The End of Dutch “Tolerance”?
The Dutch have long been known for their “tolerant” (read: liberal) views on such things as physician-assisted suicide, prostitution, abortion, homosexuality and anything else that is the antithesis of decency. They, in fact, prided themselves on being the most “tolerant” country, if not in the world, at least in Europe.
But tolerance doesn’t solve one’s problems. It was in the Netherlands that the filmmaker Theo Van Gogh was murdered because of his views on Islam. The Netherlands had elected a Somali woman to Parliament but she had to leave the country because of death threats for her criticism of Islam. It seems that the Dutch mind simply could not open wide enough to appease some people.
The problem is that if you tolerate everything, you stand for nothing. It is those barriers, beyond which you don’t tolerate divergence, that define who you are. Someone who tries to tolerate everything is about as substantial as a blob – molding and flowing around everything yet with no inherent structure at all. Structure – that means barriers. Barriers mean you don’t, indeed can’t, tolerate everything.
A few years ago, the most left-wing political organization in the Netherlands, the Labor Party, issued a position paper calling for an end to the Dutch model of “tolerance.” The problem for the Dutch is that when they wanted to tolerate anything and anyone, it led to immigrants disregarding their own language, their own laws, and their own customs. It is language, law, and customs that make a people into a community.
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We can only hope that the Dutch will continue their move toward Divine absolutism. We can only hope and pray that our own country-men who worship at the altar of tolerance will see its futility and move back toward Divine absolutism.
What is “Divine absolutism”? It means that God has decreed that certain behaviors are sinful. It means that God has defined the “language, law, and customs” of His nation – the church of Jesus Christ – and it is these aspects that make us into a community. If people want to become members of Christ’s body but refuse to speak His language or follow His law or engage in His customs, they are really refusing to accept His leadership. When you tolerate everything, you stand for nothing.
In the days of Nehemiah, the Israelites had tolerated the inter-marriage of their children with the children of pagans. This was in express violation of God’s law – Deuteronomy 7:1-6. Observe what happened: “In those days also I saw the Jews who had married women of Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab. And half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod, and they could not speak the language of Judah, but only the language of each people. And I confronted them and cursed them and beat some of them and pulled out their hair. And I made them take oath in the name of God, saying, “You shall not give your daughters to their sons, or take their daughters for your sons or for yourselves. Did not Solomon king of Israel sin on account of such women? Among the many nations there was no king like him, and he was beloved by his God, and God made him king over all Israel. Nevertheless, foreign women made even him to sin. Shall we then listen to you and do all this great evil and act treacherously against our God by marrying foreign women?” (Nehemiah 13:23-27).
Tolerance might be the politically correct position to take in our world, but God doesn’t tolerate it.
Paul Holland
