I've been reading instances of tolerance lately and thinking about what I've read. Tolerance, not as a political stance (such as that of our Constitution, that "tolerates" all religious faiths and even non-faith) but as a personal matter, begins with pain. In its oldest meaning, "to tolerate" meant to endure pain and discomfort. Though that usage has largely disappeared, it's still used to refer to an organism's ability to survive extremes of heat, dryness, pH, etc. Every once in a while, someone will ask another, "Are you in pain?" And the other will respond, "Yes, but it's tolerable." This usage gets back to the original meaning of "tolerance."
Now, pain is a person matter, a feeling. But we should distinguish between physical and mental pain (though any kind of pain is processed in our brains). If you should stick a knitting needle in your eye, you will undoubtedly feel a great deal of physical pain, especially if you actually rupture your eyeball. That pain is a bunch of electro-chemicals rushing to your brain from your eye, essentially telling you, "Hold on, chief, you've done something real stupid with that knitting needle." We all have the opportunity to feel that kind of pain every day: just let me go without coffee for 24 hours, and I'll tell you all about pain. That's physical pain.
Mental pain is different in its mechanics (perhaps) but just as real if not more real. After you've poked out your eye with that knitting needle, your mind begins to let you have it with both barrels, "You idiot! Look what you've done! Now you're going to go through the rest of your pitiful life with only one eye! Cyclops! How could you do something sooooo stupid?!" Mental pains - grief, regret, sadness, loss - these are just as real as physical pain but derive from mental rather than physical processes (again, I'm being crude: mental processes are also physical processes). They are a matter of interior dialogue, of thought and evaluation, more than body damage or distress. And, depending on their content and origin, they tend to endure longer than instances of physical pain (chronic pain is somewhat a different matter).
"Tolerance" used to refer to the capability to endure pain, both physical and mental. Though not used so much any more to refer to physical pain, tolerance is used quite often to refer to mental pain or, since I like to get my discussions back to my own model, persona pain. When we use "tolerance" today, I think we're referring to a clash of ethoi and, since ethoi are always a matter of personas, persona pain. Let me unpack that a little bit. Our persona(s) are constructed through interacting with other personas in the arena of ethoi. For instance, in my recent trip to Israel I went out one day alone to get lost in the Old City of Jerusalem, purposefully wandering to see how it felt to be lost in a different culture. Intellectually I knew that I was in little danger of being kidnapped, blindfolded, placed on a webcam and having my head cut off to make a political statement. But my persona - white, Western, infidel, Ugly American - is heavily constructed by an ethos that is derived from gruesome web pages, 9/11, anti-American demonstrations, anti-Islam rhetoric, etc. And this ethos is built on personas, constructs about other persons that I happen to engage whether immediately or remotely: images of beheadings, Osama bin Laden, the students who took over the American Embassy in Iran, United States politicians, friends on Facebook, etc.
Now, I was able to tolerate this discomfort, not by making it go away, but by walking and letting these feelings settle, knowing full well that my persona was fabricated in some sense falsely in my own ethos. Further, by opening myself (my persona) to the ethos of the Old City, eventually my discomfort lessened.
One important moment came when, in my purposefully purposeless wandering, I returned to a vendor who the day before had sold me six University of Alabama t-shirts written in Hebrew (a big hit back home, you can be sure). I greeted him and he thanked me for sending some business his way (the t-shirts were also a big hit with other members of my group, who promptly went and found his store and bought t-shirts for themselves). That vendor was not Jewish, was probably Arab and may have been Muslim: I couldn't tell and didn't ask him. But that different ethos - vending - lessened my discomfort: I was a buyer, he was a seller (this is not necessarily an endorsement of commerce, though commerce has brought many ehtoi together peacefully) and we had done business together.Tolerance should, it seems to me, be a process of recognizing the sources of our discomfort but not letting our discomfort get in the way of engaging "alien" personas and ethoi. However, the way "tolerance" is often used seems to imply that that's all we need to do: tolerate our discomfort, but not engage other personas and ethoi. To move beyond tolerance seems to me to be a matter of recognizing our discomfort and its sources, then through engagement with other personas letting our discomfort settle and dissipate through experiencing or forging a common ethos. When I hear someone say, "I do not accept homosexuality, but I tolerate homosexuals," I think she or he has not moved beyond tolerance. His or her persona, when engaging a gay man's or a lesbian woman's persona, has remained rigid so that the person feels icky, uncomfortable, pain. To step beyond tolerance means creating a common ethos, however briefly, with that gay man or lesbian woman. Sharing an ethos means both personas are affected, are changed and modified, so that the pain and discomfort both feel begins to subside until, hopefully, it disappears.
Moving beyond tolerance, then, is a matter of forming new ethoi, a root characteristic of Christianity (not just love your neighbor - one like you - as yourself, but loving your enemies - even those trying to kill you - as well, so said Jesus). Sticking with the gay and lesbian theme, David Wilcox has a great song, "Fearless Love," about a person attending a protest against homosexuality, holding a condemning sign, and being faced by a gay man with HIV carrying a sign that reads, "There's Nothing Here to Fear." The person flashes back to Jesus encouraging his disciples to "carry that soldier's (Roman's) pack and, after the gay man has been hit in the head with a rock, crosses (!) over and lifts the gay man to his feet. Fear is pain and tolerance is putting up with that pain. Moving beyond tolerance is embracing (Volf's term, from "Exclusion and Embrace") another persona (and perhaps the person as well) and letting our own pesonas be changed in the engagement.
Tolerance alone will not construct new ethoi, hence the need to move beyond tolerance, because in our global, shrinking world, cultural clashes, etc., we need new ethoi not just as an ethical matter, but as a survival matter, an economic matter, an environmental matter, a Christian matter. Though tolerance is better than intolerance, since intolerance aggressively maintains rigid divisions that perhaps should pass away (though some divisions are necessary and good), tolerance, too, can leave rigid divisions in place because the tolerant person is not allowing persona change or the creation of new ethoi: the tolerant person is simply tolerating the pain from recognizing difference in personas and ethoi, not engaging and embracing different personas and ethoi. The pain remains.
What lies beyond tolerance? Simply, relief. The Old French for "relief" was "a raising up" (think of "bas relief" in sculpture), a lifting of burden or distress, or rescuing a town from siege. In terms of persons, by engaging other personas in new ethoi, the pain one formerly tolerated is relieved. In Christian terms, "lifting up" implies resurrection, not just in the future kingdom, but in present terms: no better demonstration is Paul's insistence that Jew and Gentile form one people (a common ethos), even though they had been long estranged, a new ethos that Paul names "a new creation, the Israel of God." Though moving beyond tolerance doesn't do much for physical pain (though shamanistic or faith healing may have something to do say about this), it has much to do with relieving mental or person pain. To end with politics (the matter of negotiating ethoi), if America is to be a "city on a hill" for the world, our shining beaconness lies not in our wealth or might, but in our capacity to embrace multiple ethoi from every corner of the world and - by not just tolerating them but embracing them - forge a commonwealth stronger because of our diversity, not despite it, and one in which healing from many ethoi pains (poor, wretched, huddled masses) is not just promised but accomplished. And to be explicit (and perhaps argumentative): intolerance of Muslims here in our homeland, even tolerance of Muslim Americans here, keeps the pain, but engaging Muslim personas here and abroad and together forging a new ethos relieves us from much pain, even, perhaps, the pain of 9/11. Thank you for reading.
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