Tolerance or Compromise

[pelathais]

Originally Posted by stmatthew

Received this in my email the other day, and thought it might be an interesting discussion topic. How would you differentiate "Tolerance" and "Compromise"?

Quote:
This question was asked about Tolerance or Compromise and below is Elder James Groce's answer.


In a discussion about Apostolics and tv, the idea was being kicked around about allowing time for people to acclimate themselves into the church.

So how long before church standards are expected to be followed?

15 minutes?

3 months?

6 months?

1 year?

5 years?

So when, if ever, does tolerance become compromise?

Maybe some one can define the difference between Tolerance and Compromise?


This is Elder Groce's answer...

There were two basic groups in the Roman churches according to Romans 14, those Paul characterizes as "weak in faith," and those who he views as "strong in faith." Obviously Paul viewed being strong in the faith as preferable, and he counts himself as part of those who are strong in faith. Notice that Paul wants all members of the church to "accept" those who are weak in faith. The Greek word "accept" here means "to welcome." Paul is calling for genuine tolerance. Tolerance assumes we disagree or object to something. We tolerate, for instance, the inability of a child to read -- until they have had sufficient time to learn to read. We do not, however, tolerate WITHOUT teaching -- to do so would not be true biblical tolerance - it would be a crime! So where there is NO teaching there is no tolerance only compromise. Compromise does not deal with teaching-it only accommodates-it leaves the unschooled in spiritual ignorance.

A time factor?? -- once the subject(s) have been throughly taught - it is time to take the test.

Authentic Christian tolerance is an issue in the establishing of a church body that is designed for "the perfecting of the saints."

The problem that I see in this application is that in the first example your email correspondent is looking at a situation with a timeline that moves toward a resolution. In other words, there is one who is following church standards and one who is not. The problem is how do these two people get along and cooperate until they are both in agreement?

However, in Romans 14, Paul is addressing a situation where the two sides will never agree; at least not in this life. Here he gives guidance on how to get along - and that guidance is to compromise! He tells the brother who would eat meat (the stronger of the two) to lay down his convictions for a while and in the spirit of unity to not exercise his beliefs.

"Help the 'weaker' brother out in this situation..." is what Paul seems to be saying.

I'm not certain how this applies to the situation of discipling new believers. To apply Romans 14, here it seems that the "new converts" are stronger in faith than the ones who are purportedly doing the discipling.

So what we have is a situation where the "new people" in the church are really the ones modeling the "preferred" behavior (stronger faith). If that's the case, what's the point in having "church standards?" It seems that the church described here actually weakens the faith of believers.