To Tolerate or To Love?

We hear more and more that we as Christians must tolerate one another. Tolerate the brother next to you and tolerate the sister next to you and that’s all fine. But the danger in this tolerance lays in what tolerance really means.

Would you like to be tolerated or would you like to be loved? Would you marry somebody because they "tolerate" you or would you need more than tolerance to marry that person?

Well, in my case, I surely need more than tolerance. Stepping into a place where people "tolerate" you can be translated as :"Oh, so you came too, o.k., have a seat, we won’t be here much longer anyway and eventually we’ll cope with you somehow for an hour or two." Now compare this situation with entering your home where your loved one awaits you with open arms saying:"I could hardly wait for you! I missed you so much!Oh, come here!"

It is a tremendous difference between mere tolerance and the love we as Christians should have one for another. You as my sister in Christ and you as my brother in Christ must become so precious to me that I would not only tolerate you but sincerely love you, sincerely being willing to sacrifice myself for you, just as Jesus did if the case. To that kind of love and that profound level of Christian love named "agape" it is not likely to arrive unless we are willing to step out from mere tolerance.

Tolerance might be a first step, but real love is the next one and sacrifice becomes the ultimate expression of Christlike love, the love we need to have for our brothers in Christ.

Tolerance in the frame of real love is surely a different concept. It is a fruit of that love and it should never go separately, but always together, however it goes without saying that when you love someone you will surely tolerate that person.

I remembered this experiment we had to make in the physics class. There were three containers that communicated at the bottom trough a canal and we had to make a simple observation that when we added water into a single container, the water reached the same level in all three of them (in spite of our expectations to see a single one filled and the others not). The communicating containers are a good example of the way love and tolerance work. If you fill the "love container", you’ll automatically have the same level in the "tolerance container".

However, the core of the idea is "love one another" not just "tolerate one another". Love makes tolerance what it is supposed to be and not the other way around. Tolerance without love is like a "resounding gong or a clanging cymbal", in other words it is a sound that you get sick and tired of and you’d rather not hear it.

As the apostle Paul says: "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing."

All tolerance without love is a facade, a painted surface that still has rust underneath. We as Christians are called to live demonstrating the love of Christ shown onto us to every human being we encounter.
I would like to underline this idea once more: would you marry someone who tolerates you or would you rather marry someone who loves you? There is a huge gap between the two!

I will end with the words of the apostle Paul: "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

…And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." May we all choose the greatest of them all: LOVE.