It is becoming abundantly clear to many that the call for tolerance has in fact not been a call to tolerate all opinions everywhere, but to express agreement and endorsement of certain groups and positions. The LGBT community, feminists, non-Christian religions, minorities or previously oppressed ethnicities are usually those said to be suffering from intolerance from others and requiring greater tolerance from others.
This is a tad disingenuous, for two reasons. First, if there were no tolerance of such groups, their voices would not be heard in the media, and their marches would be illegal. They would be in jail or worse, as the non-tolerated often are in despotic countries. Once again, tolerance is not the same as agreement. Christians and non-Christians don’t agree on the meaning of life, but our children play in the same parks, and we peacefully stand in the same checkout lines. This is tolerance.
Second, the eclectic nature of the group supposedly needing more tolerance or experiencing intolerance seems suspiciously close to the List of the Previously Non-Tolerated produced by liberal Western professors. When Marxism was in the ascendancy, liberal professors classified everything according to class warfare and economic motives. Now the hip rhetoric is to speak of oppression, domination, and ‘ontologies of violence’. All things Western and Christian (and in some cases, white or male) tend to be cast as oppressors exhibiting physical or verbal violence on all things non-Western and non-Christian. The Tolerazis posture as championing freedom for previously oppressed groups, but it is obvious with anyone with eyes to see that the crusade is not so much for freedom for all as much as it is about limiting (or extinguishing) the voice of historic Christian or Western views. The New Tolerance is not for Christians – you’ve been tolerated long enough, don’t you know – it is for those on the List of Previously Non-Tolerated. But the List is not consistent.
Here’s an example. I happen to be left-handed. Now consider just how oppressed we left-handers have been, and what sort of tolerance we are now entitled to.
First, in almost every language, the word for ‘left’ is connected with the ideas of evil, deception, inferiority, or things sinister, while the words for ‘right’ suggest trust, correctness, goodness, or ability. To think of how the rhetoric of violence has used language to prejudice the other ninety percent of the world against us just chills my blood.
Second, many societies have (and some still do) force left-handed children to write with their right hand, being told that the left hand is the dirty hand, or the hand for cleaning oneself. This has caused learning difficulties for many. We’ve been held back economically, to advantage the right-handed. I’d be richer right now, if it weren’t for this economic intolerance.
Third, the world has trampled on our rights, neglecting our needs when it has come to door-handles, scissors, cars, can-openers and potato-peelers, the direction of reading, writing, and books in the West, and computer mice. We have been struggling through a world set up to favor the right-handed.
We left-handers check all the boxes for the List of Previously Non-Tolerated:
* we are a minority
* our difference has been historically frowned upon
* people have tried to change us
* we have been at a social and economic disadvantage
To counter the vicious intolerance of left-handedness, and to promote society-wide tolerance of left-handedness, should I not march for left-handed equality? Should there not be a government-grant for left-handers to compensate me for the fact that I cannot cut straight? Should I lobby to have the terms “in his right mind” or “right-hand man” or “righteous” deemed culturally offensive and examples of micro-aggressions? Can we not classify the term “two left feet” as hate-speech? Should building codes and rezoning laws not be changed to reflect the reality of left-handers entering and exiting those buildings? Should right-handers not become automatically guilty of “handism” – a sin which I, as a left-hander, am completely immune to? Indeed, all right-handers are implicated in this systemic oppression which uses language, the media, and the economy to deny me my rights – my lefts, that is. Should they not contribute to some reparation tax?
Well, this little illustration, as facetious as it is, shows the farce of the New Tolerance. The reason I don’t get to do any of those things is that left-handers are manifestly tolerated in the society I live in. I don’t need more tolerance, however much intolerance once existed. However much people might think us weird, no one imprisons us or executes us. We’re tolerated, in a secular society, precisely as many of the other groups on the List are tolerated. Perhaps some disapproval still exists. But no one, in the society I live in, is expelling left-handers from society itself by imprisonment, deportation, death-threats or execution.
Further, the fact that left-handers don’t make the List shows that the criteria for inclusion are eminently flexible, and ultimately, hypocritical. I have a hunch that the fact that left-handers are truly representative of every ethnicity, religion, and gender (including white Christian males) might be a reason we don’t make the List. In truth, I don’t want to be on the List – but I can’t see a very good reason, by their stated criteria for the List, that I’m not.
To be clear, tyrannical intolerance is an evil. I am not mocking the genuine suffering that humans have inflicted on each other, or the true oppression (which God hates) that has happened and still happens. Racism, religious violence, or other acts of intimidation are evil, and Christians must shun them. What deserves our scorn is the hypocritical New Tolerance, which selectively tolerates, and is openly intolerant of Christians. It postures as a liberator, but it is a tyrant. It preaches freedom, but it means to enslave. It speaks of love, but it loves only those who love it – and woe betide those who do not.
About David de Bruyn
David de Bruyn pastors New Covenant Baptist Church in Johannesburg, South Africa. He is a graduate of Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Minnesota and the University of South Africa (D.Th.). Since 1999, he has presented a weekly radio program that is heard throughout much of central South Africa. He also blogs at Churches Without Chests.
