The Paradox of Tolerance | Ep. 48
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jeremy_1_06-02-2025_132838: [00:00:00] I want to explore an idea today that is rarely talked about. In fact, the first time you hear me explain this, you might even think this has no place in Christianity. It is one of those ideas I wish we talked more about. I think we need to make space for, but it's not really a familiar concept for most of us.
Which is why it's perfect conversation for an episode of Cabernet and Pray. In fact, today what we explore might just be a game changer for you and the way that you live out your faith, especially in the midst of community. This is episode 48, the Paradox of Tolerance.
I have never shared this with anybody publicly. There's so many things happen in this conversation right now, thousand years from now, people are gonna be looking at this podcast saying, so this was the breakthrough. If this [00:01:00] was SportsCenter, that would be like such a hot take. Skip Bales would've no idea.
Stephen A. Smith would've no idea what to say. You drop that down. That is so good. The joke I always say is like, how'd you learn so much? You gotta drink a lot. The power of food and beverage to lubricate an environment, resistance to change is hurting the church. I'm not in the camp that God has a penis or a vagina or a body at all.
I mean, the camp to God is at Universal spirit. This is the strangest podcast that I've been on. I don't even know what to do. I'm kind of geeked up about this wine. So this is my second glass and it delivers a little more of a punch than I expected. So if I get a little loopy, it's your fault. You tell me to drink and I just show up.
I'll also say as a confession, I am a lightweight, so I've had like three sips of this wine and I'm already feeling it, so this is fun. You've uncovered the mystery, you've exposed the formula. You've just duct taped together a number of things that aren't normally hanging out together, and I'm here for it.
We're gonna sit down a [00:02:00] table, we're gonna have a glass of wine and some food, and we're gonna talk about the beauty of Jesus. Thank you for the, the hospitality that this particular podcast. Provides folks like myself and I know others to, to be curious around their faith practices. I really appreciate this venue, what you're doing.
It is fun, and yet you dig into the deep stuff. I've heard about your podcast for a long time, and I love that you're a pastor and that you explore the world of faith through wine that's very unique. I will never forget the first time I bought a bottle of wine. By myself, which was yesterday. If you're familiar with Drunk History, I thought it's like drunk theology, so I, oh, I got a little spicy there.
It's the peach wine early. The wine is, here we are. Here we are. Beer, we are, no, it's wine. Jeremy. By the way, drinking this Pinot Grigio at three o'clock in the afternoon is making me even more direct in my communication than I normally would be. I know why you have your guest drink wine. [00:03:00] Makes sense now.
Yeah, I get it. A little bit of liquid courage. You really unleash the beast. I think you've got a good podcast throwing the wine bit in there. That's nice, doesn't it? Cabernet and Prey. Yeah.
jeremy_1_06-02-2025_132838: So let's begin with what I'm drinking. Today. I am going to enjoy a 2021 Soan Estate. Zinfandel Rocky Top. This is a cool bottle. It's even autographed. I'm not really sure. I guess the wine maker autographed, I think I got this at total Wine, so I'm not really sure how I got an autographed bottle, but there you go.
This is from Amador County in California and just a beautiful Zinfandel. I'm a fan of Zinfandel's. It's dark. Broody feels right for a rainy day and. I'm getting black, cherry, blackberry, cinnamon, and cedar, and it almost feels mysterious. [00:04:00] And , this is a fun wine to enjoy, especially with the topic we're gonna get into today.
So that's what I am drinking and hopefully if you're able, you're unlocking your own glass with me as well, and you're enjoying something. So cheers to you and cheers to another episode of Cabernet and Pray.
Ooh, that's good. I like that. Okay. I'm gonna begin with a little illustration and I'm gonna use a wine themed illustration. Feels right. So I, I wrote this up. I feel like this is this is what I wanna invite you to imagine, okay? I want you to imagine that. You're hosting a dinner party and you decide to invite a number of friends of yours over for this dinner party, and you're gonna invite 'em to a wine night.
And so you ask each of them to bring over a bottle of wine that means something to them. And that can be, [00:05:00] whatever they want to take that. But you say, Hey, bring a wine that's meaningful to you over to this wine night. Now imagine that all of these different friends that you're inviting, they don't know each other.
So you're really focused on creating a welcome environment, a safe space for all of these friends that are connected to you, but not necessarily connected to each other, to feel welcome, to feel comfortable in this gathering together. And so you invite 'em all in and each person that comes in, they come in with their bottle of wine and it's.
Something special. And so I picked a few signature ones for our illustration. So imagine someone brings, of course, a pinot noir from Oregon, right? This is, this is the good one. This is your, your friend that knows wine. I'm just kidding. That's my favorite wine. But then someone brings a cabernet.
From California and you're like, awesome. Welcome to the party. Someone brings a Riesling from Germany, like, excellent. This is gonna, offer some variety to what we have. Someone brings a Barolo from Italy, oh, this is so great. And [00:06:00] so you're assembling not only a great group of people, but some really cool, meaningful wines to enjoy.
And then imagine that someone shows up with no bottle of wine. And so you have this exchange a little bit awkward. You're at the door and everybody else has come in holding a bottle, and yet this person's not holding a bottle. And they tell you that they actually don't drink wine. So you're a little confused, like, oh, I, I thought you did.
I didn't know this about you. I'm not sure why you came to a wine night. But then they say, well, in fact, I don't think anyone should ever drink wine for any reason. Now you realize this has moved from awkward to like really awkward. And so you're standing there and you're thinking, okay, what do I say?
But then imagine this person comes into your house and they start taking these bottles that your guests have opened in preparation for the celebration, and they take the [00:07:00] first bottle and they just start dumping it down the drain. And then they go to the next bottle and they start dumping it down the drain, and everybody's in shock.
Everybody's just kinda watching this going, what do we do? Then they start taking the wine glasses and just shattering them one by one, and they start insulting the guests saying, this is disgusting. You should be ashamed of yourself that you would ever like this. Now, if this is you, this is a part of you're hosting, what do you do?
How do you respond to this person and their behavior in this scenario? And the way to think about this question is at what point does your hospitality to one person become hostility toward everyone else? You can see the conundrum there. It reminds me, there's a cartoon drawn by David Hayward that shows a farmer at a [00:08:00] chopping block and around the ax that stuck into the chopping block are a bunch of severed.
Chicken heads and the farmer is holding a chicken with its head cut off and blood is dripping out of where the head would be. And then the farmer turns to the three remaining chickens who are alive and standing there with wide eyes. And he says this, we might disagree, but we can still be friends.
Oh, I love it. You could just imagine how this gets used. And then David added this caption below where he posted this cartoon. He said, it's funny how we can still be friends. Usually comes from the ones holding the acts, right? It's usually that person that's saying, Hey, it's okay. We can get along. We can be fine.
But they're the ones holding the ax. Now let me, let me drill [00:09:00] this in a little bit deeper. Okay. If you're going, okay. I'm starting to see the tension here of maybe why these different scenarios would be problematic. Let's, let's bring it into the church world. What would we do and how would we react if someone were to wear a red MAGA hat to church?
Now you might be thinking this is a hypothetical, bizarre, never gonna happen scenario. But it's not at all. And I can give you a couple illustrations of this. I was once preaching, I think this was probably 2016, and in the front row sits a couple wearing red. MAGA hats and I tell you friends, I was quite thrown off by this and was not prepared for two people to be right in the front, staring right at me with these red maga hats on in the middle of church.
And I just hadn't really anticipated it. I wasn't prepared for it, and I just remember being very caught off guard in that moment. [00:10:00] Now fast forward, when I was a lead pastor in Oregon, I remember proactively having this conversation with some of our team and saying, Hey, what would we do? If someone were to wear this hat, and as you can imagine, there was lots of disagreement on that.
Some people suggested, well, that, that's a very threatening statement, a very threatening position to make. And we would want not want that because that's gonna have other people not feel safe if they see someone wearing that hat. Then other people said, well, what about that person, how do we just exclude them?
And their views aren't, aren't they entitled to, to do that? So this is not a trivial conversation. And in fact, all of this is what is, is known as the paradox of tolerance. Now this was a term first coin by Carl Popper in 1945. So this is not a new concept, but it's something that we don't talk a lot about.[00:11:00]
Here's what he said. In the book, the Open Society and Its Enemies, he said, unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed and tolerance with them.
Now, maybe a little confusing the wording there, but he's arguing that in order to maintain a tolerant society, we must reserve the right to be intolerant of. Intolerance, hence the paradox, right? Hence where you go, this is kind of a weird idea, but he really focused whenever it is violent or seeks to suppress the rights of others, that is when we should stand against it.
We must be intolerant of that. Or the way, I would just say this [00:12:00] succinctly, we must be willing to exclude anyone who is trying to harm others. This is the paradox. Of tolerance. So then the question becomes this, is it Christlike to exclude those who want to harm others? And I can imagine if we could get all the listeners of the show together at the same time, we could all gather in a circle and go around the room.
We might have any variety of responses to this, and maybe you're feeling some tension as you're processing this idea. You might be asking well. Didn't Jesus tell us to love our enemies? Like that was a pretty big deal. How could we intentionally exclude anyone? Like wouldn't this go against what we are called to be as Christians?
Didn't Jesus love everyone? Now, let's unpack this a little bit because it's true. I, I don't think Jesus ever made [00:13:00] an enemy. Out of any person, including many people who he had the opportunity to, you would say, yeah, that person you should have. But he didn't treat people like they were his enemies, but he absolutely did call people out.
He absolutely did draw a line in the sand toward the people who wanted to harm other people. Now the irony is you look at Jesus as an example of this and we figure out how did Jesus navigate the paradox of tolerance. The irony is that the people he excluded were the religious leaders. It was the last group of people you would ever anticipate or guess he was going to exclude.
These were the people that Jesus chose to, to practice the paradox of tolerance on. Now you might be going well. Give me a verse on that. Where, where do we see this? Friends, I'm gonna give you more than a verse. I'm gonna do, I think this is a first in Cabernet and pray. [00:14:00] I'm gonna read an entire chapter for you because there's an entire chapter in the, the, the gospel of Matthew that I would say this is a chapter of the paradox of tolerance and it's all in red, and these are red letters.
And so if you've got a Bible that distinguishes, it's Jesus talking. This is one of those chapters where you'll say, oh, this is a red chapter. There's a little setup there at the beginning of the chapter, and then it's Jesus talking. And I want you to consider in light of what we've been discussing, that this is all the paradox of tolerance.
So I'm gonna, I. Get another sip of wine here and we're gonna read Matthew 23. If you wanna pause this right now, you wanna go get a Bible and follow along? I'm just gonna read the entire thing 'cause it is so good. And when you read this and hear this, in light of the paradox of tolerance, you're gonna see that Jesus absolutely did this.[00:15:00]
Alright. So this is Matthew 23, and we'll just start in verse one, and this is, this is so good. Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, that's the only part not in red. The rest of this isn't red. I. The teachers of religious law and the Pharisees are the official interpreters of the law of Moses.
So practice and obey whatever they tell you, but don't follow their example for they don't practice what they teach. They crush people with unbearable religious demands. And never lift a finger to ease the burden. Now you can imagine people at this point getting a little uncomfortable that Jesus is, is no doubt.
Talking about people who are probably there, probably within earshot, listening to him say [00:16:00] this and he just keeps going. Everything they do is for show on their arms. They wear extra wide prayer boxes with scripture verses inside. And they wear robes with extra long tassels and they love to sit at the head table at banquets and in the seats of honor in the synagogues.
They love to receive respectful greetings as they walk in the marketplaces and to be called rabbi. Don't let anyone call you Rabbi for you have only one teacher and all of you are equal as brothers. And sisters, and don't address anyone here on Earth as father. For only God in heaven is your father. And don't let anyone call you teacher.
For you have only one teacher. The Messiah, the greatest among you must be a servant, but those who exalt themselves will be humbled, [00:17:00] and those who humble themselves will be exalted. And then he's gonna turn it up a notch. Verse 13. What sorrow awaits you, teachers of religious law and you, pharisees, hypocrites, for you shut the door of the Kingdom of heaven in people's faces.
You won't go in yourselves and you don't let others enter either. These are some fighting words. What sorrow awaits you? Teachers of religious law and new Pharisees, hypocrites for you cross land and sea to make one convert and then you turn that person into twice the child of hell that you yourselves are.
Blind guides what sorrow awaits you for. You say that it means nothing to swear by God's temple, but that it is binding to swear by the gold in the temple. Blind fools. What is more [00:18:00] important, the gold or the temple that makes the gold sacred? And you say that to swear by the altar is not binding, but to swear by the gifts on the altar is binding.
How blind? For which is more important, the gift on the altar or the altar that makes the gift sacred. When you swear by the altar, you are swearing by it and by everything on it. And when you swear by the temple, you are swearing by it and by God who lives in it. And when you swear by heaven, you are swearing by the throne of God and by God who sits on the throne.
What Sorrow awaits you. You teachers of religious law and you, pharisees, hypocrites, in case you didn't know how he felt about 'em, for you are careful to tithe even the tiniest income from your herb gardens, but you ignore the more important aspects of the law, justice, mercy, [00:19:00] and faith. You should tithe.
Yes, but you do not neglect the more important things. Blind guides. You strain your water so you won't accidentally swallow a gnat, but you swallow a camel. I mean, this is like spiritual smack talk. What Sorrow awaits You teaches of religious law and you pharisees, hypocrites, for you are so careful to clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you are filthy full of greed and self-indulgence.
You blind Pharisees first wash the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside will become clean too. What sorrow awaits you? Teachers of religious law and do Pharisees, hypocrites, by this point, you can finish these sentences for you are like whitewashed tombs, beautiful on the outside, but filled on the inside with dead people's bones [00:20:00] and all sorts of impurity.
Outwardly, you look like righteous people, but inwardly, your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness. What sorrow awaits you, teachers of religious law and you pharisees, hypocrites, for you build tombs for the prophets your ancestors killed and you decorate the monuments of the godly people, your ancestors destroyed.
Then you say, if we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would never have joined them in killing the prophets. But in saying that you testify against yourselves, that you are indeed the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Go ahead and finish what your ancestors started. Snakes Sons of Vipers.
How will you escape the judgment of hell? [00:21:00] Therefore, I am sending you prophets and wise men and teachers of religious law. But you will kill some by crucifixion and you will flog others with whips in your synagogues, chasing them from city to city. And as a result, you will be held responsible for the murder of all godly people of all time.
From the murder of righteous able to the murder of Zaria, son of Baria, whom you killed in the temple between the sanctuary and the altar. I tell you the truth, this judgment will fall on this very generation. Oh, Jerusalem. Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stone stones, God's messengers. How often I have wanted to gather your children together as a hen, protects her chicks beneath her wings, but you wouldn't let me.
And now look, your house is abandoned and desolate for I [00:22:00] tell you this, you will never see me again until you say. Blessings on the one who comes in the name of the Lord. Woo. That is a doozy. That is Matthew 23. That is Jesus absolutely going after these people who were harming other people and making it very clear they had no part.
In what he was doing and in what God was doing at that time. Now I wanna just highlight a few of the phrases that we just read because it's so significant what Jesus is doing here. Verse 13 says, you shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people's faces. Jesus is showing here that blocking others from God's grace.
Is not a neutral activity. [00:23:00] Whenever someone decides you don't get to experience the grace of God and I'm going to be the one to draw that line, I'm gonna be the one to say you cannot experience it. This is what Jesus is calling out here in verse 13, verses 16 and 17. He says, blind guides, what Sorrow awaits you.
Blind fools. Jesus doesn't say as we might expect, that there are some very fine people on both sides. No, he's very specifically calling them all sorts of names in this chapter. Calls them blind, calls them fools, calls them snakes. Sons of vipers. Calls 'em hypocrites over and over and over again. This is not Jesus being neutral or guarding his words.
He is absolutely giving an onslaught to this group of people who were harming others. Verse [00:24:00] 24, Jesus says, you strain your water so you won't accidentally swallow a gnat, but you swallow a camel here. I think what he's talking about is that fake purity. Is dangerous, and this is what we see with Christian nationalism today.
It's a whole bunch of purity For show. We're going to look religious, we're gonna sound religious, we're gonna act religious, and it is all for show. And this is what Jesus is saying. You are straining your water for a gnat and you're swallowing a camel. Like the absurdity of what you're doing. You may have convinced yourself or a handful of people that, yeah, this is pure and this is holy.
But Jesus is not convinced. God is not duped by this at all. And then verse 29, he says, for you, build tombs for the prophets your ancestors killed and you decorate the monuments of the Godly people your ancestors [00:25:00] destroyed. I hear Jesus saying that they're honoring the past prophets, but they're persecuting present truth tellers.
Jesus calling out anyone who would celebrate the past while crucifying the present. Sound like any rhetoric you may have heard lately? See, inclusion isn't Christ-like when it protects those who hurt other people. I. This is what we find in the example of Jesus, especially in Matthew 23. Jesus was excluding these people precisely because they were actively harming other people.
And if Jesus were to make space for them and say, you know what? Hey, we just agree to disagree on these kind of things, and it's okay, and you can still be a part of this, then that would come at the expense of the people they were hurting. Jesus decides that's [00:26:00] not okay. He's gonna side with them, which means he needs to side against these religious leaders.
Standing with marginalized and vulnerable people will inherently mean standing against the people who make them that way. This is the paradox of tolerance. Now, I would suggest. Right now the church is getting this wrong a lot. There's a lot of examples where the church is missing an opportunity to follow.
Jesus's example in the paradox of tolerance. Whenever we protect an abuser rather than supporting a victim, and the church is doing this. Churches often rush to restore abusers faster than they try to heal the victim. And what this is is just institutional self [00:27:00] preservation. The show must go on. We need to be able to keep doing what we're doing, so let's figure out how do we move on and let's restore this person back, rather than calling out the abuse and standing with the person who's been victimized.
The church gets us wrong whenever we side with a majority against a vulnerable minority. And this could be about race, gender, orientation, theology. Whenever we choose, Hey, we're gonna go with the majority against this vulnerable group, we gotta realize we're we're doing it wrong. Jesus always starts with those on the margins.
That's who he begins with. That's who he is standing with in solidarity. And I would suggest we get this wrong whenever we continue to support and enable systems that exclude others. And this is where we gotta [00:28:00] start asking ourselves some tricky questions. How are we enabling the system to keep excluding others, to keep harming others?
And how are we participating with that? So when you wrestle with the paradox of tolerance, when you begin to make space for this idea and say, okay, we, we, we need to be willing to follow Jesus in this regard. There's a couple difficult questions that I think we're left with and I'll, I'll give you these today for you to wrestle with.
So first question would be, who should we intentionally exclude today? Like based on the paradox of tolerance, who should we. Those of us who are following Jesus intentionally exclude today. And then a follow up question might be, and in what ways should we exclude them? Now, if you're looking for a great answer that Jeremy's gonna give you a, a [00:29:00] perfect way to understand this.
I'm not, I'm gonna leave you to the Holy Spirit. Dear listener, and, and you can wrestle with this, with you and God of God, who should I exclude today and what should that look like? But I will give you a couple filters to use. I'm not gonna leave you high and dry. Here's a couple filters to use and then I'll give you a closing thought here.
Here's filter number one. Who is using religion to control, dominate or dehumanize other people? So when you look around, you go, okay, who is using religion to control, dominate or dehumanize other people that might be a hit for you? That might be an indicator that might be the Holy Spirit nudging you going, Hey, maybe that's someone you need to be willing to exclude for the sake of the people they are harming.
And a second question, who is [00:30:00] demanding power but rejecting accountability? That's another indicator that this is likely someone who is abusing people, and we might be needing to stand up to this person or this group in order to stand with those who are being hurt. Now, this is a heady topic. This is a, a tricky one.
This is one that. It might take a few bottles of wine to process, right? But I will leave you with this thought and, and then godspeed to you on your journey of the paradox of tolerance. Here, here's, here's a closing thought for you. The gospel is always good news to the poor and the marginalized, which means it is therefore bad news to those who benefit from keeping them.
I'll see you on the next episode of Cabernet and [00:31:00] Pray.
