Tolerance
So a Bill against incitement to religious hatred is struggling its way through Parliament. I’d better declare my personal bias on this at the outset! I consider it to be a perilously bad proposal. Emotions or attitudes like ‘hatred’ are not legal matters; they are too private, too liable to manipulation, too intangible. Law is concerned with actions, and care for the victims of unjust behaviour.
Some of the difficulty lies in the fact that in our culture the moral ideal of love for one’s neighbour is now replaced by a vague notion of tolerance based on the belief that everybody’s personal convictions are above criticism. Of course we have to draw the line somewhere, but it is a little curious, surely, that the more important the conviction the less it is subject to criticism.
Obviously religion is at the heart of all this, and biblical religion especially. Belief in only one God excludes all others, and therefore is open to the charge of being intolerant. It further implies that there is a standard of truth and falsehood against which all claims must be judged. It was this that made those early Christians who said ‘Jesus is Lord’, refuse to say ‘Caesar is Lord,’ and died for it. But it also made them people of moral principle who eventually became indispensable to the pagan world.
The odd thing is, that in the modern world, the ideal of tolerance is most freely exercised where historically biblical Christianity has been most dominant! It is, I think, because the New Testament demands its own kind of tolerance. The very origin of the word gives a clue: it comes from a word meaning ‘to bear a burden.’ Christian tolerance is not a shrug of the shoulders; it is actively caring for our opponents. We are obliged to ‘respect everybody’ - even those who accuse us of being intolerant! That’s why Christian relief work serves people of every religion, even where its workers may be discriminated against. But there is more.
The earliest name for Christians was ‘disciples’ - learners. We can learn from our opponents - even the worst of them is made in God’s image, and cannot exist without some fragment of God’s truth, distorted by unbelief.
Since faith is where truth is at home, Christians, uniquely, if they are willing, can learn from anybody.
Sadly, we have too often treated the opposition with aggression or indifference. But in a world where the cult of tolerance only too often becomes oppressive, we need to take up our cross and join with the meek, who, Jesus said, will inherit the earth.
John Peck