Dr Andy Bannister: Tolerance? None of us want to be tolerated

Dr Andy Bannister Solas Centre for Public Christianity

Tolerance is everywhere: we must tolerate other people, tolerate those who are different to us, never criticise, never question, never disagree, and certainly never – absolutely never –tell somebody else that we think we’re right and they’re wrong. Tolerance, all hail tolerance.

Well, I’ve had enough. I can no longer tolerate tolerance. My first issue is that it’s a deeply disrespectful word.

Think about the things we usually tolerate. We tolerate the cat, when it deposits half a dead mouse on the front door mat and claws the sofa for the third time in a week. I tolerate my three-year-old son when, acting on his latent (although rapidly emerging) artistic tendencies, he decides to emulate Banksy on the lounge wall.

In other words, we tolerate things that are misbehaving, things that don’t measure up, things that are a little bit beneath us – animals, young children, TV celebrities.

On the other hand, when you encounter an adult who thinks differently to you, who sees the world in a different way, who – heaven forbid! – disagrees with you, I’d suggest ‘tolerance’ should be your Verb of Last Resort.

Instead, what about welcoming, listening, talking, or having dialogue with them? In short, treating them as an equal, rather than as your inferior?

But there’s a further problem with ‘tolerance’, in that it’s a ready-made licence to ignore those different to us.

Rather than talk to people, extend hospitality, engage with people, and listen to them, mere tolerance allows us to dismiss them.

Whilst we pat ourselves on the back with warm thoughts about how tolerant we are, we are all the while deeply dehumanising people, airbrushing them out of our circle of concern, with a sneer or superiority.

None of us want to be tolerated. You don’t want other people to tolerate you. You want to be listened to. You want to be taken seriously. To be heard. You want other people to consider your views, even if they disagree, to treat you like an adult, to understand you.

The Christian basis for treating people as truly human, as loving and listening even to those who are radically different to us, who are even disagreeable or unlikeable, lies at the heart of the gospel.

The good news of Jesus is that God didn’t just tolerate us, even though he could have done. God could have looked at the mess we’ve made of our lives, and His world, shrugged, tolerated us, and walked away. But God didn’t step away. Rather, in the person of Jesus, he stepped in.

In Jesus, God gave everything for us, even while we were his enemies, deserving nothing better than condemnation, let alone toleration. As the Bible says in Romans 5:8: “God demonstrated his love for us in that we were still rebels, bullies, and oppressors, Jesus Christ died for us.”

But there is one final problem with tolerance – it’s cheap. Dirt cheap. It costs nothing to look down on people, to sigh with a sneer, or to walk on by and not give people a second glance. Tolerance is cheap. But by contrast, love is expensive, love always costs the one who gives it.

I’m incredibly grateful that God didn’t tolerate us but instead he loved us and did so in a way that was costly. Christians – those who’ve realised that they’ve no grounds to be superior and to look down on others, but need the forgiveness and help that God offers through Jesus – are called to show the same love to others that Jesus showed to us. Especially those who are difficult, different or disagreeable. As the New Testament, in Ephesians 5:1 puts it: “Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children, and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us.”

Dr Andy Bannister, Solas Centre for Public Christianity.