I was the most intolerant person that God created. I was considered the ultimate “gay basher” and could lash a person who struggled with a same-sex attraction to small pieces with my mouth. I laughed at them.
One Friday I sat in the back room of Shoney’s in a men’s Bible Study and heard a testimony on cassette of a man I knew. Suddenly, the struggle had a face and was real. I found myself weeping uncontrollably.
Later, I met a man who had practiced a gay life style all of his adult life. I befriended him and began meeting with him every week for an hour. Some Wednesdays we wept together as he shared his ferocious struggle not to “act out”. He talked, and I mostly listened. He told me what it was like to spend time in jail. He shared the riveting pain from being rejected by family members.
We were making great progress in our friendship, and he was beginning to listen to the claims of Christ and seriously considering becoming more involved in discipleship and even joining our church.
Then it happened–someone, somewhere in our church building gave him a religious verbal whipping. He disappeared, and I’ve never seen him or heard from him again. He had met intolerance.
Webster defines tolerance with words like sympathy and endurance.
Is it possible to be tolerant and articulate truth at the same time?
Jesus was so tolerant with lost people. He chose to hang with tax collectors and prostitutes. His personal mission statement was,”The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free.” (Luke 4:18 NLT)
However, Jesus was extremely intolerant also! He was intolerant of religion.
Mike Cowart Sr.
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September 21st, 2009 at 11:47 am
Christ’s ability to make someone feel loved and speak the truth at the same time is something that will always draw me to Him.
I have had several people put in my life that allowed Christ to do that through them. One is a mentor and friend that has lead several Bible studies that I have been through. He is a tall large framed guy born in Columbia. When you hug him, you feel that big teddy bear heart of his. But there has been times, when he has looked me in the eye and shared the truth with me, and it wasn’t what I wanted to hear. But I never doubted that he loved me and only wanted what was best for me.
Truth is an important thing for me. One of my “hot buttons” is pushed when someone implies that I lied. I am an auditor and I feel that part of what I do is to preserve truth. I struggle with wanting to “yell” the truth at the top of my lungs without the love in my heart. The truth is that is not how Christ most often shared his truth.
But there were times such as when he turned the tables of the moneychangers over in the temple when he “yelled” the truth in a way that may have not been interpreted to be loving. These people had already rejected a relationship with Him, and I believe that this was an act of love for His father.
May God give His children great discernment and love to know when and how that line of loving and speaking the truth works. May we never “judge” but may we ALWAYS speak His truth in LOVE.