Tolerance

[Catherine Therese]

One of my old professors from when I was doing my postgrad theology study a couple of years back recently asked me to do a little reading and to write an opinion piece for her on 'Tolerance'.

Before I do any serious reading and research I thought I'd throw this one out to my phellow phatmassers by way of brainstorming to get a few ideas.

Anyone got a strong opinion on this that they want to share?

Edited February 9, 2011 by Catherine Therese

[Miss Hepburn]

My take:

Tolerance is like patience or forgiveness - one either has them or one does not.
Oh, one can recognize that they don't have them feeling the pain of their absence;
now what do they do?

One can pray for tolerance and to forgive and for patience.
One can take a deep breath and show the outward signs of all three.
The old "fake it till they make" practice.
Or one can pray for and ultimately be "in that place" where there is no need for any.

One reaches a place in their wisdom, in their understanding and in the depth of their heart
where there is no longer any need or even existence of tolerance, patience or forgiveness.
Why?
Because by the grace of God one sees Him in all things.
What is there, then, to tolerate?
What is there to forgive?
There is no need for patience because all waiting is perfection and delicious.

One has reached a place of perfect peace, of perfect trust, of perfect knowing...
that all things are for the good, that all things are of God, all things are 'in His Hands' eternally
in their correct place at the right time and happening according to His Plan.

Where one sees God in all things - tolerance, forgiveness and patience do not even exist.
There is nothing to tolerate.
There is nothing to forgive.
There is no need for patience because one knows all is happening as it should.

And then, one understands and knows the Mind of God even more, as He told Jeremiah;
"if a man boasts let him boast of this, that he understands and knows me".


Thank you for the thread, dear.
Miss Hepburn
Had some typos I corrected.

Edited February 9, 2011 by Miss Hepburn

[cruciatacara]

None of us are perfect except in our own minds. I like to refer everything back to Jesus. "Do unto others..." He didn't approve of what the adultress had done, but He didn't condemn her either. He simply said to go and sin no more. I think it comes back to hating the sin and loving the sinner. We can't tolerate certain behaviors because they are just wrong - in man's eyes and in God's, and these behaviors need to be condemned, but it's not for us to judge the heart. God alone is our judge.

Edited February 16, 2011 by cruciatacara

[Tally Marx]

[quote name='Catherine Therese' timestamp='1297235400' post='2210514']
One of my old professors from when I was doing my postgrad theology study a couple of years back recently asked me to do a little reading and to write an opinion piece for her on 'Tolerance'.

Before I do any serious reading and research I thought I'd throw this one out to my phellow phatmassers by way of brainstorming to get a few ideas.

Anyone got a strong opinion on this that they want to share?
[/quote]

I think the word "tolerance" carries a lot of baggage, and needs to be rehabilitated.

One distinction I think must be made is that there is a difference between tolerating a person, and tolerating an act.
It is a virtue to tolerate a person, to tell them, "I hate what you do. But, I love you as a person and as a child of God." The attitude of a caring parent toward a drug-addict son--that's tolerance, and that's a virtue.
However, tolerance of an act is not a virtue, and can in fact be a sin. If the parent were to tell their son, "I love you so much, I don't care you are on drugs", that would be tolerating the action, and not only the person. And that would not only fail to be a virtue, it would be a sin. Because you would be condoning and supporting an evil act, and actually assisting the sinner to further destroy himself.

This is a very important distinction which I feel must be made, because most people these days cannot understand the difference. I see this mainly in the gay-pride movement. They can't grasp how one can hate homosexuality, but not homosexuals, so that in their minds if you do not support gay marriage, you don't care for gay people. And this is just not true. A person is separate from what they have/do, and you can therefore love and tolerate them without loving and tolerating what they have/do.

[thessalonian]

Won't vote because none of them possibilities really address what tolerance is. Tolerance to me is realizing what a great gift the Catholic faith is and how it is only by grace that I am in the boosom of mother Church. Then looking out at the world and all the confusion and realizing that there are alot of people that are just plain in ignorance and to get them out of ignorance requires great amounts of patience, love, humility, and in the end the grace of God. And of course prayer. Much of this I have not mastered very well and am more accountable than they for where I don't display these things.

I do highly recommend the book by our Pope when he was Cardinal Ratzinger called Truth and Tolerance. I think it will help understand tolerance.

[CatherineM]

I tolerate alot. I just don't want to tolerate someone to the point that I let they condemn themselves.

[Catherine Therese]

See, this is where it gets confusing.

Cruciatacara appears to be equating tolerance with the ability to refrain from judgement. Yet Tally Marx is appearing to equate tolerance with love. Those two understandings of tolerance strike me as being at pretty significantly different places on the love scale, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Meanwhile it seems like CatherineM's interpretation of tolerance is turning a blind eye... something she's prepared to do a lot provided it doesn't equate to allowing someone to condemn him or herself.

Miss Hepburn's discussion of tolerance as only having meaning in a temporal world certainly seems to bear up under scrutiny, yet she also paints it as a virtuous thing.

IF Cruciatacara and CatherineM are right and tolerance equates to little more than turning a blind eye and refraining from passing judgement, then this seems an insipid response to another person in whom the Holy Spirit dwells. How is THAT virtuous? How can Miss Hepburn possibly be right about the degree to which tolerance is righteous if we consider tolerance under these circumstances?

If Tally Marx is right and tolerance is more like love, why is it that they are separate entities? What are the distinguishing factors between tolerance and love? God is love. But is God tolerance? That seems unworkable. It seems lower than love somehow, so I'm not sure that the distinction TM has offered about tolerating act and person really holds water. You see, I would have thought you love the person, not simply tolerate him. As you say, you cannot tolerate the act, for it is evil. Therefore in my opinion tolerance has absolutely no role to play in the scenario you've offered.

Anyone seeing why I'm confused? Please feel free to elucidate further!


As for the book recommendation - thanks, Thessalonian, I'm going to try and get my hands on that book and have a look.

[Miss Hepburn]

[quote name='Catherine Therese' timestamp='1298381157' post='2214582']
See, this is where it gets confusing.

Miss Hepburn's discussion of tolerance as only having meaning in a temporal world certainly seems to bear up under scrutiny, yet she also paints it as a virtuous thing.

If Tally Marx is right and tolerance is more like love, why is it that they are separate entities? What are the distinguishing factors between tolerance and love? God is love. But is God tolerance? That seems unworkable. It seems lower than love somehow, so I'm not sure that the distinction TM has offered about tolerating act and person really holds water. You see, I would have thought you love the person, not simply tolerate him. As you say, you cannot tolerate the act, for it is evil. Therefore in my opinion tolerance has absolutely no role to play in the scenario you've offered.
[/quote]

[color="#000000"]The Sun shines - it lights the earth - is the light on the earth the Sun itself?
It is what the Sun "does" - the ability to see the tree at all is because of the light from the Sun
- the light is an extension of the Sun itself - reaching out from itself ---
Is tolerance God, is tolerance love, is God tolerance?
I'd say it would be separating a ray of light from the Sun.

Can it be done? Yes and no.

The ray itself is not the Sun in it's fullness - yet you can not have the Sun and not have the ray.

If one is embued with the Presence of God - there is automatically, tolerance, peace, kindness..
A ray of light is to the Sun what tolerance is to God.

And how wonderful that is. He is the thirst and He is the water [b]and[/b] He is the quenched.
(That could be a bumper sticker.)

My take.
Miss Hepburn[/color]

[AudreyGrace]

I feel that tolerance is acknowledging that others may have opposing opinions and ideas about things, and that we have to respect their choice to have them while holding to our own beliefs and showing them the truth. For example, tolerance is not being okay with having a friend who is living a homosexual life style. Tolerance is understanding that they have chosen that life for right now, telling them your stance on the issue, and offering direction towards the truth. Tolerance is not full acceptance, and that's where I think most people go wrong.