Tolerance Is Not a Virtue
An Epistle to the Church on the Sin of Silence
An Epistle to the Global Church
You’ve been told that tolerance is love. That the highest moral act is to affirm, accept, and avoid offense. That silence is kindness. That disagreement is hate.
That’s a lie. A well-branded, culturally-embedded, soul-draining lie.
And it’s killing the Church.
Because what we tolerate, we empower. What we refuse to confront, we normalize. And what we normalize? Our children will evangelize.
The Bible doesn’t call tolerance a virtue. Not once. It treats it like rot in the beam—a vice that weakens the structure until collapse is inevitable.
"Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness..." (Isaiah 5:20)
Let’s be clear: we’re not talking about patient dialogue, basic decency, or the fruit of the Spirit. We’re talking about spiritual compromise masquerading as compassion. The kind that applauds sin in the name of acceptance and allows harmful influences into the flock under the guise of kindness.
For the uninitiated here, “sin” refers to actions that harm ourselves or others against God’s design, and “truth” is the unchanging standard of Scripture.
"Yet this you have: you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate." (Revelation 2:6)
Jesus doesn’t say, "You’re so gracious to Jezebel." He says, "I have this against you: you tolerate her."
This isn’t about becoming a culture warrior. It’s about becoming salt again. Light again. Immune again.
The church is God’s enduring firewall, called to uphold truth in every age.
Clarifying Christ’s Kindness
This is not a call to combativeness. It’s a call to clarity.
To be fair: many Christians embrace tolerance out of good instincts—out of empathy, compassion, and a desire to avoid unnecessary conflict. They’ve been told that this is the way of Christ.
But Jesus didn’t avoid conflict. He walked into it—graciously, truthfully, and always with the goal of redemption.
Jesus dined with sinners not to affirm their sin but to call them to repentance.
"I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance." (Luke 5:32)
What we call tolerance today, the Bible calls compromise. And compromise is how cultures fall. Not all at once—but inch by inch, soul by soul, silence by silence.
"But I have this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel..." (Revelation 2:20)
"Yet this you have: you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate." (Revelation 2:6)
These aren’t outlier verses. These are red-letter rebukes from the resurrected Christ Himself.
What you tolerate becomes what you teach.
And what you teach, you will answer for.
While tolerance can aim for peace in diverse societies, compromising biblical truth risks diluting the Church’s witness.
Love and Tolerance Are Antonyms
This section of the letter is not warm. It is surgical.
Because love, as the Bible defines it, does not mean silent approval. It means sacrificial protection. Love does not stand aside while evil advances. Love intervenes.
"Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good." (Romans 12:9)
We have confused emotional comfort with moral clarity. Real love—divine love—hates what destroys the beloved.
"Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent." (Revelation 3:19)
Imagine a parent who "tolerates" their child's slow addiction to a destructive substance. Imagine a spouse who watches silently while their partner walks into danger.
"Open rebuke is better than hidden love." (Proverbs 27:5)
Now multiply that by the soul.
Yes, biblical love is patient. Yes, it bears with the weak. But biblical patience never affirms destruction. It confronts sin in love, not silence.
If you tolerate what kills someone you claim to love, you don’t love them. You fear rejection more than you value their life. You prefer being liked to being righteous.
This is not Christlike. It is timid.
"Better is a poor and wise youth than an old and foolish king who will no longer take advice." (Ecclesiastes 4:13)
And when the Church plays tolerant bystander to moral decay, it forfeits its witness.
The deeper the love, the lower the tolerance for harm. That is not cruelty. That is covenant.
We’ve been sold a lie: that to love someone is to tolerate whatever they do. That love means nodding silently while people walk off cliffs.
Biblical love is not passive. It doesn't whisper "you do you" while souls rot.
If I love my daughter, I hate anything that threatens her. I don’t tolerate abuse, lies, or slow poisons dressed as freedoms.
Every real relationship proves this: the deeper the love, the lower the tolerance for harm.
"Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently." (Galatians 6:1)
"Open rebuke is better than hidden love." (Proverbs 27:5)
The Church: Culture’s Immune System
If the Church is salt, tolerance is corrosion.
The world is not neutral—it’s spiritually metastatic. Every cultural trend has a trajectory. Every lie unchecked finds a pulpit. And every sin tolerated in the name of compassion puts down roots and chokes the truth.
"If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?" (Psalm 11:3)
When the Church abandons its role as truth-teller, it forfeits its role as culture’s immune system.
Tony Evans nailed it:
“Nobody dies from AIDS. They die from what AIDS allows. AIDS destroys the immune system, and once it’s gone, anything can take you out.”
The same is true of a culture. When the Church stops confronting sin, false teaching, and corrosive ideologies—when it becomes “tolerant” of poison—the immune system is down.
And collapse becomes inevitable.
"The church of the living God, the pillar and buttress of the truth." (1 Timothy 3:15)
What are these cultural metastases?
Relativism as truth—where God's Word is demoted to opinion.
Lust as identity—where desire defines personhood.
Therapy as theology—where feelings overrule Scripture.
Self as savior—where personal autonomy becomes ultimate.
Power as righteousness—when might or influence is mistaken for moral virtue.
Why don’t we know more about the Nicolaitans?
Because the early Church refused to platform them. They didn’t hand falsehood a mic or give error a seat at the table.
"You cannot tolerate wicked people... you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false." (Revelation 2:2)
They didn’t tolerate the ideology. They confronted it. And by confronting it, they immunized the Body.
The Church did what it was designed to do:
Identify spiritual pathogens
Call them by name
Refuse them access
Protect the flock
No tolerance. No legacy. No spread.
That’s how you disinfect a generation.
Innoculating the Culture
How truth-trained believers build resistance against cultural decay.
You cannot fight a lie with silence. And you cannot rebuild the Church with sentiment.
What we need now is not louder opinions. We need faithful antibodies—disciples trained in discernment, pastors who preach with fire and clarity, families that protect truth like it’s oxygen.
This is how you build immunity:
Teach the Word—in your home, your small group, your pulpit. Saturate the immune system with Scripture.
Name the lies. Don’t blur the line. Don’t nuance the poison. Call sin what God calls it.
Love with courage. Real love warns, corrects, and sometimes wounds to heal.
Correct with clarity and compassion. Grace doesn’t mean silence. It means confronting error with tears in your eyes and truth on your lips.
Before confronting, listen. Then speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15), with grace that disarms and clarity that convicts (Colossians 4:6).
Example 1: When a friend in your small group celebrates a new sexual identity or living arrangement that contradicts Scripture, love doesn't ghost them or publicly shame them. It means having a one-on-one, eye-level conversation that says, "I care about you too much not to say this. Here's what Scripture teaches. And here's why it matters."
Example 2: When a church teacher subtly promotes moral relativism—suggesting that "your truth" can differ from God's truth—an elder or mature believer should meet with them, open the Word, and clarify that truth is not subjective. That’s correction, not condemnation.
Example 3: When a community event promotes a message contrary to biblical values—whether it’s gender confusion or aggressive secularism or competing religious claims—believers can respectfully write, speak, or host a forum to witness, not condemn.
Example 4: When a school curriculum promotes misinformation, like relativism over objective truth, parents can engage teachers or school boards with respectful, evidence-based dialogue to uphold truth.
Discipline your affections. We’ve tolerated too much because we’ve desired too little. Holiness must become beautiful again.
In gray areas, test every trend against Scripture to discern truth from error.
"But test everything; hold fast what is good." (1 Thessalonians 5:21)
Pray like lives depend on it. Because they do.
“Contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.” (Jude 1:3)
Let the church be intolerant—of lies, of death, of compromise.
Let the church be full—of grace, yes, but also of truth.
Let the church be what Jesus paid for: holy, set apart, burning with love and anchored in truth.
"Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ." (Ephesians 4:15)
"Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone." (Colossians 4:6)
Final Transmission
The church is not called to be a chameleon. It’s called to be a pillar.
Stop confusing gentleness with passivity. Stop preaching kindness while timidity goes unconfessed. Stop tolerating what Jesus came to overthrow.
"Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them." (Ephesians 5:11)
You were not saved to be silent.
You were not commissioned to be liked.
You were not sent to affirm every idol with a smile.
You were called to testify.
You were called to stand firm.
You were called to wage peace with truth.
So speak up.
Call it out.
And if they hate you for it—congratulations.
"Woe to you when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets." (Luke 6:26)
This is not a drill. This is a diagnosis.
Tolerance is not a virtue. It is the death of discernment. And discernment is the lifeblood of the Church.
If you love them, you warn them.
If you follow Him, you imitate Him.
And if you fear God, you will never again fear being called intolerant.
"There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." (Romans 8:1)
There is no shame in correction. Only the mercy of restoration.
May the God of all grace bless you with courage, clarity, and love rooted in truth.
Your faithful servant,
—Protocol One