On this definition of tolerance, true tolerance is impossible. Let me give you a real-life example.

A few years back, I spoke to a class of seniors at a Christian high school in Des Moines. I wanted to alert them to this “tolerance trick,” but I also wanted to learn how much they had already been taken in by it. I began by writing two sentences on the board. The first expressed the current understanding of tolerance:

All views are equally valid; no view is better than another.

All heads nodded in agreement. Nothing controversial here. Then I wrote the second sentence:

Jesus is the only way of salvation; all other religions are wrong for rejecting Him.

Immediately hands flew up. “You can’t say that,” a coed challenged. “That’s disrespectful. How would you like it if someone said you were wrong?”

“Like you’re doing right now?” I pointed out.

“But your view is intolerant,” she said, noting that the second statement violated the first statement. What she didn’t see was that the first statement also violated itself.

I pointed to the first statement and asked, “Is this a view, the idea that all views are equally valid?” They all agreed.

Then I pointed to the second statement—the “intolerant” one—and asked the same question: “Is this a view?” They studied the sentence for a moment. Slowly my point began to dawn on them.

If all views are equally valid, then the view that other religions are wrong for rejecting Jesus is just as true as the view that other religions are right for rejecting Jesus. But this is hopelessly contradictory: “All views are equally valid, including the view that all views are not equally valid,” or “All views are equally valid and not equally valid at the same time.”

They’d been taken in by the tolerance trick. If this is what tolerance amounts to, then no one can be tolerant because “tolerance” turns out to be contradictory gibberish.