Jesus’ Case for Tolerance in His Counsel of Perfection

“Small is the gate and narrow the way that leads to life,” says Jesus.

What is this life that is so difficult for man to achieve? A crucial clue is given when elsewhere He says: “ I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Life is found only when, aided by God’s grace, one is resolved on treading the very way of life, namely the lifeway of Jesus. This abundant life actually comes about as man’s resurrection to a new life (though fully realizable only in the hereafter), one of love of God and neighbor.

If it seems rather cryptic, it should not. It is an invitation to follow Jesus, to imitate Him and His ways. Jesus knows that man is preeminently a mimetic or imitative creature, and advises us accordingly. He wants to lead the way for us for our own good, beginning with His (i.e., God’s) kenotic Incarnation, through His Passion, and capping it with His Resurrection and Ascension. That is His invitation for us into fellowship with, and the kenotic life of, the Trinity.

Saint Paul said that without Jesus’ Resurrection all our strivings would be in vain. But do we truly realize what it implies for us? First off, that also our resurrection has to be preceded by our death to the old ways of self-love and fear. And then, that we are called to embody agape, or “perfect love that casts out fear” (1 John 4:18). That is why Jesus says: “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends,” and, “This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.”  

Now this way in truly narrow; navigating it resembles traversing a precipitous mountain ridge from which one can easily fall into either an abyss of hatred or that of indifference.

Our fall could be easily precipitated by our being scandalized by our neighbor, or his or her behavior as appearing in our scandal-prone eyes – that is the way of anger, resentment and hatred, one easily entered upon by those of us who ostensibly care about the wellbeing of our community. We are often scandalized by what we perceive as a threat to our community’s traditional, good ole ways, no matter how uncharitable or even outright violent they might be.

Indifference on the other hand is often bred in and by a climate of ostensible respect for another’s individual rights and freedoms. Sure enough we tend not to see or to overlook somebody’s desperate situation as long as we are able to self-righteously judge that he or she is the one to blame for their predicament, and that no identifiable worldly power has doubled down on them to cause it. We tend to overlook the systemic injustice potentially causing or contributing to it.

But neither attitude has anything to do with love. Christ’s love sees everybody as one’s neighbor. What else would His words: ”love your enemies, do good to those who hate you; and pray for those who persecute you;” then mean? He continues: “in order that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.” This He places in the context of His characterization of the Father’s benevolent attitude toward all creation: “for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”

That actually is also Jesus’ counsel of perfection for us: “you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” meaning: the description of the Father’s tolerance of the evil and the unrighteous on this earth of ours is to be our guiding light while we subsist here. This must be our bedrock and point of departure for things greater than tolerance itself, for actions of charity towards both friend and enemy, whenever God’s grace enables us in our initial prayerful disposition to be a vehicle of His love.

Tolerance is bearing (with) somebody even if our differences, or our ingrained attitudes toward them, tend to make it a difficult task. It is never about denying or glossing over them, but on the other hand there is also nothing to prevent us from mutually appreciating or even celebrating our differences, of course depending on their nature. We may also feel like engaging our neighbor in discussion or even expostulating with him or her. But in a climate of genuine tolerance our strong adherence to the core tenets of our beliefs will never turn into an imperative to forcefully proselytize them. What tolerance truly throws into stark relief is that winning someone over can only be accomplished on the strength of one’s example, of how faithfully we embody what we preach.

Tolerance is not indifference, where any pain of an encounter with another is avoided as a default position, possibly by immediately giving him or her a wide berth. Of course being able to be “systemically” separated from one’s neighbors is an even more preferable solution for someone with such an attitude. But if, as it often happens, that “solution” is not feasible on a given occasion, one easily falls back on resentment or hatred towards the intruding other. Whereas for one not motivated as a rule by indifference but rather by tolerance, he or she might still choose to keep away from one’s neighbor, but only if the encounter was judged to be potentially fraught with a possibility of a conflict that might erupt into violence, including – or maybe especially – on one’s own part. In such circumstances staying away might actually be an exercise of a humility aware of one’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities, aware of lacking the solid foundation of love that springs from truly modeling Jesus.

Tolerance, as stated above, is a point of departure, a resting area if you will, for acts of love – if you are blessed with enough loving energy to engage in them, which for the Christian should always be a desired option, one prayed for. Without this love it may easily show its inherent limits and attendant dangers, as pointed, e.g., by Karl Popper when he spoke of its paradoxical nature and demanded that in the name of tolerance we should claim the right not to tolerate the intolerant, actually for the sake of fostering a tolerant society. 

To even stand a chance of overcoming this mimetic, scandal-producing trap one would have to exercise heroic love; heroic also by virtue of its being strictly the responsibility and task of those who would choose it of their own volition. And in a society under threat or attack (by terrorists, demagogues, etc.) or in moral decline, all the more so, denying oneself easy recourse to accusing or recriminating anybody, even those whose position might be seen as stemming from base motivations, not to mention those who might be falling away, e.g., out of fear. Bearing heroic witness to tolerance in order to be credible as a bearer of Christ’s love and that of His Father is the name of the game here.

On the other hand it is indifference that is taken by many thinkers to be the true opposite of love, especially in our age, replacing hatred in this capacity. Indifference will not be disturbed in its solipsistic egotism, not by any moral strictures that love might be felt as imposing. It is a modern malady that tends to supplement and on many occasions to successfully replace man’s violence-laden hatred. And because of the latter ability, it is unwittingly treated by many Christians as an improvement over the hatred of old. But what is important here is that it represents a falling short of the perfection Jesus wants us all to aspire to, that of love of all, just as His and our Father does love us all, tolerating our earthly foibles and iniquities. There is always hope as long as we live, for there is time to repent, to mend our ways. There is always time to love.