Q: What is tolerant?

Today I was listening to Brett Kunkle from Stand to Reason talk about how many people think of Christians as intolerant. Many times Christians can be labeled as unloving, judgmental, rude, or bigots because we claim to know Truth in this world. Besides the fact that name-calling is no way to prove yourself as nonjudgmental, Brett went on to explain the definition of tolerance. Here is a dictionary definition that is similar to what Brett explained.

Definition of TOLERANCE

1

: capacity to endure pain or hardship 

2

a : sympathy or indulgence for beliefs or practices differing from or conflicting with one's ownb : the act of allowing something 

3

: the allowable deviation from a standard; especially : the range of variation permitted in maintaining a specified dimension in machining a piece

4

a (1) : the capacity of the body to endure or become less responsive to a substance (as a drug) or a physiological insult especially with repeated use or exposure <developed a tolerance to painkillers>; also : the immunological state marked by unresponsiveness to a specific antigen (2) :relative capacity of an organism to grow or thrive when subjected to an unfavorable environmental factorb the maximum amount of a pesticide residue that may lawfully remain on or in food

Now, he did not say all of these definitions, but I wanted to leave them up here because I think they are humorous. So the definition of tolerance is basically not to judge anyone else's beliefs, religious beliefs in this case, as wrong but rather assume truth is relative and everyone's beliefs can be considered true. 

If there is relative truth, and no one is allowed to tell anyone they are wrong, then how can the Christian belief of One Truth be considered wrong? Their strong belief in tolerance must sympathize with Christian's belief of only one truth if they are truly tolerant. And so it is interesting that Christians are called intolerant by these so called "tolerant" people.

I'm not so sure being religiously intolerant is such a bad thing anyway...

There have been and probably still are religions such as Jim Jones Religion that led to the murder of 900 people and then there are mosques that are dedicated to keeping peace and giving to the poor. I think we can say that one religion is better than the other in this case. 

These other definitions of tolerant, when not applied to beliefs, just sound horrible. Its like allowing something bad in your body until you just don't respond to it anymore. I mean think about it... what if our body's immune systems just became tolerant to any foreign material in our body? That our system just decided that the antigens couldn't be all that bad... Our bodies would become fresh meat to any living bacteria.  And don't even get me started on "the maximum amount of pesticide that can remain on our food"...

A: Being tolerant in your beliefs makes you susceptible to anything. Being grounded and confident in Truth gives you strength. 

"Tolerance is the Religion of a man without conviction." G.K. Chesterton