Let love be without dissimulation.
Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good.
During a discussion recently, a friend asked me, “Surely you agree that it’s good to be tolerant towards other people?” I agreed at first, in haste to get to the meat of our disagreement, but ended up reflecting a lot on my answer to that question. My conclusion is that tolerance is, usually, a sin.
What is tolerance?
Oxford Languages gives us three definitions for the word “tolerate:”
allow the existence, occurrence, or practice of (something that one dislikes or disagrees with) without interference.
“a regime unwilling to tolerate dissent”accept or endure (someone or something unpleasant or disliked) with forbearance.
“how was it that she could tolerate such noise?”be capable of continued subjection to (a drug, toxin, or environmental condition) without adverse reaction.
“lichens grow in conditions that no other plants tolerate”
I think we can split all three of these definitions into the same two halves. The first half is the action taken: (1) allowing without interference; (2) accepting or enduring; or (3) surviving without reaction; and the second half is the underlying attitude: (1) dislikes or disagrees with; (2) unpleasant or disliked; or (3) drug, toxin, or (harsh) environmental condition, which we would normally expect to cause an adverse reaction.
Tolerance, then, is a passive action combined with a negative attitude. When we tolerate a person, we view that person negatively, but do nothing about it.
Tolerance is not good enough
Imagine you met a mother who, in all seriousness, said that she “tolerated” her child. How awful!
My parents do not tolerate me. They love me. A while ago, I entered religious life with the hopes of becoming a priest. This entailed a decision (celibacy) with which my parents disagreed. They thought that decision would harm me. Therefore, they actively strove to change it. It led to a lot of arguments and tension, but it was the right response: if they had disagreed but tolerated, it would have shown that they didn’t care about me!
I am reminded of a story from the (rabidly atheistic) Penn Jillette, half of the magic duo Penn & Teller. After a show, a Christian came up to him and gave him a copy of the New Testament, saying that he was praying for him. Here was Penn’s response:
“How much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize? How much do you have to hate someone to believe everlasting life is possible and not tell them that?”
He is fully right! Except for the word “hate.” After all, if you hated someone, you would actively try to prevent them from getting to eternal life. But somebody who doesn’t care whether you get eternal life is simply passive in the face of a negative situation. The word Penn is looking for is “tolerate.”
If I tolerate someone, I don’t care whether they do what’s right, whether they live a good life, or whether they go to heaven. That’s not the way I want to treat my fellow man.
So what’s the alternative?
We defined tolerance earlier as a passive action combined with a negative attitude. Let’s graph those two dimensions out:
As Christians, we know we are called to love others. This is because others are made in God’s image and, therefore, are good. We are not permitted to have a negative attitude towards others. In fact, we are not permitted to have a negative attitude towards any of creation.
And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.
This is also the lesson from mindfulness, as seen in my article last week: be open to the goodness (God) present in everything. The only response we are allowed to have towards any part of creation, especially towards other people, is a positive one:
When we may hate
So far, I have been talking about tolerating others. But this is quite different from tolerating others’ actions – we should be careful not to conflate the two.
When we think back to Penn’s proselytiser earlier, or to my parents’ attitude towards my potential priestly celibacy, both of them had a negative attitude towards some object (Penn’s not being Christian; my not getting married). In both of these cases, the person is loving someone (positive towards them, actively working on it) and hating their actions (negative, active).
We know that we may hate some actions, but this is a rather confusing line for Christians to take. As I have already said, we Christians believe that all of creation is good, and also that God created everything. So everything is good.
How come we are allowed to be negative at all?
It is a long-standing principle in Christian philosophy that evil (sin), in the strictest sense, does not exist. What do I mean? St Augustine writes that sin involves “not a desire for naturally evil things, but an abandonment of better things.” For example, sex is a good, which includes the possibility of the creation of life. Contracepted sex excludes the possibility of the creation of life. So contraception is not evil in itself, but contraception applied to sex is a turning away from the fulness of good. Drunkenness is a sin not because alcohol is a bad thing, but because it is a choice for the good of alcohol in such a quantity that it takes away a greater good, your reason.
I have always appreciated the fact that the Dutch word for sin (zonde) is the same as the Dutch word for waste. You commit a sin by wasting the good that God has created.
When we have a negative view of sin, we are not in fact viewing creation negatively. We are viewing actions negatively in so far as they waste the good God has created.
Responding passively
With my latest chart, I’ve raised another question. I originally gave two examples where tolerance was not good enough. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “Silence in the face of evil is evil itself.” Similarly, neglect is not good. In my article on the Examen, I quoted Saint Ignatius calling ingratitude “the cause, beginning, and origin of all sins and misfortunes.”
So then why did my attitude charts allow for neglect and toleration? Because they are sometimes necessary.
This becomes clear when we look at the good – when should we neglect a good? Whenever we have something better to love. For example, I may have a positive attitude towards a beautiful sunset, but nonetheless neglect it, since it would prevent me from the greater love of taking care of my sick friend’s health. So it is sometimes necessary to neglect.
When should we tolerate evil? When hating it would cause a greater evil. For example, I may have a negative attitude towards a false statement someone makes. But if I know acting on this negative attitude will prevent me from loving him, I have created a greater evil. So it is sometimes necessary to tolerate.
The goal is to love the good and hate the evil. But, when there is a greater good to be loved, or a greater evil to be hated, a more passive approach to something else may be needed.
God is love
While passivity and negativity are, at times, necessary, they are never the greatest good. The greatest good is active positivity: love.
Love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
This brings us back to the title of my article: Tolerance is (usually) a sin. If we remember our earlier definition, sin is a failure to choose the good. When passivity or negativity are necessary to help us love, they are instruments of good, but they are not themselves good. Voluntarily choosing them is a sin.
I personally find myself in arguments too often, which means I choose hate when I should love. I need to focus on moving to the positive side by working on gratitude. Perhaps you are melancholic or depressed, which means that you neglect when you should love. You need to focus on moving to the active side.
But the one thing that we should avoid as much as possible is passivity combined with negativity: tolerance. In a society that calls tolerance a virtue, don’t forget that its polar opposite, love, is the goal.
Exactly.
The largest step is to enforce the non-toleration and be willing to take steps that would make those born and raised in a liberal society... uncomfortable. Otherwise, as society comes down around us, we'll never have a working system in mind with which to strive to replace it. Instead we'll be right back where we started.