I found Josh and Sean McDowell’s book The Beauty Of Intolerance to be such a timely book! Parents, teachers, pastors, and anyone who works with youth should definitely read this book to help navigate through the tolerance-saturated world we live in. You can check out my review of this book by clicking here.
“God gave Moses pages and pages of highly specific rules to govern the relationships and morality of His people. Each of those rules, which we call precepts, applies to a specific situation. But each is important because it is grounded in a principle, which is a fundamental, primary law from which other laws—the precepts—are derived. Each principle, in turn, is grounded in a Person—in the very character of God Himself. … God is not behind the principles and precepts simply to validate the rules; He is there as a Person for the purpose of relationship.”
“When moral truth becomes a matter of opinion, personal preference, or the individual’s views and feelings, then practically anything goes. … In a culture of tolerance where the individual decides morality, morality has no bounds.”
“An entire generation tends to go to the Bible not to discover the truth and bend their lives to it accordingly but to use it as sort of a self-help book to help them form their own version of what’s true and false, good and evil, right and wrong.”
“When you discuss the Bible, do not refer to it simply as a spiritual book that teaches us how to live, but as a road map leading one toward the discovery of true reality. … The one true God’s communication to humanity and the whole of Christianity as a religion is based on three primary realities supported by evidences: (1) The historic reliability of Scripture; (2) The deity of Christ; and (3) Christ’s bodily resurrection.”
“While we all may have a sense of what is evil and what is good, under the philosophy of cultural tolerance, evil and good can only be relative ideals. Without an objective truth—a set of universal moral values—good and evil are defined by the individual, community, or society. Therefore we have no moral basis by which to judge another person, community, or nation for what they do or don’t do.”
“Unless justice is rooted in a moral authority beyond those with the most power or even with the most votes, there cannot be true justice for all. … Justice, charity, and human rights are grounded in the fact that we are created in God’s image with value, dignity, and worth. … God’s mercy and justice as our model has fostered societal justice and provided more positive contributions to society in general than any other force in history.”
“The intolerance of the early Christians was a beautiful thing. They believed that everyone—including the poor, the homeless, the handicapped, the sick—was made in the image of God with dignity and worth. They were utterly intolerant of injustice, and they did whatever they could to correct the injustices they saw in society.”
“Real love—biblical, Godlike love—exposes cultural tolerance as the counterfeit of love because cultural tolerance fails to point people to a universal standard of morality designed to save them from serious harm. Cultural tolerance does not address what is in the best interest of a person—it possesses no moral standard that aligns to what is universally right and good. Real love, on the other hand, looks out for the best interest of others.”
“Every truth, every rule, and every guideline coming from God’s Word is issued from the loving heart and character of God for our own good.”
“Love is making the security, happiness, and welfare of another person as important as your own. Biblical love is not merely focused on another but on the good of another, even if the other does not recognize or accept the reality of the good.”
To read the first set of quotes I shared from The Beauty Of Intolerance, please click here. And be sure to follow me on Twitter and Tumblr to read more quotes from this book, and from lots of other profound thinkers, that I share daily.
I went to America some years ago with the captain of a steamer, who was a very devoted Christian. When off the coast of Newfoundland he said to me, “The last time I crossed here, five weeks ago, something happened which revolutionized the whole of my Christian life. We had George Mueller of Bristol on board. I had been on the bridge twenty-four hours and never left it. George Mueller came to me, and said, ‘Captain I have come to tell you that I must be in Quebec Saturday afternoon.’
Craig T. Owens 