6/29/12 Sarah,
about 30
I
was walking out of Home Depot and saw a young lady sitting outside on a bench,
reading something on her Kindle. She was
covered with tattoos, piercings and all manner of nose, lip and eyebrow rings,
mismatched and eclectic clothes and hair dyed several neon colors. Her appearance was so bizarre it was hard to
ignore, especially in the context of the Home Depot store, but when I began to
ask her questions about her spiritual beliefs we went on to a normal
conversation that allowed me to focus on her relationship with God and to share
the Gospel. In order to do this I had to
show "tolerance" - a politically correct term in our culture that
many Christians have come to reject as ungodly. But before we do we need to be reminded that we
ourselves are beneficiaries of God's tolerance - "Or do you show contempt
for the riches of his kindness, tolerance
and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance?" (Romans 2:4)
The reason why this word is being rejected is that it has begun to take
on a new, unbiblical meaning. It is coming to mean simply the lack of strong beliefs or opinions
of any kind, and those who do have strong beliefs are then labeled
intolerant. But tolerance really
means that we are to exercise kindness and patience
with those whose views or lifestyles we disagree with. This doesn't mean we
should have no strong beliefs. That verse on God's tolerance in Roman's 2:4 is
sandwiched between verses about His righteous judgment and the day of His
wrath, which helps us to understand even more how precious His tolerance is! As we share our faith, we are to be tolerant
as we go out into the world and ignore objectionable behaviors and attitudes in
order to focus on what is really important in the lives of non-believers. Personally, I thought Sarah's extreme
appearance was vain and self-indulgent. But
I chose to tolerate it because it would only be a distraction from what she
really needed to hear about - living in a right relationship with God through
faith in Jesus.
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