TOLERATION ––– Not Good Enough

Toleration––Not Good Enough

In an effort to end discrimination and prejudice people have been called upon to tolerate those who are different from the majority. As a first step to bringing communal peace tolerating others is a good initial step, but not a final step. Suffering comes from being tolerated, from being in a group but not part of the group. Such surface social inclusion compliments the host group but frustrates the outsider. The new comer can’t help but feel inferior. The host group then fails to receive the full measure of respect and admiration that is possible.

Exclusion may not be deliberate. Skeletal enfolding may take the form of a cursory greeting. (eg. How are you? Response not heard.) People are often so busy with their own lives that they don’t have time to include anyone new. In other cases people are so interested in the lives of family and friends that they fail to take time to know more than the name and maybe work of a new comer never mind their interests.

What’s the harm? The new comer, feeling like a foreigner, may leave the group. While the host group loses the benefit of new skills, passions or points of view, the tolerated individual feels inadequate, perhaps even angry, anger that sees the welcoming group as a hypocrite. If that is as far as the troubled feeling goes an uneasy peace remains.

In Baggage Burdens. the light shines on the personal pain of a shallow enfolding through the limited acceptance of Joseph by a church group.

Welcome But Not Really

“I’m afraid I might end up like Uncle Mike. I’ll die alone, unmarried, without children.”

Jill shook her head. “No, you’re too nice a person.”

 “So was Uncle Mike. You see I live in a community, no near a community, that while they accept me, I know they don’t trust me. They don’t want me near their daughters. It’s like they’ve spread the word that I’m a leper or something. I attend all their social events, and I go to their church, but there is always a multitude of chaperones around their daughters when I’m around.  I’ve seen that’s not the case with other young guys.

I’ve even taken to looking for girl friends in nearby towns where I’ve done carpentry jobs. I’d come up empty, at least until I saw you last fall”

In Joseph’s case there were overt actions that clued him in that he didn’t really fit in the community. Some times the actions are subtler, but they have the same effect. The next blog looks at how Jill felt that she wasn’t part of the congregation. What actions lead her to that belief and how did she eventually respond?

Any club or group can isolate people by just tolerating them.

haiku capsules

                                                                            Welcome to our church.

                                                                            Keep away from our daughters.

That’s toleration.

Join me when I look at being alone in a congregation.