Eric, thanks for sitting down.

I wanted to talk to you about as Christians, we're called to live with conviction.

We're to be, you know, even right now we're at Hume Lake and the theme we're preaching through

is on Daniel who stood with boldness when everyone

else around him was bowing down to idols. In our own culture, there's so many contemporary

and cultural idols that people are bowing down to. And at times, standing for God and standing

for his word is synonymous with being bigoted and narrow-minded. And even if you were to say it with

gentleness and respect, no matter what if it's the truth of God's word, it's going to offend.

And so I'm just interested because I think a lot of people sacrifice truth at the altar of kindness.

And so they never actually approach people with the truth because they're so worried they're going to burn a bridge with someone who doesn't

know the Lord or doesn't believe what they believe. And so they never end up communicating the

truth at all. And so I'm just curious and interested in your perspective on how can people today, Christians, live

with conviction, proclaim the gospel with boldness in a world of tolerance?

It's increasingly difficult to be people of conviction because the perception often is,

like you say, bigoted, intolerant, mean, forcing your faith on someone.

But I think the first thing to realize is that tolerance has been redefined in a way,

where it isn't really tolerance in the way a lot of people think about it now.

Because true tolerance is having a legitimate disagreement in a way a lot of people think about it now. Because true tolerance is having a legitimate disagreement in still respecting you,

still loving you as a person, even though you may vehemently disagree with your perspective or your thinking on something.

Tolerance increasingly is being defined as going along with the status quo, going along and not wanting to be on the wrong side of histories, which you hear all the time.

And so I want to truly respect people, even if I deeply disagree with them.

And that's the kind of Christian tolerance I think we should have.

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