Tolstoy's Cautionary Warning on Human Nature

I try to make tolerance of others number one on my ethical hit parade. I honestly do. And it’s not always easy, especially when dealing with people who have little respect for the concept. The liberal’s credo goes something like this: I can be tolerant of almost any personal freedom except the freedom to be intolerant. Making that exception seems justifiable, even logical. But like it or not, it leaves us in the same place -- being judgmental toward those with whom we disagree.

We, meaning we humans, have a tendency to assign black hats and white hats to the characters of our lives, whether they’re playing on the local, family or international stage. Avoiding hats in shades of gray makes demonizing our enemies and excusing our own behaviors easier. You could call it the “by definition” method. We are good “by definition” so what we do is good. Enemies, like various Arab peoples, get the opposite assignment. This is especially handy for fighting wars. Once the hats are handed out, we can be sure who’s right and who’s wrong.

Sometimes, when it comes to hat assignments, I talk a better game than I practice, which is not to say we should throw discernment on the scrap heap and declare all values equal. Of course not. God has pretty clear values and they’re spelled out in scripture if we’ll only look for them. But when it comes to divisions among political parties and the various branches of the church, it‘s good to remember no one is perfect. I recently came across a quote from Russian author Leo Tolstoy’s novel Resurrection that sounds a cautionary alarm for us all. Tolstoy writes:

“One of the most widespread superstitions is that every man has his own special, definite qualities; that a man is kind, cruel, wise, stupid, energetic, apathetic, etc. Men are not like that. We may say of a man that he is more often kind than cruel, oftener wise than stupid, oftener energetic that apathetic, or the reverse; but it would be false to say of one man he is kind and wise, of another he is wicked and foolish. And yet we always classify mankind in this way. And this is untrue. Men are like rivers: the water is the same in each, and alike in all; but every river is narrow here, is more rapid there, here slower, there broader, now clear, now cold, now dull, now warm. It is the same with men. Every man carries in himself the germs of every quality, and sometimes one manifests itself, sometimes another, and the man often becomes unlike himself, while still remaining the same man.”

To which we might all say, “amen.”