Tolerance... fresh direction, new and improved...not really

In thinking about everything from Chick-Fil-A to Katherine Webb to Louie Giglio to so many things that get Americans up in arms lately, America seems to have become a country, in which, it's fashionable to be self-righteously indignant.  People seem to act as if the more offended you appear to be, the more righteous you are.  I think that people hope that pointing fingers and taking offense is really an attempt to place blame and criticize, so that they can cast attention away from their own faults.

Tolerance in America is a fail because it is just another mask for someone to exclude and hammer someone else...in fact, one factor that gets blamed for the "tolerance movement" is the claim that conservative Christianity has been so "intolerant" of others.  They were mean to them, excluded them, judged them, ridiculed them, silenced them.  So what is this "new" enlightened position?  To be mean to, exclude, judge, ridicule, and silence anyone who they think is not tolerant.  It's almost as if they have a Bible of their own somewhere that says "the worst thing you can do is disagree with me".  That doesn't sound new or enlightened at all...that's just the same old prejudiced, angry hypocrisy that allegedly caused this to begin with...just pointed at a different group of people.  But it's "right" THIS time, because "they" deserve it...funny, that argument isn't new either.

In truth, tolerance in America is a failed attempt to create an ala carte, faded copy of what God has offered all along...grace.  The difference between tolerance and grace is that "tolerance" says you are wrong, but we won't tell you, and if you are damaging yourself, I'd rather you do that than be mad with me and inconvenience me...and CLEARLY, that's already been abandoned.
Sadly, like all things trying to achieve God, but not guided by God, it has become perverted and mutated.  Tolerance ends up doing the exact opposite of what it intended and becoming the very dragon it hoped to slay.  Look at America now...is everyone MORE free to speak or is another group just taking their turn with the keys to the "jail" and the power to imprison?

The truth is that tolerance in America is simply INtolerance everywhere else.  It's the "Emperor's New Clothes" in verbal and written form..."Look at me!  I'm enlightened and tolerant, now get your sword and let's shut down those idiots over there who aren't tolerant like I am."  It's just repackaged hypocrisy and prejudice...a sin-driven society just "chasing it's tail" and going nowhere.  The end won't be found in beating or shutting up everyone you think is wrong any more than just never calling foul on anything that isn't cleared by your lawyers and popular opinion...the answer, just like the problem, has never changed...the answer is Jesus.