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On today's edition of Pathway to Victory. Tolerance, when correctly understood, really is a virtue that ought to be embraced. But what society understands tolerance to be and what true tolerance is, are vastly different things. You can only truly be tolerant of something you either dislike or disagree with. Welcome to Pathway to Victory with author and pastor, Dr. Robert Jeffress. Tolerance seems to have become America's new favorite buzzword.
Some would even argue that it's our culture's greatest virtue. But today's definition of tolerance has taken on a whole new meaning. Today on Pathway to Victory, Dr. Robert Jeffress talks about what he believes is the most misunderstood word in America today. Now, here's our Bible teacher to introduce today's message.
Dr. Jeffress. Thanks, David, and welcome again to Pathway to Victory. Today, I'm going to identify what I believe is the most misunderstood word in America today.
It's a relevant topic because Christians have been pigeonholed as narrow, shallow minded people who are unwilling to entertain other points of view. Well, today, we're going to push back on those notions. But first, I'll take a moment to remind you about the exciting beacon of hope matching challenge that was activated only a few days ago. Several families came together to create a $750,000 fund in order to motivate friends like you to give generously. As a result, every dollar you give to Pathway to Victory between now and July 5th will be automatically doubled in impact until we reach the goal. The funds raised during the matching challenge will help empower our radio, television, online, and publishing ministry while shining the light of the gospel into our ever darkening nation and world. Now, in addition to making an impact on our country through the beacon of hope matching challenge, I want to thank you for your generous gift by providing a wonderful book your entire family will enjoy. It's called Miracles in American History. 32 amazing stories have answered prayer. In this book, you'll read about God's miraculous interventions in the Boston Tea Party, the Civil War, the Great Depression, and so many more events.
I'll describe more opportunities later in today's program. But right now, let's get started with today's study about the most misunderstood word in America. It was the British writer G.K. Chesterton who said, Tolerance is a virtue for a man with no convictions. That statement certainly explains why there seems to be an inverse relationship between our cultures embracing tolerance and also our cultures rejection of the moral and spiritual absolutes. If you listen carefully to the voices around you, you'll conclude that tolerance is the most important character quality that any of us can develop. The conviction that all beliefs are equally valid is celebrated as the highest ideal in our culture.
And by the way, that's not by accident. There are many educators today who believe that encouraging tolerance of all beliefs and behaviors is the highest educational goal of educators. And that's why we elevate in our culture tolerance over truth.
I want you to listen carefully to the words of Stephen Bates, a conservative writer, in an article he wrote for the American Enterprise. Bates said, tolerance may indeed be the dominant theme in the modern curriculum. The authors of a recent study of American high schools concluded that tolerating diversity is the moral glue that holds schools together.
One study of American history books found that toleration is presented as the only religious idea worth remembering. The effort to indoctrinate students to embrace tolerance is having a profound effect on our culture's attitudes and beliefs. It has led to an increasing acceptance to those beliefs, those behaviors once thought morally wrong. As you know, George Gallup regularly surveys the attitudes of Americans. And over the last 20 years, Gallup has noticed a general increase in those who believe homosexual relationships should be legal, 60%. Those who believe that sex between an unmarried man and unmarried woman are permissible, that's 59%. Those who believe that divorce is acceptable, 65%.
And those who believe that having a baby out of wedlock is an equally valid moral choice, 54%. Do you see the relationship between culture's embracing of tolerance and the rejection of moral absolutes? However, I'm not that concerned with the general public's embracing of religious beliefs and behaviors that we find objectionable. What I am concerned about is the effect that relativism is having on Christians themselves. And instead of embracing absolute truth, what people have embraced now is relativism. Now if you want to know what relativism is, understand this simple phrase that expresses it better than anything else. Relativism says everything is right sometime and nothing is right every time. What is the net result of Christians embracing relativism? We become tasteless salt and diminished light.
Remember the whole thesis of this series. Our collapse as a country is inevitable, but we can delay that collapse by being the salt and the light Jesus commanded us to be. But if we don't believe that there are absolute rights and absolute wrongs, we become first of all tasteless salt. For example, if we really don't believe that abortion is tantamount to murder, why insist that we elect pro-life candidates?
If we're really not convinced that homosexuality is a perversion, why would we oppose efforts to teach school children that homosexuality is a valid lifestyle choice? Once we bind to relativism, we quickly lose any motivation to stand up and push back against the tide of immorality that is sweeping our country. When Christians lose their motivation to be restrainers of evil because they no longer believe these behaviors are evil, it's only a short time until society crumbles under the weight of its own sin. Jesus said it this way in Matthew 5, 13, you are the salt of the earth, but if the salt becomes tasteless, how will it be made salty again? It is good for nothing anymore except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. When Christians embrace relativism, they lose their distinctive taste.
They lose their saltiness. But relativism also diminishes our light as a Christian. Remember, we're to be that preservative, pushing back, delaying evil, but we're also to be light, pointing people to the gospel of Jesus Christ. However, when you don't believe in the exclusivity of truth, you become a diminished light.
Let me illustrate that for you. Media entrepreneur Oprah Winfrey claims to be a Christian. However, she does not believe that Christianity's truth is exclusive. She said in an interview one time, quote, one of the biggest mistakes humans make is to believe that there is only one way. Actually, there are many diverse paths that lead to what you call God.
Now that's Oprah Winfrey. Of course, her own belief that there's not an exclusive way to God violates the beliefs of the founder of her religion, Christianity. Because Jesus Christ, the founder of her faith and our faith said in John 14, 6, I am the way, the truth, and the life.
No man comes to the Father except by me. However, when it comes to this subject of exclusivity, unfortunately, polls reveal that more Christians believe Oprah Winfrey than believe Jesus Christ. Of course, the most obvious result of believing that all religions are offering an equally valid path to God results in a loss of motivation to try to point people to faith in Jesus Christ. I mean, why risk offending somebody about their religious beliefs if you believe their religion is just as valid as your religion? Dr. Roy Fish, a professor at Southwestern Seminary who was one time interim pastor here for a period of time, believes that spiritual relativism is the primary culprit in the loss of our evangelistic zeal.
Dr. Fish says, very little will stultify evangelism and missions any quicker than the belief that nobody is really lost and everybody is going to make it to heaven sooner or later. Why go across the sea or even across the street with the message of Jesus if everybody is already saved or everyone will make it to heaven ultimately anyhow? Jesus said the same thing in Matthew 5, verse 15. He said it is unthinkable to light a lamp and put it under a peck measure.
Have you ever read that before and wondered what in the world is a peck measure? It's a clay bowl. Jesus said you don't light a light and then put a bowl over it where nobody can see the light. And yet when we buy into relativism, the idea that all religions are equally valid, we are effectively placing a bowl over our light.
We are hiding the light of the gospel. Now up to this point, I have equated tolerance with relativism. In today's world, when people say I am tolerant of something, they're saying I believe that that belief, behavior, or choice is just as valid as mine. However, what I'm going to call true tolerance not only allows for, but it requires a belief in absolute truth. Author Gregory Kalki says, probably no concept has more currency in our politically correct culture than the notion of tolerance.
Unfortunately, one of America's noblest virtues has been so distorted it's become a vice. But tolerance, when correctly understood, really is a virtue that ought to be embraced. But what society understands tolerance to be and what true tolerance is are vastly different things.
Many years ago, my grandmother wrote a widely published poem entitled A Plea for Tolerance. However, my grandmother's understanding of tolerance and today's understanding of tolerance are vastly different. Let's go back to the historic understanding of the word tolerance.
It's best understood from Webster's New World Dictionary. Tolerance is defined as to allow or to permit, to recognize and respect others' beliefs and practices without sharing them. To bear or put up with someone or something not necessarily liked.
Do you get that? It's to allow something that you don't agree with. Gregory Kalki, again, identifies the three critical components of true tolerance. Number one, there's a permitting or allowing something you dislike or don't agree with. Secondly, a conduct or point of view with which one disagrees with in the process.
While number three, respecting the person in the process. Here is the most obvious but overlooked truth about tolerance. It is a conduct or point of view one disagrees with, not one accepts. You can only truly be tolerant of something you either dislike or disagree with. However, the concept of tolerance has undergone a radical transformation today. Today, when people say you must be tolerant, what they really mean is you must accept all ideas, beliefs or behaviors as equally valid. For example, heterosexuality and homosexuality are equally valid expressions of human sexuality.
Choosing to abort a child or to keep a child are valid moral choices depending on the particular circumstances. See, that is what false or pseudo tolerance is. It's the belief that all things are equally valid and desirable. To suggest that one idea, belief or choice is superior to another is to be called intolerant. Now this pseudo tolerance, this new tolerance resembles historical tolerance in some ways but it's also radically different from the historic understanding of tolerance in four distinct ways.
I want you to write this down. First of all, pseudo tolerance. This is the new perverted idea of tolerance. Pseudo tolerance rejects the idea of absolute truth. Now today we throw around the term absolute truth all the time.
And maybe you're not sure exactly what that means. An absolute truth is a truth that is true in every circumstance. However, there are also relative truths in our universe. Not every truth is an absolute truth. Now there are many areas even in morality that are relative instead of absolute. For example, the statement, we should obey the law. Is that an absolute truth or a relative truth? Is there any circumstance in which we shouldn't obey the law?
Of course there are. I mean if you're racing your child to the hospital at two o'clock in the morning, it's an emergency and you come upon a stoplight and there's no traffic coming, the morally right thing to do is to run that red light, isn't it? To preserve the life of your child. Acts 5 29 tells us, and we're going to get to this in about four weeks, there is going to be a time when we as Christians need to be willing to disobey the government, to disobey the law. Peter said we must obey God rather than obey men. So we should obey the law is a relative statement.
It's true most of the time, but it's not true all of the time. However, the proponents of pseudo-tolerance, this new tolerance, want to say that every moral and spiritual principle is relative rather than absolute. In fact, the embracers of pseudo-tolerance find it almost impossible to label any behavior as absolutely right or absolutely wrong. For example, if you ask somebody who embraces pseudo-tolerance, were the perpetrators of September the 11th, 2001 evil? Was that an evil act?
They would hem and haw and say, well, you know, it depends on your perspective. I mean, if you're a family of one of the victims of 9-11, yes, to you that was evil. But on the other hand, if you happen to be a poor, oppressed Muslim living in a third world country that has been oppressed by the great Satan America, no, that wasn't evil.
That was justified. In fact, we had a Muslim imam here in New York who made a similar statement. You see, to the relativist, there is no absolute right and wrong. Pseudo-tolerance requires rejecting the belief that all truths apply to all people. So therefore, instead of saying abortion is wrong, what we're supposed to say is abortion is wrong for me. Instead of saying homosexuality is a perversion, we're supposed to say homosexuality is not my particular choice.
Instead of saying that Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven, we say, and you even hear some Christians say this, Jesus Christ is the way to heaven for Christians. That is pseudo-tolerance, a rejection of absolute truth. And of course, by rejecting absolute and spiritual truth, pseudo-tolerance has to become what they say they despise, and that leads to a second characteristic of pseudo-tolerance. Pseudo-tolerance is intolerant of other points of views. That's the most ironic thing about the whole thing.
Those who say they're tolerant usually end up being the most intolerant people of all. Let me give you some illustrations of that. While he was the editor of a publication entitled Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, Dr. Richard Stenberg received a submission from an author, Dr. Stephen Meyer of the Discovery Institute, an institute not unlike our own creation research institute that the Morrises head up. It's an institute that is dedicated to promote the intelligent design theory of the origins of the universe. So Dr. Meyer submits this article for publication. When the publication was received by the editor, Dr. Stenberg, he was so impressed with it that instead of asking for peer group review, he as editor made the decision to publish the article, something that was clearly within his rights as editor. Dr. Stenberg was immediately attacked by his peers for allowing the publication of an article that allowed for intelligent design.
The incident, by the way, is not isolated. In June of 2006, the National Science Academies of 67 countries warned parents and teachers about any attempts to undermine the teaching of evolution or allowing students to be taught that the world was created in six days. In November of 2007, the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe adopted a resolution that recommended a prohibition against the teaching of creationism in any educational setting outside of religious classes. The statement declared, and I quote, if we are not careful, creationism could become a threat to human rights, end of quote.
Now how's that for tolerance? A few years ago, and some of you came to see this, a few years ago I was invited to be on a panel discussion at one of the largest Jewish temples here in Dallas, and the panel discussion had to do with the separation of church and state. Now on the panel with me was a Jewish rabbi, a minister from a liberal mainline denomination, a member of the Texas State Board of Education, and yours truly was the token conservative.
During the discussion, one of the panelists asked me this question. They said, Dr. Jeffress, why are you so opposed to teaching evolution in the public classroom? I said, I'm not opposed to teaching evolution at all. I think evolution ought to be taught. My question to you, I said, was, why are you so opposed to allowing creationism also to be taught as an alternate theory?
See, that is the hypocrisy of tolerance. You know that up until 2009, here in Texas, our school board guidelines had a long-time requirement, that in the teaching of evolution, the teacher was allowed to present some of the evidence against evolution, of which there is a mountain of evidence that discredits the theory of evolution. But in January of 2009, a sharply divided Texas State Board of Education voted to abandon the long-time requirement that high school biology teachers discuss some of the weaknesses of the theory of evolution in biology classes. Proponents of this new policy, eliminating any questioning of evolution, argued that graduates of Texas high schools would be denied entrance into respected universities if they came from schools that allowed any questioning of Darwin's theory. Have you ever heard anything so preposterous?
I mean, I thought the whole basis of education was questioning different theories, and re-questioning and re-testing different theories. Those who worship at the shrine of tolerance are often some of the most intolerant people in the world, especially when it comes to the issue of choice. As we saw last time, Roe v. Wade, 1973, granted women the right to choose to kill their unborn children. Now, you would imagine that along with that choice would be the choice of medical professionals to choose not to engage in abortions, not to kill unborn children. Now, fortunately, the federal government has in place a law known as the Weldon Amendment that protects medical professionals from discrimination for their decision not to be involved in abortions. However, you also need to know that Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union are challenging that law on the basis that a mother's right to kill her child preempts the right of a doctor not to kill a child.
Now, that is Planned Parenthood for you. The intolerance of these pseudo-tolerant people reaches into spiritual issues as well. I want you to read carefully this statement from Reverend William Murray, a prominent Unitarian Universalist minister. Listen to what he says about what he calls intolerant religions, of which he would say you're a part of. Listen to what he says, quote, I get a little impatient with the concept that we should tolerate all religions because people are entitled to their own beliefs. If a religion is based on ignorance and irrationality and totalitarianism, think Evangelical Christianity. If a religion is based on these things, there is no need to stand aside and pretend that's okay. What I would say about tolerance is we cannot tolerate intolerance.
Now, that statement reveals the hypocrisy of pseudo-tolerance. I have so much more to say about the most misunderstood word in America, and I'll do so next time on Pathway to Victory. In the time remaining, I want to tell you about an exciting event taking place right now. Several generous friends of Pathway to Victory have banded together to create the $750,000 Beacon of Hope Matching Challenge. In doing so, these friends are extending an invitation directly to you to join them in supporting their critical ministry work of Pathway to Victory.
As you give this month, your gift will be matched and therefore doubled in impact until we reach the finish line. In Matthew 5, verse 14, Jesus said, You are the light of the world. Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. And that's exactly what we're doing together through the broadcast ministry of Pathway to Victory. So please join me in seizing this opportunity to move forward and expand our influence for the gospel across America and around the world. In a moment, David will describe several resources we've set aside for you as a means of saying thanks for your generous gift this month.
There's one I'd like to highlight. It's a fabulous book for you and your family called Miracles in American History. Thirty-two amazing stories of answered prayer. This book pulls aside the curtain that secular education has used to hide behind.
They don't want students to know the facts about our country's great Christian heritage. So let me send you a copy of Miracles in American History to share with your children and your grandchildren. Here's David to explain how to get in touch today. Thanks, Dr. Jeffress. Today when you invest in the ministry of Pathway to Victory by giving a generous gift, we'll say thanks by sending you the book Miracles in American History. Plus we're going to send you a DVD copy of one of Dr. Jeffress' most popular messages, America is a Christian Nation.
Just call 866-999-2965 or visit our website at ptv.org. Now when your gift is $100 or more, you'll receive not only the book and the DVD, but also the complete collection of audio and video discs for the America and the Bible teaching series. Plus we'll also include Praying for America, a book by Dr. Robert Jeffress. Each chapter of this uplifting book includes an inspiring story demonstrating the power of faith in the life of our nation.
Remember, because of the Beacon of Hope matching challenge, your gift will be matched and therefore double in impact. One more time, call 866-999-2965 or find us online at ptv.org. You could write to us if you'd like our mailing address, P.O. Box 223-609, Dallas, Texas, 75222.
Again, that's P.O. Box 223-609, Dallas, Texas, 75222. I'm David J. Mullins inviting you to join us next time for Part 2 of the message, The Most Misunderstood Word in America. That's Thursday here on Pathway to Victory. Pathway to Victory with Dr. Robert Jeffress comes from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. You made it to the end of today's podcast from Pathway to Victory, and we're so glad you're here. Pathway to Victory relies on the generosity of loyal listeners like you to make this podcast possible. One of the most impactful ways you can give is by becoming a Pathway partner. Your monthly gift will empower Pathway to Victory to share the gospel of Jesus Christ and help others become rooted more firmly in His Word. To become a Pathway partner, go to ptv.org slash donate or follow the link in our show notes. We hope you've been blessed by today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.
