Monday Candle Moment: Tolerance

Entered in the Reli­gion in Every­day Life Blog Car­ni­val at Find Reli­gion.

I don’t remem­ber how I stum­bled upon Defin­ing Spir­i­tual Pres­ence. I was click­ing from site to site and some­how found myself there … It is a beau­ti­ful blog and I found the posts there intrigu­ing, filled with dis­cus­sions about a wide vari­ety of spir­i­tual mat­ters and prac­tices, most of which I was unfa­mil­iar with.

One thing I have taken away from my visit to that site is a meme head­quar­tered there, Mon­day Can­dle Moment. Green­woman, the orig­i­na­tor, believes in the power of “com­mu­nity prayer,” a decid­edly Bib­li­cal concept.

So each Mon­day, I will be post­ing a “Mon­day Can­dle Moment,” focus­ing upon a con­cept, idea or issue that I believe we should all be think­ing and pray­ing about.

So this, my first Mon­day Can­dle Moment, is about tol­er­ance. I love the 2006 Ran­dom House Unabridged Dictionary’s def­i­n­i­tion of the word:

A fair, objec­tive, and per­mis­sive atti­tude toward those whose opin­ions, prac­tices, race, reli­gion, nation­al­ity, etc., dif­fer from one’s own; free­dom from bigotry.

That really sums it up suc­cinctly and elo­quently, doesn’t it? A “fair, objec­tive, and per­mis­sive atti­tude” does not allow us to dis­re­gard what our neigh­bor expresses. Rather, implicit in the act of being fair and objec­tive, it seems to me, is the require­ment that you lis­ten and give due con­sid­er­a­tion to your neighbor’s ideas, view­points, feel­ings, obser­va­tions or the­o­ries. After doing so, you are free to embrace or reject those notions, but not your neigh­bor. Instead, a “per­mis­sive atti­tude” is one that acknowl­edges the inher­ent value and worth of your neigh­bor as a human being and the ways in which he/she dif­fers from you.

We must prac­tice tol­er­ance toward each other in order to live peace­fully and in har­mony. It is not suf­fi­cient to give “lip ser­vice” to this con­cept when we are in pub­lic and behave dif­fer­ently behind closed doors. But I’m sure that you know peo­ple who do just that.

Rather, tol­er­ance must be a way of life, prac­ticed when we are in the pri­vacy of our home with just our imme­di­ate fam­ily mem­bers (and par­ents have to set a good exam­ple in this regard), with our extended fam­ily mem­bers, among good friends, and in our schools and work­places. There is no time or place when it is appro­pri­ate or jus­ti­fi­able to prac­tice intol­er­ance or behave in a big­oted or prej­u­di­cial manner.

For this rea­son, I am appalled when I hear young men call­ing each other a deroga­tory name related to sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion — it seems to be a fad among teen-age boys. I am a fan of “Grey’s Anatomy” and hate to see the char­ac­ter of Pre­ston Burke go, but applaud ABC for ter­mi­nat­ing its asso­ci­a­tion with Isa­iah Wash­ing­ton. I also believe that MSNBC acted appro­pri­ately when it deprived Don Imus of an ongo­ing plat­form for hate speech. I’ve never lis­tened to Imus so I don’t know if the many peo­ple who tell me that he’s been get­ting away with sim­i­lar behav­ior for years are cor­rect. What I do know is that no mat­ter how long it went on, the fact that he has been silenced is, in my esti­ma­tion, golden.

And churches are soci­etal micro­cosms so they are a reflec­tion of the peo­ple who inhabit them. Among the many rea­sons I left orga­nized reli­gion was the lack of tol­er­ance I saw dis­played within that insti­tu­tion, not just toward those out­side “the fold,” but toward fel­low mem­bers and their extended fam­ily members.

For instance, sev­eral years ago, the church decreed that all con­gre­ga­tions would engage in a multi-session study for the pur­pose of dis­cern­ing what, if any­thing, the Bible says about sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion and, more par­tic­u­larly, whether per­sons who iden­tify them­selves as gay, les­bian, bisex­ual or trans­gen­dered should be ordained and called to serve as pas­tors. Regard­less of one’s under­stand­ing of the Bible on this sub­ject, respect and dig­nity must be accorded to all per­sons in atten­dance in order for a class on such “hot but­ton” top­ics to succeed.

Sadly, in the par­tic­u­lar con­gre­ga­tion to which I belonged, those attrib­utes were in short sup­ply: From the elderly male con­gre­gant who stood to announce that “God cre­ated Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” as though he’s just had an orig­i­nal thought … to the other elderly gen­tle­man who stood to declare that he had a solu­tion to the whole “prob­lem of gays in the church — we should just have our church and let them [gay, les­bian, bisex­ual and trans­gen­dered per­sons] have theirs.” The pas­tor lead­ing the study did not chal­lenge either of those gen­tle­men, espe­cially the lat­ter, at which point I left the room. I am ashamed to tell you that it took me sev­eral more years to leave the church altogether.

Why? Because I thought that stay­ing there would be ben­e­fi­cial. I thought that I could gen­tly par­tic­i­pate in the process of edu­cat­ing and enlight­en­ing those folks. Alas, my can­dle did not burn brightly enough. I had to admit defeat and exit per­ma­nently in order to pro­tect and pre­serve my own phys­i­cal and men­tal health. I was sad­dened, but not hurt, by that reality.

I was also deeply sad­dened by the exchange that I wrote about last Tues­day. One kind reader took the trou­ble to aptly observe, via e-mail: “I do believe your post is really more about pain and the way we all hurt each other, even Chris­tians, and about how we fail to love in the way that Jesus taught.” The whole sit­u­a­tion came down to a lack of tol­er­ance, accep­tance and uncon­di­tional love. Those are the traits that most stand out for me when I read the Bible and study the way that Jesus lived. He wasn’t the guy who hung out with the cool kids at the pop­u­lar table. He asso­ci­ated with the out­casts which, in those days, included women and chil­dren, not to men­tion tax col­lec­tors, lep­ers and any­one else who had been mar­gin­al­ized by society.

Have you ever heard “If I Was Jesus,” by Toby Keith? I hadn’t heard the song for a long time, but as I was think­ing about that woman, the song started play­ing in my head. So I went to his web­site and this is what he said about the song: “I am a fol­lower of Jesus and I’ve always looked at Him as one of us, even though he’s the Son of God. I believe he had a sense of humor and let peo­ple be who they were, not who He wanted them to be. If I could be Him – which I can’t – these are some things I would do. This song might be a lit­tle con­tro­ver­sial; peo­ple will say, ‘You can’t say that about Jesus!’ But I played it for my pas­tor to hear what he thought, and he said it’s okay: These words are straight out of The Bible.”

This is one of the verses:

If I was Jesus,
I’d have some friends that were poor.
I’d run around with the wrong crowd.
Man, I’d never be bored.
Then I’d heal me a blind man,
Get myself cru­ci­fied
By politi­cians and preach­ers who’ve got some­thing to hide.
And I’d lay my life down for you.
I’d show you who’s the boss.
I’d for­give you and adore you
While I was hang­ing on your cross …
If I was Jesus.

I love Mr. Keith’s assess­ment. So I sim­ply can­not imag­ine Jesus ever endors­ing words such as these, much less say­ing them himself:

I have friends and acquain­tances who are gay, who are of other denom­i­na­tions as well as Jew­ish, Mus­lim, Hindu, agnos­tic, and of var­i­ous eth­nic­i­ties and back­grounds. I respect them for it, and I find their per­spec­tives utterly fas­ci­nat­ing. That does not mean that I would want to wor­ship with them, or that I would take Holy Com­mu­nion with peo­ple who do not rec­og­nize the pres­ence of the Body and Blood of Christ in, with and under the Bread and the Wine. And to tell you the truth, if they were being hon­est and true to their faith (or lack of it), they wouldn’t want to either. So I don’t under­stand the whole “rad­i­cal inclu­sive­ness” idea …

Those words didn’t hurt me, nor did any­thing else that pastor’s wife wrote to me because I know the Truth and it has said me free. In my belief sys­tem, you can­not under­stand, appre­ci­ate and fol­low the teach­ings of Jesus Christ and make such state­ments. My belief is that Jesus wor­ships right in the mid­dle of all the folks that nobody else wants to wor­ship with. Smack-dab in the mid­dle of ‘em, to be exact.

But that woman’s words do bring me pain and make me incred­i­bly sad because, in my opin­ion, any­one who can say “I wouldn’t want to wor­ship with” another human being is a per­son who, like those narrow-minded folks in my for­mer con­gre­ga­tion, is lost. Utterly lost. And I have no capac­ity to be angry with some­one like that … there’s only one thing that I know how to do for some­one in her circumstances …

So today, this Mon­day Can­dle Moment is a request for prayer for all those who are, like the woman who wrote those words to me, lost. And for all those peo­ple who need to come to an under­stand­ing of what “tol­er­ance” really means and how to live it each day.

It is also a request for prayer for those who strive to prac­tice tol­er­ance — that they be able to do so con­sis­tently in their deal­ings with oth­ers. Because we all fail from time to time, but we are called to be bea­cons of light and set good exam­ples that oth­ers will want to emu­late. I solicit your prayers for all of us to be patient with each other as we unravel the mys­ter­ies of the Divine, the Spirit and seek to under­stand our pur­pose here.

Mon­day can­dle moment

Wel­come back to On the Hori­zon! So glad you’re vis­it­ing again. Be sure to leave a com­ment and add any posts that you like to the var­i­ous social book­mark­ing sites using the links just below the posts. Thanks for stop­ping by!

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