Religious Tolerance as Christian Value by Rob Witham

I am delighted that Rob Witham accepted my invi­ta­tion to be the first par­tic­i­pant in “Guest Blog­gers on the Hori­zon.”

Rob is a free­lance writer liv­ing in Upstate New York and Mon­tana. He writes about tech­nol­ogy and spir­i­tu­al­ity and is a fre­quent guest speaker at area churches.

Reli­gious Tol­er­ance As Chris­t­ian Virtue

by Rob Witham

There seems to be some­thing about human nature that dri­ves us to be intol­er­ant of peo­ple who see things dif­fer­ently. This is per­haps more true in reli­gion than any­where else. Some of the nas­ti­est and most intol­er­ant peo­ple you are likely to meet are also very reli­gious peo­ple. I don’t think this is an acci­dent. It is quite com­mon to hear intol­er­ance jus­ti­fied and excused based on a few scrip­ture ref­er­ences (as often as not taken out of the proper con­text). Once we get onto a band­wagon it becomes quite easy to for­get other less-popular ref­er­ences — like com­mands to love one another, to love com­pas­sion and to show mercy.

Unfor­tu­nately, the blo­gos­phere is not immune from reli­gious intol­er­ance. We have all seen peo­ple get very nasty while debat­ing their point on a blog or forum. Peo­ple argu­ing about their reli­gious faith often sound sus­pi­ciously like peo­ple argu­ing about their pre­ferred tech­nol­ogy on Digg. In other words, there is an awful lot of intol­er­ance and not a whole lot of love.

But isn’t defend­ing the truth also a Chris­t­ian virtue? Absolutely! Any­one who wants to fol­low Jesus should be con­cerned with the truth. After all, it was Jesus who called him­self “the way, and the truth, and the life.” Truth is impor­tant and we should be con­cerned with know­ing, embrac­ing and com­mu­ni­cat­ing the truth. How­ever, our goal needs to be speak­ing the truth to one another in love. We are never jus­ti­fied in resort­ing to offen­sive com­ments and per­sonal insults because we dis­agree with a com­ment or post.

Con­sider the instruc­tion the Apos­tle Paul pro­vided to the believ­ers in Rome:

Wel­come those who are weak in faith, but not for the pur­pose of quar­rel­ing over opin­ions … Who are you to pass judg­ment on ser­vants of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand … Let us there­fore no longer pass judg­ment on one another, but resolve instead never to put a stum­bling block or hin­drance in the way of another. (Romans 14:1–13 NRSV)

There are lots of things in reli­gion that just aren’t worth argu­ing about. Some things just are not right or wrong — they are mat­ters of pref­er­ence, con­vic­tion or under­stand­ing. Start­ing argu­ments just for the sake of “quar­rel­ing over opin­ions” is fool­ish and imma­ture. Noth­ing pos­i­tive is gained by this; rather, this results in anger, hurt, dis­sen­sion and fac­tions. The Apos­tle instructed the church in Rome to teach and live the truth, but to do that in an envi­ron­ment that was safe. Too often, whether on a blog or in a church, only opin­ions that agree are tol­er­ated while all other opin­ions are banned.

One of the fas­ci­nat­ing things about the blo­gos­phere is its com­mu­nity nature. Blogs and other social media pro­vide an oppor­tu­nity to inter­act with peo­ple of all dif­fer­ent back­grounds and faiths. When we fos­ter a com­mu­nity (vir­tual or per­sonal) that encour­ages par­tic­i­pa­tion, shar­ing and dia­logue with room for dis­agree­ment we all win. Iron­i­cally, peo­ple are more likely to even­tu­ally agree with a debated posi­tion if they are first allowed to dis­agree. On the side of that argu­ment is the con­sid­er­a­tion that the dis­senter may just be right!

The book of James offers strong reminders about how easy it is to wrong one another with our words.

Not many of you should become teach­ers, my broth­ers and sis­ters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strict­ness. For all of us make many mis­takes. Any­one who makes no mis­takes in speak­ing is per­fect, able to keep the whole body in check with a bri­dle. (James 3:1–2 NRSV)

It is very easy to wrong peo­ple with our words. Those of us who teach oth­ers, whether at a church meet­ing or through arti­cles on the Inter­net, need to be espe­cially care­ful about our words.

Intol­er­ance is not a virtue just as tol­er­ance is not com­pro­mise. It is quite pos­si­ble to stand for what you believe with­out becom­ing intol­er­ant of oth­ers with dif­fer­ent views.

Hope­ful Spirit offers a safe place to dia­logue about things that mat­ter. A safe place on the Web to wor­ship and give thanks.

Thank you for your inspir­ing and thought-provoking arti­cle, Rob!

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