Begging to Differ on Column About Intolerance

William Aulenbach says Christians should be tolerant of homosexuality. We should tolerate abortion. He says he doesn’t believe in a place called hell, and in any case he doesn’t feel that Buddhists, Hindus and Mormons will go there, because God is not a Christian--whatever that means.

Aulenbach misses the point entirely. He takes his own opinions as the basis for his lecture to Christians. But true Christians believe the way they do about homosexual sex and about hell because they accept the Bible as the basis for their opinions.

Aulenbach gives us a whole list of things he thinks we should tolerate and another list of things we should not tolerate. Without giving any supporting reasons, he asserts that “No more can Christians afford to believe that they are God’s only answer to humanity’s needs.”

I am a member of a large missionary organization that has the goal of translating the Bible into the 6,000-plus languages that people speak in this world. We believe the Bible is an authoritative standard for what to believe because it comes from God. The Bible says that God is intolerant of homosexuality and that there is a hell waiting at the end of human life.

Moreover, the Bible makes it clear--by telling us we each need a savior, for example, and that we must look to Jesus for that salvation--that Christians cannot share common ground with other faiths.

Of course we must still tolerate each other as individuals. True Christians should not bomb abortion clinics. But after we die, the Bible says the time for his tolerance is over--that is when He says we will be separated into heaven or hell.

The Bible says that homosexual acts are sin. Homosexual people need saving from their sin. We all need to be saved and sin should not tolerated.

People should be tolerated, valued and loved--but not wrong actions or beliefs.