Perhaps this is a sequel to my rant on influence. When the view of a test of influence is casted onto the dark side, victims will find themselves unwittingly and, more often then not, unwillingly, invited into the battle of tolerance. Its when you can't stand a certain substance; when your irritated by a certain element in a situative aspect involving relationship, connectivity, unintellegent discrimination and logical dislike. There is no real litmus test to tolerance and theres obviously several different levels to what to be tolerant about. Tolerance is also a variable affected by many other variables and is beeseched upon by not runing a reputation as well.

But while tolerance is associated with being 'right', there are a handful of circumstances whereby its not politically correct; such cases exist on the conversational, social, moral, political and dogmatic levels. But then again, tolerance can be presented in many ways and forms. When someone says he is 'tolerant about your beliefs', he can mean that he is feeling irritated and angry at them and he also implies that he is trying his best to not speak of unshiny gems in your presence. Therefore, tolerance also consists of a rank, with individual level bars each. Therefore, there would be a great difference at feeling tolerant, being tolerant and acting tolerant. Yup, the sincere, the amatuer and the hypocrite.

Since tolerance is so closely linked towards influence, the influencer would be battling to influence the victim and get him to appear sincere so that he would not fall into one of the pits of tolerance that would be potrayed to the former. But those who appear tolerant can be converted; most of the time, we feel tolerant to the act of the converter in the first place anyway.

So tolerance would then relate to one's personal beliefs and then depending on the conflicting idealogies or relative relationships of the beliefs, one would determine what sort of reaction he should take. (This again, depends on his level of 'right'ness)

Then of course, theres the forms of tolerance. From the physical threshole to the strength of one's mind, to the pain one can feel through non-strightforward situations. There have been many yardsticks for tolerance such as endurance tests and reaction experiments. Humans have again associated the attribute of being 'strong' when one is tolerant. Tolerance somehow relates to being someone of good stance and endurance. It relates also to forgiveness; although not mentioned in the process of forgiveness, tolerance is most of the time assumed to be inclusive.

So, what about the relation to christianity? How tolerent should christians be? When we speak of contridicting beliefs, I think tolerance should not be an attribute that would be termed appropirate. Why should we tolerate when the truth is in vain? But then again, we should not be fuming with aggresiveness nor defending it with a you'd-better-believe-it atttiude.

Because, theres a distinction between 'tolerance' and 'love'. And Jesus told us to love others, not to tolerate them. So maybe, sometimes we should redefine the 'rightness' of being tolerant.

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