannot be a free-floating virtue. This is because no virtue (or vice either) can be found in a transitive verb. It is not a matter of whether you tolerate, for everyone does, but rather a matter of what you tolerate.

What matters is "what you tolerate." I personally do not tolerate those among us who bask in the freedom given them by Christianity as they work their evil to destroy that freedom and Christianity. (See my recent posts on Sharia Law in Dearborn). Pastor Wilson says this in his article:

Christians invented the most open and tolerant society in the history of the world. Tolerance, as we have known it historically, is a Christian virtue.

Then he says:

Unbelief does not generate free societies. Out of all the explicitly atheistic societies that formed over the course of the last century, how many of them were open and free societies? Ah . . .

For secularists to treat believing Christians as the principle threat to their freedoms would be, were it not so serious, not very serious.

Pastor Wilson has written what I believe is a very important comment on the tolerance of tolerance that now seems to be such a "valued" counterfeit virtue among too many Christians. It is a sin to tolerate the repression of freedom on the streets of  Dearborn, Michigan under the guise of toleration. That is irrational, illogical, and one small step from police-state tactics and policies. 

I wish I had the brain power to write like Doug Wilson does.