This whole concept of tolerance

So, its late at night, much past my usual bed time, but I felt I couldn't fall asleep without first writing down some thoughts I experienced at school yesterday. We didn't have our usual classes and instead had a variety of speakers and workshops. We started out with a guest speaker talking to us about the holocaust and how to educate students about it. Then a man named Max Eisen, a holocuast survivor, shared his story. This is when all the thoughts started.
As you can imagine, hearing a personal account of a man's experience in the concentration camps is sure to fire up some emotions. At first I was incredibly intrigued, then very sad, and then mad. I was intrigued by Max's story of survival and his will to carry on and even after losing his entire family, move to Canada as a teenager and make a whole new life for himself. I was sad to hear the horrible treatment he received, the conditions he lived in, the images he saw and physical and emotional pain he experienced. I was sad too at the way humans could treat other humans...and the more I thought about, the more the sadness turned to anger. How could so many soldiers believe the lies of one dictator and murder so many million innocent human beings? I have never really sat and thought about that too much (but not that I really want to either). I thought about this in a spiritual context and realized the extent to which the idea of 'being God of ourselves' was taken. Hitler was a man who became "God of himself" and felt he had the right to determine what was best for his life and his race and that meant determining the fate of an entire people. Hold that thought for a minute.
And then this song came to my mind...."What the world needs now, is love, sweet love....."
So these thoughts continued into the afternoon as we shifted gears a little bit and sat in on a 'show' about RESPECT put on by this cool rapper guy. About a 100 kids from a local school came to Brock to hear this guy speak and sing to them about respecting other people and how to build your character by being kind to those around you (all part of an anti-bullying campaign going around the school boards). So all of us teachers sat in on this session, which was actually kind of fun, and got the kids singing and dancing about respect and 'leaning on each other' - yes, we even sang "Lean on Me"!! The main idea, of this session, however, steered my thoughts into the title of my post - tolerance and acceptance.
This whole concept of tolerance and acceptance has come to my mind a lot lately. Maybe it's because as teachers, we are being trained to teach this to children, or maybe its because of the political talk surrounding the election, but whatever it is, its a word that is becoming more and more predominant in our society. Our Canadian culture has become increasingly tolerant of other beliefs, practices and customs and is drifting further and further away from TRUTH. And there is a huge difference between respect and tolerance. In fact, the more I think about, the more it makes me angry. People everywhere are making up their own ideas of what they believe to be right...they are being God of themselves (remember that thought from before?) What is right for one person may not be right for another, but thats okay, because we have to be tolerant of each other, right? No wonder people are so INTOLERANT towards Christianity...because it is so intolerant. It actually has a standard, a truth. And yet, so many people won't accept that. But then again, didn't God say that would happen?
My last workshop of the day was called "World Religions". The purpose of the workshop was to explain the main ideas of what religion (in general) is all about and how we can deal with it when we are faced with all different religions in the classroom. The leader of this workshop was actually a chaplain. So my first thought was, "oh, this might be kind of cool, i bet this workshop will be from a christian perspective", but I was wrong. The more I listened to him speak, the more I realized how much his beliefs were all over the place. I began to wonder what exactly his job was. I mean, even if he did have spiritual convictions in any area, how could he work as a multi-faith advisor? I don't understand this...I don't think he did either. To me, it was just more evidence of this culture of tolerance.
And then this song came mind.."The love of God is greater far then tongue or man could ever tell..."
So needles to say, it was a very thought provoking day. I'm not sure how much practical teaching knowledge I gained, but thats okay. Recognizing peoples' need for God once again is much more important.