TOLERANCE HAS REPLACED TRUTH AS NO. 1 VIRTUE

[Distributed by Way of Life Literature's Fundamental Baptist News Service. Copyright 1997. These articles cannot be stored on BBS or Internet sites without permission from the author. Any articles which are redistributed by e-mail or print must be left intact and nothing must be removed or changed, including these informational headers. This is a listing for Fundamental Baptists and other fundamentalist, Bible-believing Christians. Our primary purpose is to provide information to assist preachers in the protection of the churches in this apostate hour. If you desire to receive this type of material on a regular basis, e-mail us, tell us who you are and where you are located, and request to be placed on the list. Also include your postal address and the name of the church of which you are a member. Some of these articles are from the "Digging in the Walls" section of O Timothy magazine. David W. Cloud, Editor. O Timothy is a monthly magazine in its 14th year of publication. Subscription is $20/yr. The Way of Life web site is http://www.wayoflife.org/.]

April 29, 1997 (David W. Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061-0368, fbns@wayoflife.org) - Speaking at a Southern Baptist Christian Life Commission seminar in March, Josh McDowell stated in March that a "truth shift" has occurred among students in North American schools. The concept of objective truth has been replaced by the belief that all truth is relative. "To say that Jesus is the only way to God is now considered a value judgment, not a statement of fact," he said (Associated Baptist Press, March 5, 1997). He noted that not long ago the Scripture verse most commonly quoted by Christian young people was John 3:16. "But today the verse most quoted is 'Judge not that ye be not judge.'" In a word, tolerance has replaced truth as the "No. 1 virtue in America," McDowell said.

For 33 years McDowell has been a traveling representative for Campus Crusade for Christ. He has spoken to more than seven million young people on 700 college and university campuses in 84 countries.

McDowell notes that tolerance has been redefined. No longer is tolerance defined as "to recognize and respect others' beliefs and practices without sharing them." And no longer does tolerance mean a person listens and learns from all people without having to agree with them. Now, tolerance means that "every single individual's values, beliefs, lifestyles and claims to truth are equal," he said. The new definition of tolerance demands that "we praise others' ideas as if they were our own," McDowell said. "All opinions are equal. There is no intellectual way to discern between them" (Associated Baptist Press).

What McDowell might not have noted is that this philosophy of tolerance and positivism is precisely that which has been promoted for the past 40 years by the New Evangelical movement with which he is affiliated. The "evangelical" churches are largely to blame for the condition that he describes.