I remember meeting with someone who had begun attending our church. They wanted to know how tolerant our church was. Before I answered their question, I asked them one of my own. “If you became convinced that the Bible didn’t meet your definition of tolerance, would you throw out the Bible or your definition of tolerance?” My point wasn’t that the Bible is intolerant, but before I began the conversation, I needed to understand whether I was trying to defend the Bible or explain the Bible. Was the Bible the authority that helped them evaluate all their other beliefs, or was a certain view of tolerance the standard by which they would evaluate the Bible? After a long pause, they decided that if the Bible didn’t agree with their definition of tolerance, they would abandon a commitment to their definition of tolerance and accept the Bible’s. Sooner or later, everyone who reads the Bible needs to make a similar decision. Will we treat the Bible as a nice book, even one of our favourites? Or will we put it on the top shelf, in a class all by itself, with ultimate authority in our lives?