Tolerance is usually regarded as one of the great liberal values of modern society. People indeed often equate tolerance with freedom. But they’re not necessarily the same. Freedom is a greater liberty by far than is tolerance. Tolerance can mean accepting something as inevitable while totally disagreeing with it. Tolerance can mean conniving with something because it may be more convenient than taking a public stand on the matter. In circumstances such as that tolerance actually become an evil stance. Many of the German churches accepted the persecution of the Jews under Hitler because they found tolerance of Hitler’s values convenient. Indeed this Sunday in many countries is being kept as a Jewish Holocaust memorial day, a day of penitence for the sin of silent complicity. And the German churches continued to find it convenient not to protest when gypsies suffered; and when even the opposition political parties were put down. So that by the time the German Churches themselves began to be scrutinised there wasn’t anybody left to dissent. I often wonder if the Irish Churches might have acted any differently in similar circumstances?

The death of a young immigrant

A young Asian man in this city was so brutally assaulted this week that he died of his injuries. His crime was to be non-Irish, to have distinctively different skin colour and facial features from the yobbos that attacked him. He was part of a community that has lived in Ireland for many years, a community that has worked long hard hours so that it has never been a burden on the state. All this, in probable total contrast to the yobbos who attacked him, who might possibly rather draw the dole than do a day’s work. The Gardai questioned some locals but no one was charged. Rightly in this country, you can’t charge anyone with a crime unless you can produce real evidence of the crime. So we’re unlikely ever to know whether or not the young men detained could possibly have been involved in any way in this act of shame. That the death of a young immigrant to Ireland could have happened at all must be acknowledged as an act of shame. We have to ask ourselves if in any way we as individuals bear some of the responsibility? Do we turn a blind eye to many events because it’s less trouble? This event is but one of many occasions of racial abuse that have become unhappily frequent in our society. Most of us have heard people comment on the growth of ethnic areas in the city, as if this were intrinsically a bad thing. Perhaps the need for protection in the ethnic communities has become a very real thing.

Do we have consciences of convenience?

People’s perceptions of what is right or wrong can be very much influenced by their own environment. People’s perception of what is freedom is also often influenced by what they feel is good or bad for them. Authority in any public situation can be undermined by enough people waging a media campaign which itself may be true or false. Now undermining authority can be a valuable and constructive thing if authority itself has been abused. There’s a long Christian tradition that defends overthrowing a corrupt society. But a watchful eye is always needed to observe both accuser and defender. Anarchy, or demoralisation in the authority concerned, is what will happen if the accusations are unfounded. The real motives are all important.

The beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount in today’s gospel at first sight seem a positive verbal goldmine for the propagation of the liberal idea of tolerance. But is this the total teaching of Christ? Is it even the fullness of Christian freedom? Each of occasions of blessedness in the Beatitudes can only happen when they are a part of the freedom for which Christ had to lay down his own life and die to achieve. Freedoms are hardly won, but can be easily lost if we allow a bland tolerance of ‘whatever goes’ to guide our lives. A gospel of wholeness is more difficult to achieve. The Churches themselves have lived by this even as they ask it of others.

It’s been well said that if you keep telling people what they must do eventually, like a nagging spouse, you will numb them into despair; you will turn the Gospel into a shaggy replica of the world’s irreligious and nagging moralism, with its oceans full of good advice. But tell people what they are, of their dignity as made in the image of God and that their sins are a wicked perversion of their true nature… tell them that the world with its sorrows is still God’s world, though its true order is upside down… tell them that they can do all things through Christ, because in him all the powers of their nature are directed and brought to fruition… tell them this and you will help revive hope in this generation.

Now that is real hope, real tolerance, real freedom to be what you’re called to be. Our God is the God of true freedom – freedom for all, not just for ourselves. And freedom grows, not out of some intrinsic human goodness; it grows only from our acceptance and acknowledgement of God's mercy and God’s guidance in our lives. Micah’s prophetic words in our Old Testament reading sum up our calling: Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God. If that had happened this week one young Asian man might still be alive and well and living in Dublin.