Everyone, Including You, Is an Intolerant Hypocrite

TOLERANCE IS A THEORY NOT A REALITY

When our facilitator asked the guys in Austin if they thought they were being judgmental of the Christian faith, one responded, “That’s all we’re doing, right?” When she wondered if being judgmental is part of human nature, another ventured it was. Listen to the dialogue that ensued:

“I don’t think being judgmental is bad, personally. I think the way that most people think about it is bad. Yes, it’s a constant. Like you said, it’s human nature. We all look at somebody, we look at a situation, everything, you make judgments and you make your decisions based on those judgments. If we didn’t have any judgments then you would just be an idiot, you wouldn’t do anything for any reason.”

“No sense.”

“Yes, you have to have some kind of understanding of what’s going on, right.”

“You’re making judgment calls, basically.”

“It’s what you do with that judgment and taking other pieces of information through religion that can lead to very negative things. But it can also lead to very positive things. They’re just completely dependent on how you take that information and put it into some kind of action….”

“Sometimes it is perfectly logical, and obviously we have to make thousands and thousands of those calls every day probably, in some way or another. I would say to me, a judgment has to be a leap some way.”

“But when I take that leap and then start condemning other people for it and telling them that they have to be as me, or else.”

“I’m not saying there are not judgments that are inappropriate.”

“Yes. You’ve got that sliding scale where judgment goes from how to live life to how to harm others.”

“I agree with that. I think that it’s not necessarily wrong to think that someone should do something a certain way. Every philosopher, period, has done that. They’ve all thought that their way of thinking was the best way, or maybe not the best but what should people probably do. Anyone who is talking about morals is talking about how they think people should do things. The difference is when you start to go from, ‘I judge people should do this’ to, ‘I judge people do this and unless they do I think this is going to happen to them’ or ‘I’m going to do something to them….’”

“I’ve met some people before, in life, who approach things more from the standpoint of, ‘This is what truth I feel like I’ve found for myself. I’m not going to tell you whether it’s right or wrong because it works for me and that’s as far as I’ll go with it. If you like it and want to play around with it in your life, cool. Otherwise, don’t worry about it.’ Yes, that’s just sharing their own personal experience and that’s, yay, do that all day long.”

These guys had the guts to admit they were being intolerant. The problem? They shifted the argument to say their own intolerance was good but other people’s intolerance was bad.