Is Tolerance a Virtue?

Beware of Appeals to Tolerance

“Free” societies extol the virtue of tolerance. The two concepts of freedom and tolerance are closely related. If people are to be free to be, do, pursue and achieve as they please the rest of the population must extend a permissive tolerance towards them. This would appear to be self-evident.

Yet, it is also self-evident that society cannot continue without a profound intolerance. Without prescribed rules and regulations, laws and institutions of punishment, no society can exist for long. It turns out that tolerance, while having an intuitive appeal, is a problematic idea. Most people espouse it, without much rigour or honesty at all. People like to view themselves as tolerant and “big hearted”. To be accused of intolerance is tantamount to accusing someone of having a sexually transmitted disease. It is one of modern society's nastiest skewers.

We take the view that everyone without exception has to be both tolerant and intolerant. Every single human being approves, approbates, and therefore tolerates something. Equally, every single human being is intolerant of its opposite. Consequently, neither toleration nor intolerance is a virtue. It is the object of tolerance or intolerance that makes it so.

It is standard operating procedure for the Unbeliever to accuse the citizen of Jerusalem of bigoted intolerance. You will not tolerate homosexuals! You are bigoted towards abortion! Your intolerance makes you a hater and a wrecker. We, however, are profoundly tolerant, says the Unbeliever. We welcome all. We may not necessarily agree, but we accept and tolerate. That makes us more human. It means we operate on a higher more positive level of being.

This sort of discourse is nothing more than a lazy dissent into ad hominem name calling. The real and substantial issue remains this: since all human beings are both tolerant and intolerant, what should we be tolerant about and what should we be intolerant towards? And on what basis are such determinations to be made—that is, by what standard are they to be measured?

And, are there different standards of tolerance and intolerance to be applied by different institutions of society? For example, all sins are not crimes. Therefore, the State may tolerate practices that some believe to be profoundly evil and immoral, and which particular individuals and families utterly reject. On the other hand, the State may legitimately be intolerant towards something which other institutions in society find perfectly acceptable—such as immigration, as in whether a member of my extended family should be allowed residency in my new adopted country. What is the basis or standard by which such decisions or differences might be tolerated and promulgated?

When Unbelievers accuse Believers of intolerance they are calling upon their own particular religious beliefs to make the judgment. Nine times out of ten they are failing to take the log out of their own eye. It will turn out that they also are deeply intolerant—just over different things.

Moreover, Believers are often far more open and liberal and tolerant to so many more things than Unbelievers. After all, it is the Scripture itself which teaches that doctrines of "taste not" and "touch not" are demonic. All of creation is good and holy and given by God our Creator as a gift to men. It is often the Unbeliever these days who is the wowser, being deeply intolerant towards certain foods, carbon footprints, types of lightbulbs and so forth. It is the intolerant Unbeliever who says, "No" to nuclear power. Believers view our created world as a wonder to be loved, enjoyed, used, and subdued. Believers celebrate life, food, feasting and the wealth of labour and industry. It is the Unbeliever in our day who has become the nagging and querulous wowser.

We are always amused by people who proclaim that they are Liberal. Usually this claim is made with a degree of self-satisfaction or pride. It turns out that there are only two kinds of Liberals: those who believe everyone else should be like them, and those who believe that no-one else need or ought to be like them. If the former, a malodorous bigotry, intolerance and illiberality are always present. If the latter kind, they are irrelevant to any discussion whatsoever.

However empty arguments over tolerance or intolerance might be, we should never lose sight of the emotive power of appeals to tolerance. Unbelievers will continue to hurl the accusation of intolerance against the Church and citizens of Jerusalem. We need to be acutely aware that in an age where government-run humanist education dominates; where, consequently; educational standards are falling steadily; and where over thirty percent of the adult population is now functionally illiterate, fewer and fewer people are able to think critically and rationally. Therefore irrelevant and emotional appeals to tolerance will be increasingly powerful to the lazy or easily led, regardless of their irrelevance or dissembling nature.

To be forewarned is to be forearmed.