Tolerance once meant that we could use our reason to discern good and evil in open debate. Today tolerance has been used to call good evil and evil good.
Interpretation
Tolerance has shifted from rational discussion to the confusion of right and wrong.
In this quote, Charles Colson reflects on the evolving definition of tolerance, indicating that it has changed from a useful tool for reasoned debate over morality to a concept that muddles the distinction between good and evil. Today, tolerance is often misused to justify wrongdoing while condemning righteousness, highlighting a troubling shift in societal values and the moral landscape.
In practice
During a seminar on ethics, one might use this quote to spark a discussion about the importance of discerning right from wrong.
The life function of [the local church] is to love the God who created it - to care for others out of obedience to Christ, to heal those who hurt, to take away fear, to restore community, to belong to one another, to proclaim the Good News while living it out. The church is the invisible made visible.
Life is a mess. And theology must be lived out in the midst of that mess.
Moral crusaders with zeal but no ethical understanding are likely to give us solutions that are worse than the problems.
People who cannot restrain their own baser instincts, who cannot treat one another with civility, are not capable of self-government... without virtue, a society can be ruled only by fear, a truth that tyrants understand all too well
One of the most wonderful things about being a Christian is that I don't ever get up in the morning and wonder if what I do matters. I live every day to the fullest because I can live it through Christ and I know no matter what I do today, I'm going to do something to advance the Kingdom of God.
I learned one thing in Watergate: I was well-intentioned but rationalized illegal behavior. You cannot live your life other than walking in the truth. Your means are as important as your ends.
When you become a sannyasin, I initiate you into freedom, and into nothing else... I am destroying your ideologies, creeds, cults, dogmas, and I am not replacing them with anything else.
The truth is that, though we were justified by faith alone, the faith that justifies is never alone (it always produces fruit, 'good works,'...a transformed life).
Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right.
And when that crop grew, and was harvested, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips. No man had touched the seed, or lusted for the growth. Men ate what they had not raised, had no connection with the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not loved or hated, it had no prayers or curses.
It is the unseen and the spiritual in people that determines the outward and the actual.
And I too, felt ready to start life all over again. It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe.
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