In a discussion yesterday about Tertullian’s De Patientia we talked about holy patience and holy impatience. Patristics has me much more engaged than any other class. Not just now, really ever. I’m on pace to make a comment in every class, which is just unheard of. Anyway, the whole time I had the following narrative running through my mind. So I thought I’d write it down. And then I thought I’d share.
I recall writing a paper in eighth grade about tolerance. The assignment, and it wasn’t for class, it was some kind of contest, was to write about the greatest problem facing the world today. As I remember it the top three essays as well as the majority of the losing ones were about overpopulation. Putting aside the clear bias of the judges, all of my friends (who were also the only people who really took the contest seriously) agreed that overpopulation would be the greatest challenge for our generation as we grew up.
That didn’t make a lot of sense to me then and it doesn’t now. What are these people suggesting? That modern advances in medical science, nutrition, and safety research as well as the eradication of various deadly viruses, the relatively lower casualty figures of modern warfare and the growing unpopularity of capital punishment are all bad things? More of us can live longer! For shame! I think the most egregious offense has been the lowering of infant mortality rates. If we could keep those up around 25% the problem could be solved.
Certainly I’m not qualified to make their case for them, but I suppose they mean that we will eventually lose the race between the number of people we are producing and the advances that allow us the ability to feed, house, and care for more and more people. But human life no matter how it destroys non-renewable resources ultimately survives on quite renewable ones. So I guess I don’t see how overpopulating the world will bring about it’s demise; there may come a point when we can’t feed everybody but never a point where we can feed no one. Is the big problem that so many people will be born that some can neither eat nor find shelter? If it is then concern for overpopulation is a self-propagating crisis. The more we do to accommodate the repercussions of overpopulation, the worse the problem gets until we introduce some kind of eugenic holocaust. Hardly seems like what an eighth grader would want to focus on as the great world problem.
So what do you say, Grant? Why is tolerance a problem? Isn’t the problem intolerance? Isn’t that what you mean, that people hate each other and will need to learn to live in harmony?
Well, sure. Intolerance of other viewpoints can lead to many destructive behaviors that do nothing to help global society. Intolerance of this type is everywhere between the races, classes, and nationalities of the world. Is it ingrained in us? Is it learned? I think my generation is one of the first to begin life in an America where Civil Rights has settled in. We lived in integrated neighborhoods, attended schools that were diverse and received educations that were quite sensitive to the differences between us. When we learned our nation’s history we were shocked by pictures of Selma and Emmett Till and could hardly accept that was our nation only a short time ago. Yet as we graduate from college (more and more of us each year) and enter the job market it would seem to me there is still a great amount of “adult-onset” racism.
The most positive effect of liberal education is how it has allowed us to become comfortable living in the tension between our hatred of other people and our acceptance of them. To put aside hatred, even ignore it for pragmatic reasons.
And that’s tolerance. And that’s the problem. The world becomes so tolerant that it grows numb and forgets itself.
The solution for inter-personal hatred is intra-personal intolerance. Instead of directing the intolerance at those around you, you aim it at yourself. You become cognizant of your internal brokenness and confront it with great impatience, throwing off your tolerance and taking on an attitude of penitence. It is a very active process, greatly opposed to passive tolerance.
But of course to do that would be to insert Christ back into the Christian morality we’ve borrowed from him and evicted him from.
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I recall writing a paper in eighth grade about tolerance. The assignment, and it wasn’t for class, it was some kind of contest, was to write about the greatest problem facing the world today. As I remember it the top three essays as well as the majority of the losing ones were about overpopulation. Putting aside the clear bias of the judges, all of my friends (who were also the only people who really took the contest seriously) agreed that overpopulation would be the greatest challenge for our generation as we grew up.
That didn’t make a lot of sense to me then and it doesn’t now. What are these people suggesting? That modern advances in medical science, nutrition, and safety research as well as the eradication of various deadly viruses, the relatively lower casualty figures of modern warfare and the growing unpopularity of capital punishment are all bad things? More of us can live longer! For shame! I think the most egregious offense has been the lowering of infant mortality rates. If we could keep those up around 25% the problem could be solved.
Certainly I’m not qualified to make their case for them, but I suppose they mean that we will eventually lose the race between the number of people we are producing and the advances that allow us the ability to feed, house, and care for more and more people. But human life no matter how it destroys non-renewable resources ultimately survives on quite renewable ones. So I guess I don’t see how overpopulating the world will bring about it’s demise; there may come a point when we can’t feed everybody but never a point where we can feed no one. Is the big problem that so many people will be born that some can neither eat nor find shelter? If it is then concern for overpopulation is a self-propagating crisis. The more we do to accommodate the repercussions of overpopulation, the worse the problem gets until we introduce some kind of eugenic holocaust. Hardly seems like what an eighth grader would want to focus on as the great world problem.
So what do you say, Grant? Why is tolerance a problem? Isn’t the problem intolerance? Isn’t that what you mean, that people hate each other and will need to learn to live in harmony?
Well, sure. Intolerance of other viewpoints can lead to many destructive behaviors that do nothing to help global society. Intolerance of this type is everywhere between the races, classes, and nationalities of the world. Is it ingrained in us? Is it learned? I think my generation is one of the first to begin life in an America where Civil Rights has settled in. We lived in integrated neighborhoods, attended schools that were diverse and received educations that were quite sensitive to the differences between us. When we learned our nation’s history we were shocked by pictures of Selma and Emmett Till and could hardly accept that was our nation only a short time ago. Yet as we graduate from college (more and more of us each year) and enter the job market it would seem to me there is still a great amount of “adult-onset” racism.
The most positive effect of liberal education is how it has allowed us to become comfortable living in the tension between our hatred of other people and our acceptance of them. To put aside hatred, even ignore it for pragmatic reasons.
And that’s tolerance. And that’s the problem. The world becomes so tolerant that it grows numb and forgets itself.
The solution for inter-personal hatred is intra-personal intolerance. Instead of directing the intolerance at those around you, you aim it at yourself. You become cognizant of your internal brokenness and confront it with great impatience, throwing off your tolerance and taking on an attitude of penitence. It is a very active process, greatly opposed to passive tolerance.
But of course to do that would be to insert Christ back into the Christian morality we’ve borrowed from him and evicted him from.
<><
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