Tolerance is our first teaching in the Bible. Creator placed Humans in Eden and gave us the Tree of Life to nourish our lives, and advised us about the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil to guide us in our relationships. Creator warns not to touch that Tree. Many moralizing sermons have been preached about good and evil, but Isaiah explains in Chapter 7, that history will have to pass before Messiah learns to separate the good from the bad. So what are we not to do? Is it some sexual behavior, or use of force, or a kind of food that we cannot digest? What single act might be the cause of life's troubles?

The answer to these questions, and to the mystery of the Tree of Knowledge, is simply Tolerance. Each of us has the seed of the Tree of Knowledge planted within us, where it grows constantly, giving the ability to know what is good or what may be bad, and we certainly do not like to have anyone interfere with our opinions of that Tree; who hasn't complained that they do not like to be told what to do? And yet we can be quick to criticize the very same Tree growing in the minds of others. Genesis 2, verse 17, sets the penalty for this intolerance as death, and we can trace all violence and all wars and all the suffering in the world to our habit of ignoring, or disobeying the rights of others to have their own beliefs.

If we make it a personal principle to never contradict others then the flip side of that coin says nobody is better or worse than we are, and our individual Trees can begin growing together into healthy flourishing forests of truth.

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