The Postmodern system of relativism claims that we can never know anything for certain.  It claims that anyone who states they know an absolute truth is arrogant and misled.  The greatest evil in our Western culture today is to claim that you have a knowledge that is binding for everyone, a Total Truth.  The homosexuality discussion actually stems from such a proposition whether you realize it or not.  To claim that the Holy Spirit through the Bible will say anything definitively is claimed to be arrogant and oppressive.  All claims to knowledge depend on contextual backdrops.  With so many cultural, racial, geographic and historical considerations true knowledge is simply not attainable.  No one can therefore make an absolute claim as to the Bible’s view of Homosexuality that applies to today.

That sounds very enlightened, but it is actually quite arrogant!  Get this…it is not arrogant to make truth claims, but it is arrogant to state that we cannot know truth.  The later of the two makes our understanding as enlightened humans the ultimate judge of truth.  We are left as the gatekeepers to what is truth and what is not.  Our evaluation is preeminent in the discovery of what is real.  In the previous statement, the statement that we CAN know ultimate truth, we are taken out of the judge’s chair and allow the God of the Bible to take his rightful place.  True, it is impossible and arrogant to claim that humans can know….or not know truth on their own.  But if there is an outside source of truth and he gives it to us in the form of a written and divine Word, then all claims to superior wisdom are cast out.  We certainly cannot claim that we know all truth.  We can claim however that God has revealed truth in his Word and in His Son so that truth is knowable as he reveals it to us.

So on issues such as sexuality, law, human dignity, evil, justice etc. there is true truth out there and we can discover it as God reveals.  When we search the scriptures there is truth to be found.  We do not need to add to it.  We do not need to end in the defeatist position that all truth claims are equally valid.  We do not need to succumb to postmodern deconstructionism that leads down a winding trail where contextual background wins any discussion of finding absolute meaning.  There is truth available in these matters and God wants us to know His heart.

It is to the philosopher Voltaire that we owe the widespread use of the word “Tolerance”.  However the way he used the word was vastly different from the way the word is used today.  Voltaire believed in religious freedom.  He said, “it is better for it (humanity) to be subject to all possible superstitions, as long as they are not murderous, than to live without religion.”  But he ardently defended the right to believe and defend one’s religion over against another religion.  He thought it imperative that we publically debate claims to truth but not that we accept one another’s truth claims as equally valid.  Respect the person, but don’t accept the belief.  In the current culture “tolerance” has morphed into quite a different meaning.  Now it would seem that one must not only respect the person but accept their beliefs as well.  The only true evil is that someone would not accept another’s belief as equally valid. So, while I would not become an aboriginal human sacrificer, it is much more evil to claim that given their cultural surroundings they are wrong according to some truth standard.  I must not only respect the person but agree with their beliefs and practices.

So when people claim an allegiance to tolerance, what they really mean is that they claim to be tolerant as long as your claims don’t contradict their ultimate value of tolerance as defined by current standards.  One is free to believe whatever they want AND I must also agree that their belief is equally valid to mine.  However if your belief contains an element which claims superior knowledge, that belief is not tolerable.  One need not think very hard to find the irony.  It truly is the intolerance of tolerance.  All claims to truth are protected by the tolerance clause except those truth claims which claim ultimate truth.  Then we must put aside the tolerance doctrine to expel the only evil, which is intolerance….  Catch 22?

Perhaps there is a greater value to tolerance?  Certainly there is in the Bible.  Taking a look at the life of Jesus, we find a man who exuded intolerance.   The 2 most often quoted scriptures today have the same theme.  One is James 4:12- “Who are you to judge your neighbor?” The other is from Jesus in Matthew 7:1- “Judge not that you may not be judged.”  These two verses are quoted more than John 3:16 today.  In fact few even know what John 3:16 says.  But what do these often quoted verses really mean?  One thing that they cannot mean is what people think they mean when they quote them.  People in essence claim,  “don’t tell someone else what they are doing is wrong because it is not necessarily wrong for everyone.”  Don’t judge others is the cry of our culture!  But is that what is meant in these passages?  It can’t be.  Look at Matthew 7:6 immediately following the 7:1 statement.  “Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs”.  Here Jesus is actually judging quite harshly and calling us to judge as well.  He makes a qualitative statement calling some “dogs” and some “pigs”.  Just as today, these are not terms you want to have applied to you.  Not only is he judging, he calls us to judge by suggesting that we also determine who fits these categories.  So in 7:1 he cannot be telling us to make no judgment on any person.  The judgment of 7:1 probably means something closer to “condemn”.  Jesus calls us not to condemn or take away value from another.  The prohibition is similar to Matthew 5 where Jesus warns against calling someone a “fool”.  The meaning here is to disdain the person’s very existence.  He warns against calling someone’s inherent value into question.  But someone’s ideas, their ways of life, their views of reality are indeed open to judgment.  Jesus will later call some of the religious rulers “whitewashed tombs”, dead on the inside but giving off the appearance of health.  The context of his whole message in the Sermon on the Mount was “repent for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand”.  If there is no ultimate truth by which we are to be judged there is no need to repent.

Jesus’ character is one of ultimate love.  So therefore love and intolerance are not mutually exclusive.  In the ultimate expression of love, Jesus came to the earth to proclaim his intolerance of sin so that you and I might live as we were created in truth to live.  If Jesus was not intolerant, we would never have experienced true love.  We are dependent on intolerance for life and hope.  What if there was a new vaccine for cancer available…  However, as I tell my friend he does not believe me and emphatically states that there is no vaccine.  In the name of tolerance then, what should I do?  Communicate value to my friend’s identity yes, but also communicate value to his view of truth?  “Friend, your views of reality are every bit as valid as mine and I don’t want to be intolerant of your ideas and introduce truth that will save you!?”  Of course not.  Love always trumphs tolerance.  Love is a greater value than tolerance.  Of course that is a claim of truth that the postmodern might argue against.  Rightly so.  If all claims are relative then the claim that human life has value over a rock, or that life is better than death, or that truth is better than despair are all in question.  You want to find true despair, keep following that one to its logical conclusion.

So, when it comes to our current discussion, very popular arguments are 1- Christians apply the Bible arbitrarily, 2- We cannot know anything for sure, 3- Christians are arrogant 4- All truth claims are relative, and 5- Tolerance is the highest value.  In the long discussion so far, I am attempting to show that though sometimes persuasive related to our lack of ability to truly understand God’s view of sexuality, these statements are not determinative.  True truth is available and the pursuit of all humans should be to find what God says about such issues and conform our hearts and actions according to his truth.

The above discussion instead of leading to arrogance and self-righteousness leads us to humility to love and to a greater understanding of other points of view.  But it most emphatically does not mean that all view are true and right.  There are surely times when our lives, feelings, and actions are going to come up against a wall of God’s truth.  God designed it this way.