Read full text: https://voxday.net/2006/04/13/on-virtue-of-tolerance/
Jeroboam is one of the men in the Bible who’s been saddled with a reputation as a godless idolater. Throughout the books of 1st and 2nd Kings, the phrase appears like an ominous drumbeat with the description of almost every kingly reign; “He did evil in the eyes of the Lord and did not turn […] voxday.net |
But what do Jeroboam’s sins have to do with us today? More than one would think, because the root cause of his sins is a temptation faced by most Christians today. Tolerance is a byword for virtue these days, but it was Jeroboam’s tolerance for that which was wrong which led to his disobedience, and ultimately culminated in the kingdom’s full-blown rejection of the Lord God of Israel. The Israelites did not immediately turn to Baal and Asherah, indeed, it took them many years to reach that state of apostasy. But the seeds of evil had already been sown by Jeroboam, in his willingness to tolerate forms of worship that God had expressly forbidden.
It is wrong and misleading to suggest, as many do, that Jesus Christ preached tolerance. He did not. “He who is not for me is against me, and he who does not gather with me, scatters.” One finds no call to tolerance in this teaching. Jesus preached forgiveness, for all men, but first he called for the repentance of sin. Tolerance is not the same thing as love; the Christian must love the sinner, but neither tolerate nor condone the evil that the sinner commits.
Even in the oft-referenced case of the woman about to be stoned, Jesus told her, “Go forth and sin no more.” It is not for the Christian to judge, as Jesus himself refused to judge while on Earth, but we have been given our commands, just as Jeroboam was given his – to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”
It is not easy to do this in a world where even those who claim to be Christian leaders dare to criticize those who would attempt to follow Jesus Christ’s commands, call them intolerant and accuse them of somehow perpetrating hate. But Jesus told his disciples that they would be blessed when the men of the world hated them, and called them evil. If the world labels us intolerant because we preach that there is no way to the Father but through his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, we should rejoice and continue to speak the truth, not cower in fear and silence. And yet most of us fail to do as we have been told; we show the same lack of faith and obedience to the words of Jesus Christ that Jeroboam had for the commands of the Lord God of Israel.
The sins of Jeroboam make it clear that it is no virtue to be tolerant in a world of evil, and that it is no vice to be called intolerant by those who reject the Son of God. Jeroboam feared men, not God, and so brought down upon his house a devastating curse of death and destruction. Instead of following his example, let us emulate instead that of the Apostle Paul, who fearlessly preached the good news of Jesus Christ to all mankind.