Jesus never taught LGBT tolerance but the cheap grace lukewarm church has
At the request of many of my readers, I’m have begun the new year by highlighting the most popular articles of 2023 and reposting the top article from each month (based on traffic) in their entirety. In April, the most-read article was Jesus never taught LGBT tolerance but the lukewarm church has*.
I once wrote an article documenting how LGBT tolerance within the cheap grace lukewarm church had made polygamy and pedophilia the new battlefields in the LGBT culture war, and as you might expect, I received a lot of feedback on it.
Of course, I heard from the pro-LGBT crowd about how I was little more than a right-wing homophobe — true homophobia isn’t bad, by the way — and how I was clearly failing to follow Jesus’ teachings about “acceptance” and “tolerance.”
Besides the fact that the LGBT agenda has never been about tolerance but rather unconditional acceptance and the destruction of religious liberty, the claim that Jesus taught us tolerance is one of the biggest frauds ever perpetrated on Christianity even though it has been embraced by the cheap grace lukewarm church.
Tolerance is the product of the same cheap grace theology that gave rise to Nazi Germany, and in today’s American church has created the heretics I refer to as the Fellowship of the Pharisees.
The simple truth is Jesus never taught tolerance:
[Jesus] made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. – John 2:15
Do not suppose that I (Jesus) have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. – Matthew 10:34
Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I have come to divide people against each other! – Luke 12:51 (NLT)
Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it – Matthew 7:14
Throughout the gospels, Jesus referred to the religious and political leaders as “hypocrites” and “serpents” and a “brood of vipers.” He further described them as “full of extortion and self-indulgence” and “full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.”
Jesus was intolerant of those who rejected him after seeing his miracles; intolerant of those who set aside God’s law to follow human tradition; intolerant of “false christs” and “false prophets.”
Jesus wasn’t tolerant of sin; he was forgiving of sinners. He was non-judgmental when teaching and healing but promised a future judgment of hell for the wicked. He was so accepting that anyone could approach him regardless of station or condition, yet so demanding that many went away sad, disappointed, or angry.
The cheap grace gospel of tolerance has permeated the church to the point where the immorality and decay of conscience Charles G. Finney warned of has come to pass:
If immorality prevails in the land, the fault is ours in a great degree.
If there is a decay of conscience, the pulpit is responsible for it.
If the public press lacks moral discrimination, the pulpit is responsible for it.
If the church is degenerate and worldly, the pulpit is responsible for it.
If the world loses its interest in religion, the pulpit is responsible for it.
If Satan rules in our halls of legislation, the pulpit is responsible for it.
If our politics become so corrupt that the very foundations of our government are ready to fall away, the pulpit is responsible for it.
Let us not ignore this fact, my dear brethren; but let us lay it to heart and be thoroughly awake to our responsibility in respect to the morals of this nation.
In the LGBT arena, the cheap grace lukewarm church’s failure to live up to its responsibility “in respect to the morals of [America]” has led to a “change of heart” by so-called Christians who now embrace the LGBT agenda in its entirety. This capitulation has given rise to so-called “Gay Christians” who defend LGBT deviance as God’s design, such as we heard from Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg when he was a 2020 Democrat candidate for president.
In the Revelation of Jesus Christ, John wrote “In righteousness he judges and makes war” (Rev. 19:11). John didn’t see a passive, tolerant king returning to earth; he saw a warrior king who is returning to make war against his enemies.
That’s bad news for the LGBT tolerance-seekers, but it’s very bad news for the cheap grace lukewarm church preaching the tolerance message, as we see in Jesus’ message to the Last Days church:
I have a few things against you: you have some there who hold the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, so that they might eat food sacrificed to idols and practice sexual immorality.
So also you have some who hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans.
Therefore repent. If not, I will come to you soon and war against them with the sword of my mouth. ~ Rev. 2:14-16, NIV (Emphasis mine)
“Tolerance” is a stumbling block that may do well for political and religious leaders looking to curry favor with the crowd they are causing to stumble — at least for a season. But a time is coming when Warrior King Jesus will have something to say about it … and I don’t think he’ll be very “tolerant.”
* The link to the original article can be found here.
David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties.
Follow the Strident Conservative on Twitter and Facebook.
Subscribe to receive podcasts of his daily radio feature: iTunes | Stitcher | Tune In | iHeart | RSS
For media inquiries or to have David speak to your group, use the Contact Us form.
