Tolerance for people of other beliefs
Tolerance is one of those hot buzz words frequently used in our cultural debates of the day. Tolerance is generally regarded as a virtue. The meaning of tolerance is to allow putting up with, especially, with regard to ideas or moral issues. In America tolerance is particularly treated as virtue because our country was built on the principle of granting a certain freedom of dissent. Tolerance is regarded as a great virtue. The scriptures even speak of God as exercising tolerance.
Tolerance does not mean to embrace or to even accept. In fact, it is impossible to tolerate something you like or embrace. To tolerate means that you put up with something you don’t particularly like or that may even be most disgusting to you. Therefore, if I do not like a certain behavior or if I speak out against a certain lifestyle it is not accurate or fair to label me intolerant. In certain quarters today one is labeled quite intolerant if he speaks out against certain behaviors like homosexuality or abortion on demand or porn on the airwaves. But this is not intolerance because tolerance presupposes that one does not like that which he tolerates. Many people today in these various lifestyles are calling on us to embrace their sin in the name of tolerance. Tolerance does not require that we be neutral, accept, condone or embrace the evil around us. Tolerance is not concession, condescension or indulgence. Tolerance is, above all, an active attitude prompted by recognition of the universal human rights and fundamental freedoms of others. In no circumstance can it be used to justify infringements of these fundamental values. Many people are not tolerant of even the simplest things. Like I started the HCG diet weeks ago and was accosted by many health nuts. It’s amazing how many people are so intolerant of such trivial things. Tolerance is to be exercised by individuals, groups and States.
Throughout world history, we have seen cruel acts of hatred and prejudice. A more recent history of intolerance’s includes intolerance’s of race such as slavery and racism in the United States, and intolerance’s of religion such as the Holocaust of World War II. Along with these cruel acts, however, also come those individuals ready to help by promoting tolerance.
Societies throughout world history have utilized slave labor. Many believe the first slaves in the United States appeared in Jamestown in 1619 where they were put to work growing tobacco on plantations. Black people also helped whites build houses and ships, cobble shoes, bake bread, brew beer, make hats, weave cloth, and sew gowns. They cleaned streets and they hauled heavily laden carts. They waited on planters in Virginia mansions and on lawyers, merchants, and public officials in northern cities. Black men helped turn ore into metal on the “iron plantations” from Virginia to New York. Black women cooked, washed, tended children, and did scullery work in white households everywhere. They also did heavy labor in which no white woman would have been asked.
To foster respect and appreciation among members of different faith groups, young people should receive education that is practical and sensitive to religious beliefs, said some 20 panel members, who represented both Christian and Muslim traditions.