When I guide people through this values exercise, they often get stuck on the fine print. They get hung up on the categories (like “Self-Direction” or “Hedonism”). Or they flip the card over and get distracted by the “Aware-Affirm-Apply” prompts on the back.
But usually, if people are going to get derailed, it is by the definitions on the bottom of the cards.
* Authority: The right to lead or command.
* Daring: Seeking adventure, risk.
And so it goes for me with Card #27. I immediately keyed into the word in the definition: “Tolerant.”
When I was young I was given the impression that to be broad-minded was to be lukewarm. And as we all know, God spits the lukewarm from his mouth. Broad-mindedness opened you up to all manner of new thoughts and ideas that could lead you easily astray.
To be tolerant of different ideas or beliefs was to be unsure of your own, and this was unforgivable. Untenable. And inconsistent with a life with God.
On the contrary, I now believe that narrow-mindedness was brought to me on a platter labeled Conviction. And my conviction was that there was but one way. One way to believe, one way to be a Christian, one way to live.
Listen, we weren’t just suspicious of the rank & file heathen, the unbeliever, the Pagan, the Satanist. We were suspicious of the people attending the church down the street. We were suspicious of anyone who might cast doubt in our minds of our own centrality in the heart of God. Of our own right-ness.
And I have beliefs today. I am not without my own opinions and beliefs. But for me, Broad-mindedness has been another little death for my ego, the death of the idea that I am consequentially correct. Or that I even could be. The death of the idea that my spiritual kinfolk and I might be the central theme of the universe at the expense of all others.
So, I challenge the word on the card. I am uncomfortable with “Tolerance.” Because to “tolerate” another’s ideas is often just a polite way of clinging to your own superiority. It implies: “I know the truth, and you are wrong, but I will put up with you.”
And in the ugliest corners of our society, tolerance itself is becoming anathema to our fabric. “We cannot tolerate others’ beliefs or ideas”
I don’t want to just be tolerant. I want to be interested.
Today I am aware that my map is not necessarily incorrect, but it is incomplete. It’s been said that “you’ve got to stand for something or you’ll fall for anything”. I’m not sure that’s true.
Does the world need me to be a moral arbiter? Am I called to know everything, to be able to comprehend the complexities of plain old life and death on Earth, let alone the richness of God and of other people?
To be tolerant of others’ beliefs is fine I suppose, but it feels to me like it’s leaving something on the table in favor of something that you simply cannot have.
You can work hard and have many things in this life. Like a pet capybara. But you cannot have certainty, you just can’t. And to stand on certainty is to build your house upon the sand; when the waves come and the winds blow you will surely be washed out to sea.
I’ve seen it a hundred times. We’re raised with certainty and then s**t gets weird. Things get complex, ideas shift and we can’t unsee what we’ve seen. We can’t put those genies back in their lamps.
I just saw it with someone who did their values with me. They were raised agnostic. Or maybe atheistic? In any case, he was certainly something certain. And then he fell in love with a woman, and they made a life together for more than thirty years. And she had been raised in a fairly devoutly Christian household. Her faith was deeply informed by her mother’s but in due course it became her own until eventually she received a death-sentence-diagnosis. Her final months were uncertain—turbulent. Marked by moments of hope, dashed by ugly realities. In the end, death comes for us all, and it came for her. And this man, her husband, sat with me and marveled at the peace with which she composed herself during those months. At a certain point, he reported to me, she was just ready to go. She was certain of her faith and it caused him to be uncertain about his lack.
And so now, in his sixties, he’s embarking on his own exploration of faith. And I don’t know where it’ll lead him! I’d love to walk closely with him in this new exploratory phase. We’ll see. We’ll see.
Better for me, maybe better for us all, I think, to be interested in others’ ideas and beliefs. I am under no obligation to adopt them as my own, I am under no obligation to forego my own experiences and beliefs. But to remain closed to the ideas of others is to close myself off from exploration. And if this life is not for exploring, I’m not sure what it’s for.
Some people, like the man in the story, believe that this is all there is. That we are born, and we live and then we die and we are just… no more. And some people, like his wife, believe that there is much, much more indeed. More before. More after.
To be broad minded means to be softened to live I think. It means to have held something tightly, made it your own, to have had it challenged and to have it broken down into its constituent parts, ready for reformulation. In any case, exploration and openness, I believe, should be applauded.
And anyway, the truth doesn’t hide like a coward, afraid. The truth is large, and robust and illuminating, and it is out there, I think, to be found and explored.
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