[This piece was first delivered as a sermon during the season of Lent.]

I am not a pastor, but when I’m asked to be part of a sermon series in my local congregation, I accept if at all possible, because preparation and participation in the process makes me more attentive than I might otherwise be to the time of church year. The luxury of ‘the occasional assignment’ means that I know about this particular service months in advance, and am given guidance by the pastoral staff for preparation. So, here we are in the season of Lent, highlighting a cruciform life, described in our preparatory material as “how God is shaping us and guiding us as we walk in the Way of Christ.” The means to examining these ‘shapes of Lent’ is to focus on Christian virtues, each of which “shapes us to share the pain and puzzlement of the world so that the crucified love of God in Christ may heal at those places.” I like that description of these matters; it would be easy enough to talk about virtues, good habits and practices, and even character without explicit consideration of the ongoing work of God in our lives and church, but this entire series is framed otherwise. It is predicated on dependence on God for our practice of virtue. Christians aren’t the only people who think about virtue, and seek to practice the good, of course not, but the entire enterprise for Christians is a bit different, in my view.

I’m in the middle of teaching a course on theological ethics these days; on the front page of the syllabus, as a reminder, mostly to myself, but also to the class participants, I include the following quotation:

To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda
nor even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery.
It means to live in such a way that one’s life would
not make sense if God did not exist.   Cardinal Suhard

I hope this sermon doesn’t make any sense if God did not exist (hopefully, it’s not incoherent on other grounds). At any rate, in taking up my assignment, I want to think about the Lenten shape of tolerance. So, let me begin with my sermon in a sentence, my thesis: Tolerance is a virtue, but it’s not a panacea.

Following the shape of the sermon series itself, I want to begin our consideration of tolerance by talking about God. To do that helps me to resist the temptation to talk about tolerance in a generic sense, a kind of ‘tolerance in general.’ Instead, I’d like to try to understand it as a dimension of the Christian life, believing along with you that God gives us gifts that transform us; the nerve center, as it were, of Christian practice isn’t down to human capacity in isolation. Rather, it is God’s grace, God’s gift to us that makes possible our love for God and neighbor. Here the Scripture reading of the day, Romans 5:1-11, is helpful. Even though it doesn’t address the nature of tolerance explicitly, it includes a dynamic truth to which I want to pay attention. Romans 5:1-11 is a wonderful, deeply encouraging passage, describing as it does so many things for which I long, as I’m sure you do too; for example, peace with God, access to grace, hope that does not disappoint, “God’s love poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us;” in our weakness, Christ died for us, and all of these spiritual realities making possible true reconciliation. It’s perhaps obvious, but bears repeating, as we do in our shared worship, that all of this is the gift of the Trinitarian God – thanks be to God.

Further, notice with me that in the middle of the description of these gifts of God, we are confronted with a call to the development of character. The sequence, if that’s what it is, goes like this: there is suffering, which produces endurance, which produces character, which in its turn results in hope. Suffering, endurance, character, hope; these terms can be understood as practices or actions, but not only that; there’s also the notion of disposition, a certain kind of character. I think what we see here, namely, a description of Christian practices and dispositions embedded within the truth and reality of the way God works in the world and in us – that way of construing the matter appears a number of times in the writings of St. Paul; let me briefly mention a couple samples.  First, Galatians 5:16-26, which you’ll recognize as the “Fruit of the Spirit” passage, includes long lists of works of the Spirit and works of the flesh. Of course all of those ‘works’ can be examined generically, lifted out of Paul’s chapter, and treated independently from what he says about them. But, these polarized lists of practices both good and bad are framed by and embedded within a theological discussion of what it means and what it does not mean to live in the Spirit, as part of a life of those who belong to Christ Jesus, through whom even our desires are cruciformly shaped and ordered.

Another example of a passage that is similarly structured is found in Ephesians 4:17-5:2. Here we are reminded that the old and new life should be visibly distinct and Paul calls Christians to exchange one (old) for the other (new). Again, all this is understood as being made possible by the work of God in Christ through the Holy Spirit. The pattern I’m seeking to bring to view is that we are called to give up or resist certain kinds of practices and dispositions, and also called to embrace others. What’s interesting to me is that, if I’m right, if there is such an identifiable ‘pattern,’ then the lists of the good and the bad or old and new aren’t the same in these and other Pauline material. That is, we aren’t given comprehensive lists of vices and virtues; rather, these are sample lists. Whatever virtues we are called to receive and cultivate are given their shape by God’s love which is poured out on us, and the possibility of abandoning vices is also made possible by God’s love. Not only that, our capacity to exercise virtues is granted to us as a gift of grace in which we are called to participate.¹ 

Tolerance as a Christian Practice and Disposition

So, if those lists of practices aren’t comprehensive, or given to us in order of importance, it makes sense to me that there are times that we’ll emphasize one or another of them, and that it’s legitimate to consider some other practices as important, even if they don’t make it onto these kinds of lists. It’s my observation that tolerance is one of those things, a practice that can have a cruciform shape, and can be practiced because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts. This despite the fact that tolerance itself doesn’t really have much of a profile in the Bible. When it is referred to, it often includes a negative warning, as in, don’t tolerate sin. And, as my colleague Harry Huebner reminds me, God is not tolerant, God is love.

Nonetheless, might it be the case that in our time, tolerance is important, given the pluralistic situation in which we find ourselves? I think so; in fact, there are those who argue that we are in a time which is a heyday for tolerance. We need a lot of it these days, given factors such as globalization, pluralism, refugee movements and so on.

Indeed, many people tout tolerance as a good thing, but we should also acknowledge that tolerance lives under clouds of suspicion. Ogden Nash, a poet who is pretty good at using only a few words to say quite a bit, illustrates this suspicion nicely:

Sometimes with secret pride I sigh
To think how tolerant I am;
Then wonder which is really mine:
Tolerance or a rubber spine?

Fair question. Sometimes, tolerance is understood as a practice, a stance that is marked by indifference and even resentment, certainly not something virtuous. It’s easy to see how blithe indifference can quickly melt into vile acceptance, of ‘whatever’. At its worst, perhaps tolerance is just “traitorous moral flabbiness,” that it is just too condescending. Tolerance, say its critics, is complicit in the worst devices of liberal societies encouraging a passive aggressive politics, a self-deceived paternalism that in fact betrays our commitment to the equal dignity of all. Tolerance must be overcome; the conditions that demand its exercise must be escaped. After all, so goes the argument, the tolerant do not want to restrain their outrage and the tolerated would prefer just to be accepted. Let’s just admit that it’s difficult to accept something if you disapprove of it at the same time.

Since it’s the season of Lent, perhaps you’ll allow me a bit of confession. I’ve been one of those who has looked askance at tolerance, seeing it as moral flabbiness and motivated by the incoherent notion that it can be practiced consistently; I assumed it was a vice in disguise, that practices of forbearance, patience and so on are much better suited to the job. But, then I read John Bowlin’s book, Tolerance Among the Virtues, which forced me to change my view. (I hate it when that happens: you have a perfectly satisfactory, useable, long-term view of something, and then you read something and realize that you were misguided, and really should change your position. And that, my friends, is why you should not read).

Bowlin’s argument is that tolerance isn’t just a symptom of modern moral collapse into indifference, its ills are a variation on modernity’s own sicknesses. Rather, he argues, what is needed is the recognition that tolerance can and should be cultivated as part of the pursuit of justice in our day – and to do that, it needs to be rehabilitated as a virtue, a habitual perfection of act and attitude, not just an act or even series of acts. Another way of putting this might be to say that what is needed is not merely tolerant acts displayed here and there. Rather, what is needed in our day is tolerant persons, who practice patient endurance. As he puts it, “What’s needed (instead) are persons who are attentive to (these) circumstances, who have identified differences and disagreements that disrupt their political communities and social relationships, and who are disposed by habit to offer right responses in reply.”

Seen this way, toleration is distinct from indifference. We are tolerant when we disapprove but refrain from imposition of our views. So, a necessary condition of tolerance is the presence of disapproval or hostility; to cease to care about the differences that divide us is not to be tolerant.

To add a specifically religious dimension: “Genuine religious toleration is achieved when people hold their religion as so important, so absolute, that to part from it is to die, and yet at the same time realise from their absolute center of being that another person’s values and beliefs are just as important and just as real.” If that’s true, then a tolerant person is one of deep and abiding beliefs, to the point, it must be said, that the practice of this virtue becomes the potential source of suffering and pain.  Former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey claims: “That (suffering) is the moment of genuine tolerance, because there is a cost involved in the act of tolerating another person’s way of living and believing. The pain involved is not only in preserving inviolate one’s own convictions, but in enduring the reality of other people’s and, while deeply disagreeing, respecting them, with the consequent sharing of their pain as well as one’s own.” You will have noticed a similar dynamic at work in the Romans 5 passage, namely that the endurance of suffering can turn into part of the generation of character in the one who embraces the present reality of God’s love, that sure sign of the presence of the divine, made real by the presence of the Holy Spirit.

All this to say that Christian tolerance understood and practiced as a virtue, is no easy-going, live-and-let-live blithe indifference toward those with whom we disagree; it’s not a vice in disguise. So, if we as Christians want to practice tolerance, we should cultivate it as a virtue, as part of our character, as a way of expressing deeply-held beliefs, as an expression of our life of faith, all of which is rendered as possible through the ongoing work of God in our lives.

And yet, I do want to bring to our attention a kind of chastening dimension to the current retrieval of tolerance as a Christian virtue. Basically, without denigrating the positive constructive role of Christian tolerance, I think it important to recognize that tolerance alone is not a panacea; tolerance is not meant to be practiced in isolation, nor is it foundational to Christian discipleship, neither should we understand it as the height, the apotheosis of Christian practice. It’s potentially a good for our time, but it has its limits, and so needs the addition of other Christian goods, virtues, and practices. The reason I want to mention this is because there is a tendency even among the virtues to vie for dominance, for attention, for pride of place. Put another way, virtues carry within themselves their own imperialistic tendencies; one or another of them seeks to take over. This is evident, for example, in many discussions in which one writer or another tries to make an argument for this or that virtue as being the most important one, the one that ties all of the others together, etc. I don’t have time to develop this further (turns out ending the sermon on time is also considered virtuous around here). But let me just point out, that even in the Romans passage, the reality of reconciliation comes to our attention after the mention of endurance, character and the like. Tolerance is a good, but it cannot finally carry the load of Christian faithfulness by itself into much-needed and deeply-desired relationships of reconciliation and love, for example.

One more caution concerning our embrace of virtuous tolerance. In my view, we ought to be alert to the dynamics of power in the exercise of tolerance. Many of us live lives which carry considerable power by dint of our training, economic prosperity, social location, gender in some cases. Perhaps tolerance exercised by powerful people has its unintended consequences of entrenching things just the way they are. Vincent Lloyd, a black American scholar, poses the poignant question: What would it mean to draw on Christian resources while refusing the identification of Christianity with state power or with worldly authority more generally (including patriarchy)? That is, what might it mean for Christians to approach toleration from below? Further, what does it mean to practice tolerance in a situation of oppression: can our Christian virtue of tolerance apply to tolerating oppression? Or, what might it mean for us to be in solidarity with those who find themselves in just that state of tolerating oppression? Tolerance, it turns out, is no easy virtue to practice, no simple gift to receive.

To conclude, tolerance understood as a virtue is not an embrace of indifference, it’s not the weary resignation to a minimal standard to which all can concede agreement – it’s not a vice in disguise. Christians should cultivate tolerance given our place in the world, but do so in such a way that simply collapses if God does not exist. Our development of any virtue, any character trait, any disposition finds its capacity, its motivation, and its power of expression, to return to Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, in God’s love which has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us…God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” In the end, God doesn’t tolerate us, God loves us – thanks be to God.

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