Tolerance is garbage, think Love…

I know I tend to write a lot about Love, and for you who are trying to figure out if you should eat the refined coconut oil vs. the virgin unrefined, all this love talk doesn’t help!  However, I just need to write a bit about it, and honestly, I bet if most of you would take a small step in the direction of love, vs. diet, you would get bigger results!

My wife grew up for her first five years in California, outside of LA in the town of Tujunga.  She moved away with few memories, but enough to call it her first home still.  She had a childhood friend whom she had doen everything with for about four of those five years, and that included joint family vacations.  When Laura and I just started dating (I was 15 at the time) her friend from California, Deana, came out to Buffalo to visit for two weeks.  That was the first of two times in my life that I got to spend any time with her.  The second was on my honeymoon (24 yrs old now) on our way back from Hawaii, we spent three days driving along the California coastline.

We saw Deana and met her husband and her daughter.  Laura has stayed in touch, and facebook has helped.  Deana later had a son followed again by another girl.  Deana’s family just made national news this past week.  Her son Drew ran from the roof of a three story building at his school during lunch and killed himself.  It has been a difficult time for Laura to know how to help her, and obviously an eternally difficult time for Deana.  The news stories suggest that it was depression, and the investigators involved believe that.  Though Deana and her husband are confident that it was due to bullying.

My thought, as we have been hearing more and more about bullying, and the issues associated with it, the term tolerance often comes out.  We need to accept people for whom they are and tolerate difference; or there is a “no tolerance” policy for bullying.  The term flies on both sides of the fence, and it is still falls short.  Christ didn’t walk the earth tolerating people.  Today I walked by a man digging in a garbage can for food outside of Zoo Atlanta.  Is it special that I tolerated him as I walked by?

Love and tolerance are so in opposition.  Listen to this, I have a lot of love for everyone in my heart, I tolerate other religions without question as I have many friends who do not believe that Christ is the lone Messiah as I believe, but I actually love these friends.  And my actions show it.  So WHY do I not show love to someone else who really needs it?  I know that I probably do show love more than many, but still, it is SOOOO far from being enough.  And here is the real problem, if we are teaching tolerance, not love… then HOW far short will a teenager fall from actually loving?

Laura spoke with Deana this evening, this is a rough time for her, but she is on a mission.  She is thinking like I am thinking.  That they need to start teaching compassion.  That high school kids really stink at getting the “high” of helping, but if they are taught that, if they are pushed into environments where they get a chance to help someone, then they can get the “high” of helping, and get hooked on it!  I love this idea, I love this concept.  And though I don’t know exactly what their plan is to help drive the education of compassion, I know I am all for it.

So skip that tolerance crap, start to love!  Drew’s memory deserves it.  Their new foundation is getting started, it is called “Drew’s Voice”, and as long as they continue to push the idea of teaching and nurturing compassion and love, I am on it!  Be well, be blessed, love someone today!  – Dr. E