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.
I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake.
The earliest sensation at the onset of illness, often preceding the recognition of identifiable symptoms, is apprehension. Something has gone wrong, and a glimpse of mortality shifts somewhere deep in the mind. It is the most ancient of our fears.
In this world filled with challenges, we do need help from time to time. Religion, eternal truth, and our missionaries are vital parts of that help.
Religious distress is at the same time the expression of the real distress and also the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of the spiritless condition. It is the opium of the people.
By helping readers understand these mechanics, I hope they will appreciate why freedom is for everyone, why it is essential for our security and why the free world plays a critically important role in advancing democracy around the globe.
In your reaction to an imagined attack on your country or an insult to its government, you draw closer to the herd for protection, you conform in word and deed, and you insist vehemently that everybody else shall think, speak, and act together. And you fix your adoring gaze upon the State, with a truly filial look, as upon the Father of the flock.
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