Tolerance: A Plague in America

One of the more fascinating things that I have observed in my study of Marxism through the years is the agenda of tolerance that they push. When you look around you see how well they have succeeded. We tolerate everything going on in our nation now without a second glance.

Tolerance is defined in 1828 Webster's Dictionary as: The power or capacity of enduring; or the act of enduring.

Tolerate is defined as: To suffer to be or to be done without prohibition or hinderance; to allow or permit negatively, by not preventing; not to restrain; as, to tolerate opinions or practices.

It seems that we as Christians don't dare speak out against anything anymore because we are afraid of getting people angry or offending someone. The new message for morality or no morality seem to be: don't judge others, whatever someone else does isn't my problem, they believe differently than me, we need to include everyone, even though I don't believe in that I'll just turn the other way, I don't care as long as they are happy, or I won't say anything because I don't want to offend them.

All of these passive thoughts remind me of some scriptures that prophesy of the last days (that means right now):

"Wo unto them that call evil good and good for evil, that put darkness for light, and light for darkness, that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" 2 Nephi 15: 20, see Moroni 7:14

"And there shall also be many which shall say: Eat, drink, and be merry; nevertheless, fear God-he will justify in committing a little sin; yea, lie a little, take the advantage of one because of his words, dig a pit for thy neighbor; there is no harm in this;…" 2 Nephi 28:8

"It shall come in a day when there shall be great pollutions upon the face of the earth…there shall be many who will say, Do this or do that, and it mattereth not, for the Lord will uphold such at the last day." Mormon 8:31

Korihor, the anti-christ, taught, "whatsoever a man did was no crime." (Alma 30:17, see Lamoni's previous beliefs in Alma 18:5)

I have thought this way for years. I have worried about saying what I believe in because I didn't want to make anyone feel uncomfortable or offend them. How did I get to this point? I was carefully led to this point by fear. We hear about lawsuits, hate crime legislation and sob stories about gays or environmentalist crying because people won't accept them for who they are. It really comes down to being afraid, at least for me, of saying anything.

As I ponder on this the famous scripture comes to mind,

"For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ." (Romans 1:16)

A simple point about judging. We are supposed to judge if things are right and wrong. A scripture mastery scripture from Moroni says,

"For behold, the Spirit of Christ is given to every man, that he may know good from evil; wherefore, I show unto you the way to judge; for everything which inviteth to do good, and to persuade to believe in Christ, is sent forth by the power and gift of Christ; wherefore ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of God.

" But whatsoever thing persuadeth men to do evil, and believe not in Christ, and deny him, and serve not God, then ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of the devil; for after this manner doth the devil work, for he persuadeth no man to do good, no, not one; neither do his angels; neither do they who subject themselves unto him."

I believe we are expected to judge if something is wrong and evil. This one gets all messed up in our mind sometimes. We are supposed to judge ideas and what people do so that we may not if that is what we should do. We often hear in this tolerance argument that Christ said, "Judge not, that ye be not judged." However, the Joseph Smith Translation (JST) of this scripture reads, "Judge not unrighteously, that ye be not judged: but judge righteous judgment." (Matt 7:1) How often have we skipped the JST of this verse and allowed the world (influenced by Marx) to expound it for us?

When we watch movies I make my kids tell me what they reject and accept from the movie. The first one in most movies is that we reject the idea that a women needs to work to support her family. We reject that swearing is allowed. We reject the clothing worn as immodest and inappropriate. We reject the idea that we should make "love not war." If we consciously make no judgment than we will begin to rationalize these ideas as okay. (The point begs why are we watching movies like that, well, we aren't now).

I believe that it is imperative that we judge things. If we are not judging something of evil than we are accepting it as good.

I recently heard a statistic that only 7% of America considered themselves homosexuals. (I don't know if this is true). Supposing in theory that it is true than why are the airwaves of our lives overrun with messages for gay rights and ideology? Because they are louder than we are and we are tolerant. They blast their message and we look the other way. However, their message of accepting them is being heard by us. I recently had a conversation with a less-active, former temple recommend holding friend, who said, "Once all the legislation passes for gay marriages the church will simply have to accept it. Since we believe in honoring the laws of the land the church will have no choice but to marry gay couples in the temple." Are you serious? I, by the way, am ashamed to admit that I said nothing. I was worried about offending her. Perhaps a simple testimony would have reminded her to what she once believed in.

Our moral laws must NEVER be determined by legislation. President Packer recently said,

"History demonstrates over and over again that moral standards cannot be changed by battle and cannot be changed by ballot…We cannot change; we will not change the moral standard. We quickly lose our way when we disobey the laws of God. If we do not protect and foster the family, civilization and our liberties must needs perish." ("Cleansing the Inner Vessel," Ensign, November 2010, page76)

Another challenge we face is that somewhere along the way we have become tolerant of our children's misbehavior. We may allow them to participate in media that does not meet the guidelines in "For the Strength of Youth." Oftimes we allow infractions (until they simply become normal and part of life) for a couple of reasons. One may be that we may incorrectly believe that we have to "pick our battles" or that we are too tired to "fight" them on it. Even in the home school realm we allow our youth to participate in things of questionable nature because we feel bad that they don't fit in since they don't go to school. By allowing some leniency we hope that our children won't feel "too left out" or "backward."

Elder Lawerence gave a great talk this past conference entitled "Courageous Parenting." He says this,

"Challenges and temptations are coming at our teenagers with the speed and power of a freight train. As we are reminded in the family proclamation, parents are responsible for the protection of their children. That means spiritually as well as physically."

He quoted Elder Robert D. Hales by saying,

 "Sometimes we are afraid of our children-afraid to counsel with them for fear of offending them."

Elder Lawrence continues by saying,

 "It is vital that parents have the courage to speak up and intervene before Satan succeeds. President Packer has taught that 'When morality is involved, we have both the right and the obligation to raise a warning voice.'"

He concludes by saying,

 "Parenting teenagers in the latter days is a very humbling assignment. Satan and his followers are striving to bring this generation down; the Lord is counting on valiant parents to bring them up."

We must learn to recognize how we are tolerant. Thought questions: Do we watch shows that have gay people in them and just accept it? Do we allow our children to be taught sex ed in school? Do we remain silent when our legislature votes to allow girls to get an abortion without parental consent? Do we remain silent when our government takes money from someone who has earned it through the free-market and then let them give it to someone who has not worked? Do we lower our modesty because there's nothing modest in the store? Do we remain silent when our schools teach evolution and give no air time to any other theories? Do we allow our children to watch professional sports and sigh and wish that all the pornography and beer advertisements were not on there but still do nothing? Do we watch movies that have messages against what are in "For the Strength of Youth" by saying at least this movie is better than the other's. Do we allow our children to play violent video games and say, "I shouldn't let them, but all their friends play it, at least their home instead of at someone else's house." Do we allow our children to read sexually charged books? Do we allow our family to listen to the radio and accept the messages of drinking, drugs, promiscuity, and killing? (My favorite for most ridiculous song that I once heard had this line, "Earl's gotta die," from the Dixie Chicks or whatever they are called. I am very clueless when it comes to music). Do we allow ourselves or our children to be friends with people on facebook who blast their messages that are anti-our beliefs but we do nothing because we just don't want to make anyone mad or offend them?

Our lives are saturated in tolerance. I think at one time I have been guilty of most of the above ideas. It makes me really irritated at myself. I must choose to make a stand. I must pray to allow God to teach me where I am being deceived. Remember the scripture that even the very elect will be deceived? We must break our bonds of tolerance because if we accept their messages and do nothing we will face two problems. The first is that our nation will be stripped of everything wholesome and decent that it has-as President Packer taught in the above quote, (and it will be destroyed because this is the promised land and only the righteous can dwell here). The second reason is that the more we tolerate these messages we will then start accepting the ideas and we will find ourselves led carefully down to hell. We will have been "poision{ed} by degrees" (Alma 47:18) and we won't even know it until it is too late.

Let us all make a stand.