In support of intolerance

I’ve noticed kind of an odd double standard. When I see blogs that are written by progressives there is always someone who lectures them against being angry or judgmental when they are calling people to the carpet. When I look at conservative blogs nobody ever calls these people on the rug for being angry and judgmental when they go off.

I could start this trend, but I won’t.

Personally, I think it is a good thing to be angry and judgmental. I think it is an essential part of being a Christian and not a door map. We have plenty of examples of Jesus getting his anger on. If we put the money changers in the temple incident aside (it really is overused), we have plenty of examples of him trashing Pharisees, telling apostles to basically shut up and listen and even being rude to his mom.

I think the difference is, Jesus wasn’t selling people down the river. He could pass out some harsh medicine, but he did it cuz he cared.

We see the same thing happen with some of the saints. There were times when they could get a bit salty. Its part of being human.

Going back to my Blessed Mother trip. If we are to be mothers to one another, don’t we need to correct each other from time-to-time? Don’t we get angry with each other? My mom gets mad at me and I get mad at her. Fortunately we have a functional relationship so anger doesn’t automatically mean that we sell each other down the river. I think that might be what Paul means when he writes about not letting the sun set on our anger. I don’t think he is being literal here, I think he is calling for a sense of proportion.

I have actually seen people argue that it was a good thing that the Vatican II crowd were getting older and dying off. Wow, now that’s different from anger (IMHO) that’s just hate. That’s selling people down the river rather than engaging them in a good angry argument that the sun can set on.

Tolerance is wildly overrated. There are things that we need to be intolerant of (both in ourselves and in others). For instance, we really don’t need to tolerate the KKK having a rally on Martin Luther King’s birthday. We don’t need to tolerate people gay bashing or advocating killing people.

Tolerance has its limits.