Proverbs 11:19 He who is steadfast in righteousness will attain to life, and he who pursues evil will bring about his own death.

Isaiah 26:3 The steadfast of mind You will keep in perfect peace, because he trusts in You.

One of the blasting messages of our current culture is that we must all be tolerant. We are to offend no one. Each of us is to speak and act with the utmost charity toward all lest someone be offended. So goes the blab of the dominant humanist culture from every megaphone they appropriate. It has gotten so bad that if you utter the slightest moral objection to their evident depravities then you are a hater. Haters speak in a special, evil, language called hate speech. Hate speech is when you assert any aspect of God’s law or Biblical morality in opposition to the immoral humanist philosophies with which they have beset us. Are you against sodomy? Are you publicly denouncing the establishment of Muslim culture? Then, for sure, you are a hater. You are filled with judgmental genes. You are hopelessly locked into a bygone culture of bigotry and narrow-minded prudishness not fit for modern, enlightened humanist society. Or at least, so we are categorized.

As for me, I relish the word steadfast. It is a sturdy Biblical word. It resists the historical onslaught of humanist compromise. Through every age morally wobbly men have sought to push God’s ideals to the borders. The Biblical push-back is to be steadfast. He who is steadfast in righteousness will attain to life, wrote the prophet. The Christian enterprise has always been upheld by men and women of steadfast character and action. The Apostle Paul instructed (1 Corinthians 15:58), Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord.  

Our current culture preaches tolerance as a supreme virtue. To be tolerant is to be like the gods. It is the crown of the beneficent God-resister who is constructing a modernist city unrestrained by the old Biblical norms of righteousness, purity, and justice. Tolerance we are admonished, is true righteousness. To be intolerant is to be a wrecker of the foundations of all that is good. It is an unholy act. It is a desecration of the holy things.

The preachers of tolerance have rounded the bend now in their obsession with this demanded purity of motive. They have entered into the realm of the religious. Their passion is not merely that of a philosopher with a position to defend. No, there is real emotion behind their assured preference.

God’s law punished severely anyone who would desecrate the holy things. If you drank the blood of the sacrifice or in any way besmirched the holy articles you could be banished from the borders of national Israel. Out you go. There is no tolerance for those who attack the tabernacle or special properties of the reigning King. There are behaviors you simply cannot perform without the strictures of our God falling upon you like an unstoppable boulder. The same God who limited the seas saying, Thus far you shall go and no further limits man in his actions. There are things you cannot do.

The humanists of our day understand this principle, although not likely from Scripture. They impose their own sets of principles upon us presented as pure righteousness in their eyes. Tolerance is one of those inviolable precepts that lives among their holy articles. To be intolerant is to kick at their god. It is unholy in their eyes. Yet what escapes them is how intolerant they must be to impose upon us their philosophies while slapping at ours. It is impossible to affirm any set of values without automatically rejecting others. Their tolerance is our intolerance. We often cannot tolerate what they embrace. They look longingly toward Sodom while we seek the New Jerusalem. Their city is not ours and ours is not theirs. Some may call them tolerant, but righteousness recognizes intolerance when it rises. They are intolerant of the kingdom of heaven. They are haters. They hate its law and its King.

I love the words of Martin Luther speaking at the council of Worms. Standing nearly alone before a powerful council of churchmen he defended his writings and his confession professing, To go against conscience is neither right nor safe. I cannot, and I will not recant. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. He told them, “Only let my errors be proven by Scripture and I will revoke my work and throw my books into the fire.” There was a man of steadfastness. He made no apology for his stand. Luther was fully willing to suffer the unjust persecutions of his peers rather than compromise his Biblically based beliefs. This was a man of supreme courage. Five-hundred years later we would do well to learn from him and imitate his righteous acts.

The Apostle Paul tells us in the book of Galatians, I did not yield for a moment, discussing one of his controversies. This is our example. He is a Christian hero we may emulate. In the face of a rising humanism that demands we give them full allegiance we should confidently live and affirm, I did not yield for a moment. Rather, we are to be the builders of that eternal city where righteous behavior is normal and sin is not tolerated. We tolerate that which is righteous. They tolerate that which is evil. We must be steadfast and not yield for a moment. The kingdom of God is built by the courageous.

For Christian Culture,

Don Schanzenbach

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