Tolerance

Today is our second in our series on sacred cows, where we are trying to deal with a topic that generally most people think is just above reproach. We can't really even talk about it—sort of like apple pie and motherhood statements—you can't even think about them or discuss them, let alone disagree with them. Last week we talked about multiculturalism, and I was delighted to see during the week that members of our congregation were involved in the public discourse around multiculturalism, so that was excellent.

Today I want us to talk about tolerance. In our world today, we could do with a bit more tolerance. When you look out onto a world that's ravaged by war and political oppression, where you have in some places suicide bombings, where you have racial and religious hatred, we could do with a bit more tolerance. We were reminded a few weeks ago of the death in custody of the commander who oversaw the genocide in Bosnia, the former Yugoslavia. We were reminded a week or two ago of 9/11, where planes flew into buildings—it's pretty intolerant to do something like that. When you see oppression by governments in China and Burma and Myanmar, political prisoners in Russia like the opposition leader Navalny who died in custody, in Pakistan Imran Khan, the former cricketer, when you see drone attacks in Kiev, when you see in the Middle East the leveling of Gaza, the attacks in Bondi a year or so ago, we could do with some more tolerance in our world. Survey the past 100 years that saw Pol Pot's killing fields, Stalin's death camps, the rise of the Nazis and the fascists—a bit more tolerance would go a long way. And even now, we're starting to see political polarization around the world and around Western democracies.

So today's sacred cow is tolerance, and it is a key value for Western democracy. It's a tricky word because it's not a word you can find in the Bible. You can't look it up; you can't look up all the times tolerance comes up in the Bible because the word's just not there. In fact, of all the sacred cows that we're thinking about, none of them—you're not going to find those words in the Bible, so we need to think a little bit about them.

If you want a dictionary definition of tolerance, you would get expressions like this: tolerance means to be allowed to exist, to permit without hindrance, the disposition to be patient or fair towards those whose opinions are not your own. You might also see tolerance used to describe, say, a therapeutic drug, and as you take the drug you build up a tolerance towards it. Or in engineering, tolerance is the distance between two moving surfaces—if there's no tolerance, the surfaces won't move against each other, and if there's too much tolerance, well, there's vibration and wear and things like that. So tolerance becomes a term that's used in engineering, but we're talking about personal and public tolerance today.

A couple of thoughts on this:

First, you never tolerate things you agree with. Because you agree with them, you don't have to tolerate them; if you agree with them, there's no need for toleration. Most school students—those school students who have uniforms—most of them tolerate their uniforms. They don't love it. If a teenager goes shopping with their mom for clothes, the teenager doesn't say, "Hey mom, can I have another school uniform?" They don't usually do that; they just tolerate it. When I worked in a hospital, I had a uniform to wear. I didn't love it. If I went out to a party, I wouldn't wear my uniform out, unless it was a fancy dress party, of course. Uniforms are great—they've got lots of utility because you don't have to decide what to wear when you wake up in the morning. You wake up and say, "Will I wear the green trousers, or will I wear the green trousers? I think I'll wear the green trousers." There's a lot of use to them, and tolerating something is not the same as agreeing with it. When my parents were around, they would listen to AM commercial talkback radio. I didn't like it, I didn't agree with it, I thought it was simplistic, I thought it was partisan, but I put up with it because of my mom and dad. My mom and dad are important to me, therefore I'll put up with something, I'll tolerate it. I don't want to have an argument with them about it—it's just not that important. And I disagree with my friends on all sorts of issues, but I'll tolerate the issues because they're my friends, and life would be very boring if everyone just agreed with me. It's good that we have different views on certain things.

Second, you don't tolerate the things you like and approve of. So Glenn Crichton is my friend; I don't tolerate him—he's my friend, I don't need to tolerate him, I like him. I like eating seafood; I don't tolerate it, I like it. Rockmelon I tolerate—I can do it, but I don't really like it.

Thirdly, tolerance is not saying that all views are the same. For example, Hinduism teaches that there are millions of gods; Judaism teaches that there is one God. It's logically possible that Hinduism is right, it's logically possible that Judaism is right, it's logically possible they could both be wrong, but they can't logically both be right because they're saying something very different. So tolerance is not saying that all views are the same.

Fourthly, tolerance requires some sort of judgment—you have to make a judgment about what you're going to be tolerant of and what you're going to be intolerant of. There is a saying you might have heard: "The standard you walk by is the standard you accept." So what is the standard you're going to walk by, the standard that you will accept? That quote, "The standard you walk by is the standard you accept," was made famous by a former leader of the Australian Defence Force, and he was talking about unacceptable behavior in the ADF. He was saying that there is a standard that we're not prepared to walk by—we are intolerant of this. You might even see that in shopping centers and things like that: "We will not tolerate our staff being spoken to this way." There are some things to be tolerant of and some things intolerant of, and you have to make a judgment about that.

When I was at school, the school leaders decided that they were not going to be tolerant of untucked shirts. They used the phrase, "The standard you walk by is the standard you accept," to refer to something, relative to a world scale, as very banal as tucked shirts or untucked shirts. What are you going to tolerate, and what are you not going to tolerate? See, tolerance is tricky because it's not a universal good—it's not actually a virtue. Virtues are morally correct no matter what—courage is always right, love is always right. But tolerance is different—its value depends on the context. Some things it's right to tolerate, and some things it's not right to tolerate; it's not right no matter what.

I used to teach in a program, and the way educators work is they have a whole lot of learner profiles: "This is what we want the students to be." And one of the qualities was tolerance, and that's a good thing, isn't it? We want students to be tolerant. I've never—they could have done this—but I've never had a student say, "Well yeah, I did cheat in that exam, but you're supposed to be tolerant," or "I did plagiarize that essay, but hang on, isn't tolerance one of the values that you stand for?" I've never had a student argue that, but they could have, couldn't they? Tolerance is not a self-evident good; it's not a virtue, it's a value that we can hold.

And in the current scandal with one of the Big Four accounting firms, a group of people have said, "We will not tolerate this behavior; it's reached a threshold." I tolerate swearing—I try not to tolerate it in myself, but in other people I tolerate swearing; it just doesn't mean much to me. I was in a pub a few years ago to watch the rugby, and there were three or four men at a table next to me doing a very loud running commentary on a high-profile defamation case between two Hollywood actors, husband and wife. And the things that they were saying about the woman involved were crude and vulgar and misogynistic and revolting, and I said to them, "You can't say that." And we had a somewhat heated exchange because I said, "That's a standard I'm not going to walk past; I'm tolerant of swearing, I'm not tolerant of that sort of talk."

And the difficulty with tolerance is it's actually a neutral quality—it works on that sort of sliding scale. See, if there was someone I didn't like and I decided to shoot them, would that be intolerant? Yeah, it would be intolerant. What if I decided to put them into prison? Yes, that would be intolerant. What if I fought with them, or what if I spoke against them, or I disagreed with them, would that be intolerant? What if I just thought about not liking them? You see, sometimes it's right and sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's right to be intolerant, and sometimes it's right to be tolerant—we need to find a place for disagreement.

Well, why should we be tolerant?

Well, firstly, because God is tolerant. The Bible says in Joel chapter 2:12, God is slow to anger. Even though God should be angry at the things we've done to His world—the world He's given us—He ought to be angry at the damage we've done to our lives and the lives of people around us, He's tolerant. Romans 1:24 says that God, rather than act in judgment on people, actually lets people have the consequences of their choices: you choose to go your own way, He'll let you do that—He's tolerant. Acts 17:30 says He even overlooks our attempts to ignore Him; in the past God overlooked these things—God is profoundly tolerant. So we should be tolerant because God is tolerant.

Second, we are to be like God. The second reading, Luke 6:27–36: be perfect like your heavenly Father is perfect. Your heavenly Father causes the sun to shine on the evil and the good; He sends His rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. God makes no distinction, nor should you. God is spoken of as someone who loves His enemies—very rarely will someone die for a good man, though for a good man someone might possibly die, but Jesus dies for us when we are His enemies, and Jesus Himself says we need to love our enemies. We are to be like Him, loving our enemies.

Thirdly, we should be tolerant because we are not like God. We're too selfish to not be tolerant. Jesus says again in Matthew chapter 7, "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' while all the time there is a plank in your own? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you'll see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye." Jesus with His absurd humor says, "How can you take the speck out of someone else's eye when you've got a big log in your own eye?" And we find such minute problems with other people, and yet ignore our own problems. Some issues are just not important, and we've got to be careful that we don't pass judgment on people because of the things that God says are irrelevant. There are things that are just irrelevancies, and we need to be tolerant of these things and not judge people for them. I don't like smoking, right—it's addictive, it's a terrible public health disaster, I grew up in a household that was full of smoke, I don't like it, but as far as God's concerned, it's irrelevant. Tattoos—I don't know what you think about tattoos; 50 years ago it was probably just sailors who got tattoos, now everyone's got them. I've got a friend, James, he calls them "tough stickers," which I kind of like, I think that's good. Now, if you want to get a tattoo, if you want to get a tough sticker, that's fine by me, because it's just not a matter of relevancy. Body piercings—if you've got your ear pierced, well, that's irrelevant. If you've got other parts of your body pierced, which I'm kind of not interested in, then it's an irrelevancy. If you're a vegetarian or a pescatarian or an omnivore or a carnivore or whatever, it's an irrelevancy, that's up to you. 50 or 60 years ago in some Christian circles, the wearing of makeup—people were judged because of that; going to the movies sometimes was thought to be a less than Christian thing to do. We've got to stop making non-important issues important.

Fourthly, why be tolerant? Well, because of love. Remember when we looked at James chapter 5 a few weeks ago, remember that very last line James says: "Love covers over a multitude of sins, love bears all things." Or 1 Corinthians 13: "Love is patient, love is kind, does not envy, does not boast, it's not proud, it's not rude, it's not self-seeking, it's not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs." See, the loving person is the tolerant person.

And then lastly, what would you tolerate for the sake of the gospel? What would you personally be prepared to tolerate? What would you tolerate in church? Would you tolerate people who are different to you? When I come to church, I look around and I see, "Oh, there are people who are different to me, so I'll go somewhere else where people are just like me," or would you come and say, "I don't like the music," or "I don't like the choirs," or "I don't like that there is no choir, so I'll just go somewhere else which will suit me, or I'll not go at all," or "I don't like long sermons," or "I don't like short sermons," or "It's too late in the day for me," or "It's too early in the day for me"? So we've become more and more intolerant. Remember the days when there were only four TV stations—well, probably three commercials and the ABC, and depending on your view you may or may not listen to the ABC at all—four TV stations and there was one TV in the house, so if you wanted to watch the TV, it had to be all the family around the one television. And then we had two TVs, so you could choose, but still only four stations. But now we've got multiple TVs and multiple stations, and you can choose whatever you want, and you can watch things online as much as you want, and you can listen to whatever music you want to listen to, and you can listen to it with private headphones as well, so you don't have to put up with anything anybody else wants to do. And we've become more and more individual, and it's become more and more about my choices, and we have become more and more fractured, and we become more and more lonely. You see, you need tolerance so that you just don't end up with you.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your character. We thank You that You are slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love. We thank You that You're profoundly tolerant. We thank You too, in Your wisdom, that You're not tolerant of evil, You're not tolerant of things that are morally wrong. Help us to find the right level of judgment, help us to be loving, help us to find the right level of moral outrage to things that are completely wrong. And please give us the wisdom to know how to navigate life in this world in view of these things. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

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