“Tolerance is the virtue of a man without convictions.” G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
Something about ‘tolerance’ has always made me uncomfortable. I’ve long been aware that the loudest preachers of tolerance are the ones who are the most intolerant of my own beliefs. I’m well aware of that, and the contradiction of it, but somehow it never really was the reason.
And those who preach tolerance are full of conviction. It’s their followers who they expect to abandon their convictions, or conform to what is politically correct. We all know plenty of them. I’ve also been aware of this for a long time, but it was never the whole source of what was bothering me about ‘tolerance’.
There was always something else that I could never put my finger on.
Then I was blessed enough to hear Fr Jim Brand from Vatican radio talking about ‘tolerance’, and my eyes were opened. “What might we tolerate?” he asked, “A fly buzzing around…”
Essentially he was reminding us all that when we only ‘tolerate’ something bad or irritating. When we declare our tolerance of a person, it’s actually a put down. And that’s a problem for a Christian. The worth of each and every person comes from them being made in the image and likeness of God. Whether it’s a ‘reproductive rights’ protestor, an expectant mum at a pregnancy centre, or her preborn child. Another human being is never a ‘thing’ to be ‘tolerated’, but a chance for us to practice our Christian vocation of love.
So tolerance is far below the standard required of a Christian. If an expectant Mum came into our centre, and I merely tolerated her because of her beliefs about abortion, then I have failed her, myself and our Lord.
Her, because she will pick up the difference between a ‘tolerant’ attitude and a true Christian attitude of unconditional love. It’s the reason that faith based crisis pregnancy centres have been so effective. I’ve failed myself because I’ve failed to live up to my Christian vocation, and it doing so, I’ve failed our Lord too.
But there is the call to be intolerant. Yes, Christians are called to be intolerant. Our Lord himself showed a great deal of intolerance towards the practice of ‘money changing’ in the temple.
While we are not to be intolerant of people, there is plenty we are called to be intolerant too: Abortion, contraception, poverty, human trafficking, violence and anything that robs people of their God given dignity.
It’s our mission and vocation to bring the Gospel of Life, a world where everyone experiences God given grace and dignity, from conception to natural death. And it’s our job to be intolerant to a culture of death that robs people of their God given dignity, and then so often, their lives too.
And in this, may we never be that man without a conviction!
“All men are equal as all pennies are equal, because the only value in any of them is that they bear the image of the King.” G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)
When you are a trying to manipulate a population into accepting something they find disgusting at first you call for them to tolerate it. Many people will easily embrace this as this thing they nonetheless find disgusting isn’t affecting their lifestyle and opposing it would be uncomfortable. Then gradually you make “toleration” mean “acceptance” just by the socially required behavior involved in holding it. Then instead of intolerance being a socially optional virtue now it’s a social vice. It’s very easy to get people to get riled up about social vices.
Very true. But we can’t let it stop us from being salt and light in the world.
I think the reason it happened at all is because we weren’t being salt and light in the world. If we were proactively responding like Christ to homosexuals, and women with crisis pregnancies then what footholds would there be for the putrid social engineering that we’ve seen?
There is always people doing those things. But we are usually not as visible as the ‘tolerance’ crowd. And we tend to do the work first and use the media later, which is the reverse of the ‘tolerance’ crowd.