I believe there is another level of tolerance which involves toleration of ambiguity. Too often we sacrifice ambiguity to our anxiety in having to settle for belief instead of certainty. While most of us believe passionately in the God revealed in Holy Scripture and the life of the church, our knowledge is not certainty and our conceptions of God are partial.

Several years ago I attended the showing of an IMax movie about the stars and the immensity of the universe. At the end of the movie, earth was pointed out as a tiny dot in the middle of the Milky Way. Even though I knew that, it was shocking to see -- especially against what was becoming the capture of the Christian Church by those who demanded certainty, not only for themselves but for everyone else. Against the backdrop of infinity, mystery is so much more reliable than certainty -- and probably closer to the truth.

When we use Scripture as a club instead of a path into mystery and love, we use it in a way that Jesus never did. While the author of the Fourth Gospel has Jesus saying, "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me," we delude ourselves, don't we, when we assert that we understand what that means in the way that we understand most other things.

God calls us into relationship, not into a vocation of dominance over Buddhists, Jews, or even pagans. We affirm what we know and what we believe -- and we do so knowing that it is saving truth for us. That is our faith, not a club. That is the root of the tolerance beyond what John Stott saw -- and it has to do with the essence of the incarnation, transfiguration, resurrection as clothed in mystery and wonder, not certainty.

Tom Woodward