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April 23, 2004
Religious Tolerance, Brad
Filed under: Hot Topic
According to religioustolerance.org, religious tolerance is defined as "to extend religious freedom to people of all religions, even though you disagree with their beliefs and/or practices."
The dictionary defines tolerance as:
The capacity for or the practice of recognizing and respecting the beliefs or practices of others.
Leeway for variation from a standard.
The permissible deviation from a specified value of a structural dimension, often expressed as a percent.
For the purposes of this topic, I will assume the word "religious" means a spiritual belief structure.
In her essay, "The Origin of Religious Tolerance: Voltaire," Wendy McElroy highlights some key concepts of the correlation between money/commerce and religious tolerance. I highlight a few here...
"In the most famous passage from Philosophical Letters, Voltaire observed, 'Go into the Exchange in London, that place more venerable than many a court, and you will see representatives of all the nations assembled there for the profit of mankind. There the Jew, the Mahometan, and the Christian deal with one another as if they were of the same religion, and reserve the name of infidel for those who go bankrupt.'"
"Commerce, or shop keeping, established an arena within which people dealt with each other solely for economic benefit and, so, ignored extraneous factors such as the other party's religious practices. On the floor of the London stock exchange, religious differences disappeared into background noise as people scrambled to make a profit from each other. The economic self-interest of the Christian and the Jew outweighed the prejudice that might otherwise sour personal relations between them. They intersected and co-operated on a point of common interest: 'the Presbyterian trusts the Anabaptist, and the Church of England man accepts the promise of the Quaker.'"
"If there were only one religion in England, there would be danger of tyranny; if there were two, they would cut each other's throats; but there are thirty, and they live happily together in peace."
Should we show tolerance toward other world religions?
The Apostle Paul, in 2 Corinthians 11:16-28a, perhaps not even realizing what he is doing, attempts to explain his position on religious tolerance. He comes at it from a unique perspective. Instead of focusing on the "it" to be tolerated, he holds other belief systems up to the truth of his own realities. May I be so bold as to conclude that Paul assumes all should have a belief system, and that there is an ultimate truth of which he defends for, thus eliminating the need for tolerance. If Paul was tolerant, he probably would not have said what he says here:
"Let me come back to where I started--and don't hold it against me if I continue to sound a little foolish. Or if you'd rather, just accept that I am a fool and let me rant on a little. I didn't learn this kind of talk from Christ. Oh, no, it's a bad habit I picked up from the three-ring preachers that are so popular these days. Since you sit there in the judgment seat observing all these shenanigans, you can afford to humor an occasional fool who happens along. You have such admirable tolerance for impostors who rob your freedom, rip you off, steal you blind, put you down--even slap your face! I shouldn't admit it to you, but our stomachs aren't strong enough to tolerate that kind of stuff. Since you admire the egomaniacs of the pulpit so much (remember, this is your old friend, the fool, talking), let me try my hand at it. Do they brag of being Hebrews, Israelites, the pure race of Abraham? I'm their match. Are they servants of Christ? I can go them one better. (I can't believe I'm saying these things. It's crazy to talk this way! But I started, and I'm going to finish.) I've worked much harder, been jailed more often, beaten up more times than I can count, and at death's door time after time. I've been flogged five times with the Jews' thirty-nine lashes, beaten by Roman rods three times, pummeled with rocks once. I've been shipwrecked three times, and immersed in the open sea for a night and a day. In hard traveling year in and year out, I've had to ford rivers, fend off robbers, struggle with friends, struggle with foes. I've been at risk in the city, at risk in the country, endangered by desert sun and sea storm, and betrayed by those I thought were my brothers. I've known drudgery and hard labor, many a long and lonely night without sleep, many a missed meal, blasted by the cold, naked to the weather. And that's not the half of it..."
Paul is saying look, I don't care what other people are saying about their belief system because what I believe snuffs any light other beliefs might have. Paul's contention for his faith is evidenced by its validity to stand up against another.
Looking at the last definition of tolerance from above - "The permissible deviation from a specified value of a structural dimension, often expressed as a percent" - it seems clear that tolerance is also a half-hearted way of looking at things. If you deviate from your own beliefs to accept part or parts of another, your own belief structure is weakened.
Perhaps Jesus' silence on the subject of tolerance is drowned out by his second greatest commandment to "Love your neighbor as yourself. (Matthew 22:39)" Love trumps tolerance any day. If I tolerate my wife doing something I do not agree with, where is the love? Love invades the space of disagreement. She will know the thing I do not agree with stands, but that my love for her doesn't let that get in the way. In the same way, Jesus does not frame the other religions of the world in a context for tolerance or acceptance, the same way he doesn't condone sin ("hate the sin, not the sinner").
Conclusions
I find no precedent or benefit to tolerance. If tolerance is accepted, ultimate truth is irrelevant because we all believe that what the other believes may also be true, thus diminishing any ultimate truth. Do I believe that I know the ultimate truth? Of course, as do most others. The question is, which truth holds up? The danger in fighting for tolerance is that we are really fighting for watered down truth. If tolerance is a band-aid for peace, truth is the wound really bleeding.
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