On Tolerance

This blog's father was a journal with a pink cover I called "Past...Present...Fuschia." I began that diary in 1997 and it saw me through to my wedding day in October of 2000. In it, I did some of the better writing of my life. Most of it was introspective in nature: I was learning to accept myself as I was, and to do that I had to ask "who am I?" a lot.
Sometimes I look back through that diary (and its predecessors) to see if how I feel about any given issue has changed over the years. I've discovered there's no better mine for new writing than old writing.
At one point in 1998 I found myself listening to Josh McDowell on my radio. McDowell is a theologian who claims to have originated the "Lord/liar/lunatic" description of Jesus. Very briefly, he contended that one had to believe that Jesus of Nazareth could have been

(a) a liar: if so, given his words, one of the most arrogant liars in all history;
--OR--
(b) a lunatic: if so, he was quite thoroughly insane
--OR--
(c) Lord, precisely as he said he was.

McDowell's proposition had gained serious creedance in the Christian circles I once found myself in. And those circles didn't exactly welcome questioning of one's beliefs, for fear it might lead to dissent. So I'd never really listened critically to the argument: it made a kind of surface sense, so I never examined it further. That evening in 1998, I found McDowell invading my bedroom via radio wave. People don't get into my bedroom without some scrutiny, and I found myself spotting at least two alternatives McDowell had missed.

(d) Nonexistent--there is very little authoritative, extra-Biblical evidence that Jesus the Christ actually lived. One Roman historian, Josephus, mentions a Jesus, but doesn't dwell on him. That'd be kind of like detailing a history of the personal computer and throwing Bill Gates in as an afterthought.

(e) Misunderstood. Given that there are several dozen sects of Christianity, each with their own different musings on the meaning of Jesus, I think (e) is the most likely hypothesis. It's the one I choose to believe. To give but one example, according to the Bible, Jesus spent an awful lot of time emphasizing that he and the Father (God) were one; that we are all brothers. Yet that teaching is all but ignored in contemporary Christianity...to its great detriment, I might add.

That night in 1998, McDowell was meditating aloud on the topic of tolerance, and how he felt it had replaced truth. Whereas people had once criticized him by asking about other gods, or saying they didn't believe in god, McDowell noted that people now blasted him for saying that Jesus was "the way, the Truth, and the Life". They called him a bigot and told him he had no right to spread the word. Meanwhile, he said, his sons were taught in school to be tolerant (by which he meant unquestioning and accepting) of every "perversion"...every person...except the intolerant. Or those percieved to be intolerant.

Isn't that ironic...don't you think?

Well, not really. Because once again, McDowell is missing something. The continuum for belief is as follows:

Tolerance--->Acceptance--->Understanding--->Adoption

That is to say, you can tolerate something without accepting it, or indeed understanding it.

Let's take gay marriage as an example, just because it's something I'm sure McDowell doesn't tolerate--it being against his interpretation of Scripture and all.

The intolerant don't recognize it, would ban it--and, depending on their degree of intolerance, they'd criminalize homosexuality while they were at it. Some people believe the penalty for being gay should be death.
Those who tolerate gay marriage are uncomfortable with it, would prefer not to think about it, but can deal with it...if pressed. Many older people I've talked to feel this way.
Those who accept gay marriage don't feel strongly about it one way or the other. They still might not understand why gays would want to get married, but the concept itself doesn't bother them.
It is a very rare human with enough compassion to understand an position and yet still disagree with it. My wife is one such: I freely admit I am not, at least not often. This is the place people are at when they say "I can see both sides of the issue; both sides have merit; I believe..."
Adoption in this context means incorporating the belief into your worldview so that it supplants whatever was there in the first place. It's not necessarily the best place to be: there is a real danger of becoming closed-minded and of making data fit your theory. I have adopted a pro-gay marriage stance. I've honestly tried to understand the other side of the issue and I can't do it. I'm open to a concerted effort to change my mind, but it would take some real changing, using an angle of attack I've yet to hear.

I've digressed and beg for tolerance.

For McDowell, the issue is what he calls tolerance and what I call adoption. McDowell feels that his sons, by some magic teaching method, are being "forced" to adopt an attitude of tolerance to things he finds morally questionable (such as, probably, gay marriage). Further, he contends that they are being "forced" to adopt an intolerant attitude towards those who feel differently.

It takes some pretty nasty techniques to "force" someone to adopt an attitude. Our society calls that sort of thing "brainwashing". It's very difficult to brainwash an individual who has been taught to think critically. Such people usually fall somewhere between intolerance and adoption on most issues, simply because they understand the value of questioning. Rabid paranoiacs will tell you that all the teachers are homosexual, and they're recruiting people to live their "lifestyle"--a word, by the way, that every gay person I've talked to detests. A little critical thinking will assure you that there exists a great deal of space between outright rejection of a position and blind devotion to it, and that most people will try to get you into that space somewhere. In other words, you don't have to agree with what I'm saying--you don't even have to accept it--but you have to accept that I feel as I do...differently from you. That's called tolerance, and it's the oil that lubricates society.

"But Ken", I hear people saying, "what about rape? Or murder? Or child molestation? Are we to be tolerant when it comes to these things?"

Good question.

All three of these things have been very widely (though not universally) judged to be "bad". It can be hard to see with such extreme examples, but nothing is bad in and of itself. Society has judged murder to be a tolerable thing or even a good thing in several instances: war, self-defense, capital punishment. I can't rationalize rape myself, but no less an authority than God seems to have no problem doing so: see http://www.evilbible.com/Rape.htm.
(While you're there at that atheism site, you may feel an urge to look around. PLEASE don't assume I endorse anything or everything there. I accept atheism and to some degree understand it--I myself find it impossible to believe in the commonly-held Christian conception of God--but that does not mean I have adopted atheism, or even agnosticism. It just means I reject one vision of God.)
I'm not even going to go into child molestation--too many people will think I agree with it if I try to mount any sort of defense whatsoever--and I don't. I do not understand, accept, or tolerate sex with minors.
I will say this, however: no child molester thinks he's doing something evil, much less that he's an evil person. Nobody does anything without what they think of as a good reason. Sometimes those reasons reveal a sickness, is all.

So ends my little minilecture. How do you feel about it? Do you tolerate it? Accept it? Understand it? Adopt it? That decision is yours, always yours, eternally yours.