The ideal has to be surrounded by a fringe of tolerance, but that doesn't mean you sacrifice the ideal.
U.S.—The party known for being loving and tolerant of everyone also wished for the death of their political opponent this week, with many Democrats on social media erupting in celebration as Senator Rand Paul announced he had tested positive for the coronavirus. "Love everyone, unless they are on the other side of the aisle from you, then may they die a horrible death," said vocal progressive activist Squish McGee. "We are all about loving people who are different from ourselves, as long as they think exactly the same. It's all about love, bro. Also, I hope you die if you think slightly differently." Nancy Pelosi's daughter, Christine Pelosi, tweeted, "Rand Paul's neighbor was right," referring to an incident where Paul's neighbor had brutally assaulted him, once again showing what good Catholics the Pelosis are. "We don't hate anyone," Christine Pelosi said. "We're good Catholics, and we aren't allowed to hate. That's just science." "And apropos of nothing, I wish Rand had been beaten to death, and I hope the coronavirus finishes the job Paul's neighbor started," she added. "Also, how dare you."
The word tolerance is also invoked as though it overrules everything else. Tolerance may be a virtue, but it is not the commanding one.
I never cared: - I never cared if you were "gay," until you started shoving it in my face, and the faces of our children. - I never cared what color you were, until you started blaming my race for your problems. - I never cared about your political affiliation, until you started to condemn me for mine. - I never cared where you were born, until you wanted to erase my history and blame my ancestors for your current problems. - I never cared if you were well off or poor, until you said you were discriminated against when I was promoted because I worked harder. - I never cared if your beliefs were different from mine, until you said my beliefs were wrong. Now I care! My patience and tolerance are gone.
A permissive parent, an indulgent friend, a fearful Church leader are in reality more concerned about themselves than the welfare and happiness of those they could help. Yes, the call to repentance is at times regarded as intolerant or offensive and may even be resented, but guided by the Spirit, it is in reality an act of genuine caring.
"that the people of the book (that is Christians and Jews who have revealed scriptures) should be spared as long as they pay tribute and acknowledge their position as second class citizens."
When the dialogue between Christ and the woman from Canaan was read recently in a religion class at Brigham Young University, a number of the students were uneasy with the account of Christ’s behavior (see Matthew 15:21–28). A number of attempts were made to excuse or justify it. One student suggested that in calling the Gentiles “dogs,” Christ was really using a term of endearment. Such an explanation does not fit well in the context of the story. Finally a young woman expressed the thought that troubled many of her classmates; with tears in her eyes, she exclaimed, “But Jesus was so unchristian!"
You may be interested to know that the word “tolerance” traces back to merry old England at a time when they were experimenting with drugs and poison. The idea was to see how much they could administer to a person without killing him. Your level of “tolerance” was measured by the amount of poison you could endure before it killed you.
When I was a young man, tolerance meant that we treated those with whom we disagreed with civility. It did not mean that we were obligated to accept their point of view. To many of the young people in my classes today, it means that we are to be non-judgmental, holding all men and all ideas to be equal and that it is morally wrong to say that something is morally wrong.
It is not an unusual thing to have students cover willful disobedience in the blanket of God’s love and to advance the idea of a universal salvation that sounds dangerously like that advocated by Lucifer in the councils of heaven.
People like to equate tolerance with Christ-like behavior, which is in many ways a rather awkward fit. My assumption is that you too have noticed that the appeal for Christ-like behavior generally comes from people who have no meaningful
It was Isaiah who said that the Christ would come as “a stone of stumbling and for a rock of offence” (Isaiah 8:14). The only way we can square the Jesus of the New Testament with the political correctness of our day (our modern version of tolerance) is to suppose that God is no longer offended by vulgarity, profanity, or immorality.
We seek to treat all that we meet on the path of life with dignity and respect and heartily join hands with all whose lives are founded on the principles of love and kindness. We esteem their religious rights as sacred, as our own, and are their allies in the defense of the same. As to enemies, we did not choose them, they have chosen us. We have always had them and we always will. Where we cannot befriend them we choose to live above them.
As to how we as Latter-day Saints view those not of our faith and as to how we determine who in this world is “Christian” and who is not, may I suggest that though many in the Christian world are anxious to draw a circle and exclude us, we choose to draw a very large and inclusive circle. We will pray with any man who is willing to do so. Our bookstores do not contain anti-anybody literature, we do not attack those of other faiths in our missionary lesson plan, nor do we do so in our church services or in any class sponsored by the Church. We do not give out warnings against those of other faiths nor do we ever forbid our membership from listening to or talking to anyone they desire.
So, if we take the social and political views of others personally, and damage our relationships with them due to their differing beliefs, then it seems logical to deduce that we are not seeing people as people any longer, but as issues, instigators, and antagonizers to our emotions instead. This is ideological objectification, meaning that we are degrading people to mere ideas, instead of valuing them as full people who are entitled to ideas and lives that they choose to have.
If our society continues to ideologically objectify every citizen based upon their political, social, religious, and moral views, then we will be contributing to war.
Just a decade ago, people respected differing views as part of the way humans have always been. But today, a different view is seen as an attack that requires a counter attack. Each view shared by an ideological warrior supposedly creates more victims and aggressors. Attacks, victims, aggressors, and warriors are all war terms. Wars are happening in families, in schools, in the workplace, online, in the media, and at holiday parties.
Fight against those who (1) believe not in Allah, (2) nor in the Lst Day, (3) nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allah and His messenger (4) and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (i.e.; Islam) among the people of the Scripture (jews and christians), until they pay the Jizyah with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.
Through the years, discrimination based on ethnic or religious identity has led to senseless slaughter, vicious pogroms, and countless acts of cruelty. The face of history is pocked by the ugly scars of intolerance.
To Paul’s list I might add the regrettable attitudes of bigotry, hypocrisy, and prejudice. These were also decried in 1834 by early Church leaders who foresaw the eventual rise of this church “amid the frowns of bigots and the calumny of hypocrites.” The Prophet Joseph Smith prayed that “prejudices may give way before the truth.” Hatred stirs up strife and digs beneath the dignity of mature men and women in our enlightened era.
Not long ago the First Presidency and the Twelve issued a public statement from which I quote: “It is morally wrong for any person or group to deny anyone his or her inalienable dignity on the tragic and abhorrent theory of racial or cultural superiority. We call upon all people everywhere to recommit themselves to the time-honored ideals of tolerance and mutual respect.
Now may I offer an important note of caution. An erroneous assumption could be made that if a little of something is good, a lot must be better. Not so! Overdoses of needed medication can be toxic. Boundless mercy could oppose justice. So tolerance, without limit, could lead to spineless permissiveness.
Times have changed once more. The thesis of this essay is that looking ahead, the Church may need once more to establish a banking system that can be utilized by its members. Unlike in 1873, the reason is not because there are no banking and financial institutions available: there are plenty in this day and age. No, the reason is because the signs of the times are such that it may come to pass in the not-too-distant future that orthodox Christians of all denominations may be discriminated against in the financial marketplace. There may come a day when someone who hews to the doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ (CoJC) may find that no bank will have them as a customer, and that no bank will offer them credit in any form, from a credit card to a mortgage. Other financial services, such as the use of PayPal and Venmo, may also be denied them. Now, while it is still possible to do so, and while the Church has immense financial assets allowing it to stabilize such a system, it is advisable to consider the issue.
It is not difficult to assert that a social credit system is coming into existence in the United States; it is not unlike that pioneered by China, but instead of being enforced by the state, it is being enforced by our largest and most powerful businesses and corporations. In China, one’s every move and purchase is tracked, and vast databases of facial recognition, financial transactions (including late bill-paying), geo-location information, online social media activity (such as how long you play a video game online, or whether you have spread “misinformation”), and behavior resulting in a brush with the law (even smoking in a non-smoking area) are collated each and every day to assign each citizen a “social credit score.” Your score then determines what privileges you have in society. If your score is quite low, you may be barred from purchasing a bus or train or airline ticket, for example, or from buying property or taking out a loan. Your social credit score will be shown to potential employers, and their own social credit scores may fall if they choose to hire you nonetheless. Your children may even be punished for your own low social credit score by being denied entry to certain schools.
However, you don’t need to have a totalitarian government to pull off a social credit score. All you need are the largest, richest corporate gatekeepers to police the boundaries of social credit—and that is what we see happening in the United States now. While we are all familiar with big technology corporations like Facebook and Twitter coming under fire for suspending social media accounts because they disfavor the views expressed by the account holder, the bigger cudgel is wielded by those further upstream—those who hold the levers of finance and commerce.
2) In the US, JP Morgan abruptly cancelled the bank accounts of the leaders of the Proud Boys and other right-wing figures such as Laura Loomer: “Loomer styles herself as the ‘most banned woman in the world.’ In addition to Chase, she is banned from PayPal, from Venmo, from The Cash App, Airbnb and Instagram, from Lyft, Uber and UberEats, from the blogging monetisation platform WordAds and the t-shirt print-to-order site TeeSpring, from Twitter and Facebook — obviously — and from any one of a half dozen other platforms for digital congress . . . But many of those bans are mere cascade effects. TeeSpring works with PayPal. PayPal had already declared Loomer an unperson, and thus they informed TeeSpring that they would have to stop supplying her. Ditto Venmo and The Cash App.” Even more troubling, Loomer won the Republican primary to run for Congress in her home state, but even then could not reverse these summary judgments:
In sum, an individual’s right to conduct financial business in the marketplace is now under clear attack. While most of us would not espouse the views of, say, a Laura Loomer, that is not the point. There should be a basic human right to have a bank account and conduct business. Not even former felons can be denied bank accounts (unless they have written bad checks or engaged in money laundering). Up to this point in time, an individual had to be officially designated a terrorist for such rights to be taken away. No longer; now you merely have to be designated a “hate group” or “member of a hate group” by an entity such as the Southern Poverty Law Center in order for there to be justification for your financial de-personing. I remember when the Southern Poverty Law Center was a reputable institution; those days are gone. When Christian-based advocacy groups such as the Center for Family and Human Rights can be designated a “hate group,” we’ve moved beyond the pale into censorship. But organizations like the SPLC offer “cover” for big corporations to persecute those who do not conform to whatever thinking is currently considered acceptable. Orthodox Christian beliefs are increasingly deemed “unacceptable.” Persecution is coming.
What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly — that is the first law of nature.
The ideal has to be surrounded by a fringe of tolerance, but that doesn't mean you sacrifice the ideal.