Tolerance a Spiritual Force

The individuals should work for a good relationship with its neighbors through sympathetic understanding of their needs and difficulties. They must strive to understand why people do this or do that. They must understand the sufferings of their fellowmen. This has to be done cordially and heartfully.

What they should do next is to be careful in dealing with other people. They should know that to be tolerant with others, they should consider truth at different angles. It is important to recognize the viewpoints of other people. We could not say, I myself have the truth, and that, they are wrong in their views on reality.

In this way, we could be able to help our culture flourish by not criticizing anything under the sun. We find mediocre in it, and be able to build up a harmonious relationship with others. This could not be taken halfheartedly. If we only hold it superficially, we would possibly be encouraging intolerance to rise up in every aspect of human life. We would be intolerant to freedom of speech for instance, etc. We would not be advocating democracy then. We would not be taking care as to what goes on in the society we are living in. We would be trampling the most valuable principle of human society that is democracy.

In this case, we would be anti-social. We might be like persons living in the world far behind the time, that is, the medieval era, where the institution was intolerant for it did not strive to understand the people contextually. It was full of biases.

To be tolerant, therefore, we must be sympathetic to others. We should not suppress their opinions. We must "do what we want others do unto us." To be able to realize this, we need therefore a good exposure to love and learning. It is here we have to put into practice, first, that which we intended to do, that is to be tolerant with others. Love and education then have a very crucial role in developing the later.

Yet, if we only consider tolerance as an abstract reality devoid of any objectivity, I doubt whether there is any possibility for it to become the spiritual force in our society. But if we consider it as something real, possessing objectivity, as something that can be practiced in our home and or anywhere and or anytime, I am sure we would be able to make a little contribution to our community specifically and to our world generally.

To be tolerant is very significant to our life in the same way as the Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ is significant to our life also. For this, parallel to that of Jesus' call for "love of neighbor," in the gospel. So, before we could be tolerant to others, we should first be tolerant to ourselves in any aspects that we encounter daily.

We must therefore realize our own weaknesses and biases, otherwise, all these negative attitudes in us would just be projected to other people.