students of jesus

To hell with tolerance, to heaven with love. 

Tolerance is the demand of the oppressed for the grudging acceptance of the oppressor. Tolerance demands a place at the table even when the table is full of strife. Love is a feast of goodwill and plenty, always renewed. Tolerance is pocket-change. Love is lasting wealth.

Love surrounds me in a tide of patience and kindness. I’m not owned by envy or pride, or the manipulation that flows from others seeking their own way. Surround me with love and I live protected, I feel trusted, and I become the object of hope. Tolerance will let me go my own way—even when I’m a fool. Love is slow to anger; even in the presence of love’s anger I know my good is at stake.

Try this on for size: “God so tolerated the world that he left us alone, that whoever believed in him could be free do whatever seemed right.” Who would remember such a phrase for even a minute? But “God so love the world he gave his only begotten son so that whoever believed in him would not perish but have eternal life”? These words will live forever.

Love is relentless in giving, steadfast in promise. Tolerance says “Whatever.”

If we align ourselves with love we align ourselves with cosmic victory, because God is love. Tolerance is earth-bound: a wooden idol carved by men. Love keeps company with faith and hope; tolerance says we can live apart from one another, isolated from true communion.

Love is no theory; it is power in practice: Dr. King chose non-violence as a strategy, but love was his motive: “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend. We never get rid of an enemy by meeting hate with hate; we get rid of an enemy by getting rid of enmity. By its very nature, love creates and builds up. Love transforms with redemptive power.” Tolerance changes the surface of things; it transforms nothing. It leaves the heart captive and cold.

You may object. “Love is an ideal,” you say. “Ideals cannot live in the heat of life.” Perhaps—except the Ideal became reality and thrived in the glare of the desert sun.

We find love when we turn to a source beyond ourselves. Governments can mandate tolerance, but never love. The strongest man cannot will himself to love. No religion can manufacture love: no spiritual regimen will create love on its own. Love is discovered and received. The good news is the discovery of a source of love, never ending, always churning, poured out in every moment and every place.

Love calls: come search with me.