In general usage intolerance has come to mean unreasoning and insufferable bigotry, unwillingness to tolerate the opinions of others. As such, the term "intolerant" is a label which, once attached to an individual, sticks like tar. Yet few people who affix that label take time to determine whether or not one could be commendably intolerant.
The writer of this passage glimpses the possibilities: "Far from having too much intolerance, we have too little! For if we are to have craftsmanship, we must be intolerant of bungling. If we are to have learning, we must be intolerant of ignorance. If we are to have beauty and poetry, we must be intolerant of vulgarity. If we are to have excellence in anything, we must be intolerant of nonexcellence."John J. Pullen, The Transcendental Boiled Dinner (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1972), p. 51; Tolerance is willingness to put up with. Intolerance is unwillingness to put up with. There is need today for the Christian courage to enlist in a campaign of scientific intolerance.
Christian Science leads us to be unwilling to put up with the claim that anything unlike God can exist even as a false belief. Hate, greed, fear, envy, lack, disease, accident, death, are illegitimate. They have no foundation in divine Principle, so they have no real existence. Through the study of Christian Science we become aware of man's pure and perfect spiritual status as the heir of divine Love. Acceptance of that perfect spiritual status provides us with a scientific basis for claiming freedom from all false traits that error would fasten on God's spiritual creation.
