The Shisler Family Blog: I Don't Want to Raise Tolerant Kids

Loved this from a Blog I recently started following....The Farmer's Wife Tells All

The Farmer has this farmer friend who has this thing he says. Whenever you ask, “How’s your family/girlfriend/job?” he answers,

Tolerable.

Merriam Webster says that means -

tol·er·a·ble: adj. capable of being borne or endured <tolerable pain>

tol·er·ate: v. to put up with tolerate

one another>

Given those definitions, I sort of chuckled to myself the other day when I drove past a local school whose marquee said,

Practice Tolerance

It struck me as odd. Have you ever been in the company of someone and you could tell they were tolerating you? It’s not a good feeling! I don’t want to be tolerated! I want to be accepted and loved and valued, which is a far cry from, “put up with.”

Why, oh why, are we teaching our children to tolerate one another? I mean, I guess tolerating someone is a good alternative to kicking someone in the shin, but is that really the best we can do?

I don’t want to raise kids who tolerate others.

I want to raise kids who love other people as Christ loved them.

My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. – John 15:12

I want to raise kids who look at others and recognize that they were made in God’s image.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. – Genesis 1:27

Christ saw the person before he saw the sin. I want to raise children who do the same.

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. - Romans 5:8

The Christian community has a longstanding history of being irritated with the term, “tolerance.” However, that irritation usually stems from the idea that if we tolerate people we are condoning their sin. We want to teach our kids to take a stand for what’s right! And don’t make us bust out the Jesus-in-the-temple example! Nevermind all the examples of Jesus’ anger with the Pharisees.

Does a sinful world really need my kids to remind them of their sins?

Or – does a sinful world need the people of a loving, accepting Savior to *ahem* love them? What the sinner really needs is Jesus, not people telling him how to clean up his act [unless said sinner is a fellow believer, according to Matthew 8:15-22.]

See, the person isn’t the sin. The sin is the sin.

I don’t preach moral relativism to my kids or tell them that they should just tolerate all things. I’m not talking one bit about tolerating things. I’m talking about people. I am not encouraging them to tolerate all beliefs and lifestyles. It’s okay to look at something and believe it’s wrong. It’s not okay, however, to let that belief interfere with your love for the person living that lifestyle. I also believe it’s not my place as a Christian to let everyone know what all their sins are.

I love how Billy Graham put this after President Clinton’s scandal in the ’90s. When asked why he still supported the President, he answered,