How should our tolerance be?

WE are supposed to be tolerant of everyone, whoever they are and however their views and positions may be toward ours. If we go by the teaching of Christ, we are even commanded to love our enemies. That’s how our tolerance should be. But should our tolerance be an anything-goes, free-for-all kind of affair?

            I suppose not. Common sense will readily tell us that such understanding of tolerance would be harmful and destructive to everyone. It will just lead to anarchy. It will put everything proper to us in ruins—our dignity, our respect for one another, our harmony, our communication, etc.

            We need to look at Christ, we need to be vitally united to him to arrive at the proper understanding of Christian tolerance. It’s only in him that we would know how to blend charity and truth, mercy and justice, and other values that seem compete and to be in conflict with each other.

            A cursory review of the life, words and deeds of Christ can somehow tell us that he was both the strictest and the most lenient of masters. Remember those words of his which sounded very harsh.

            “If your right eye scandalizes you, pluck it out and cast it from you…If your right hand scandalizes you, cut it off, and cast it from you…” (Mt 5,29-30) Even if to be taken figuratively, these words can strike terror to anyone.

            More, he said, “Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you.” (Lk 6,27) And still another one: “He who loves father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me…He who does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.” (Mt 10,36)

            Hard words, to say the least! But they have to be taken with other sets of words that speak of tenderness, compassion, empathy.  Like when Peter asked Christ: “Lord, how often shall my brother offend against me, and I forgive him? Seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I say not till seven times, but till seventy times seven times.’” (Mt 18,21-22)

            The mystery of God and of his love for all of us, a mystery that overwhelms our human schemas, can only be reflected in our lives, as it should since we are his image and likeness and children of his, if we are in living union with him.

            This union, this identification of ours with God is not and should not be an abstract reality. It is not just a gratuitous human invention and desire, since it is first of all God’s will for us. He has created us and designed us in such a way that we can live our life always with him.

            On God’s part, he does everything to make that identification with us on-going, even to the extent of not only dying on the Cross for us but also of making himself available to us as food in the Holy Eucharist.

            It’s on our part that we need to be very concerned about, because we tend to ignore this tremendous, radical truth about ourselves. We need to enliven our faith, hope and charity to conform ourselves to this reality.

            That’s why we need to pause regularly and meditate on the life and words of Christ to at least have some good and working idea of how we should be in our relation to him and to others, and especially in developing and living that tolerance proper to us with respect to others.

            Very often, without this union with Christ, without his light, and when we are guided only by our own estimation of things, we either fall short or go beyond what Christian tolerance is.

            We keep quiet when we are supposed to speak, or we blurt out things when it would have been much better to remain silent. Sometimes, we are in doubt as to what to do, or we get blinded by our passion and start to do things mindlessly and indiscriminately.

            We have to understand though that to achieve Christian tolerance through our vital union with Christ can only be achieved if we study the doctrine of our faith thoroughly, knowing how the morals organically flow our faith.

            Then we need to develop the appropriate virtues—prudence, patience, fortitude, humility, etc. We also need to avail ourselves of the sacraments so that the flow of grace from God to us can always take place.

            The most important is that we identify ourselves with Christ on the cross, when we are eager to suffer with Christ. It’s the cross that gets the act together!