The Role Of Tolerance In Modern World

With the time I have spent learning and growing as a human being. My conclusion to the world's problems, global warming, politics and all the other things in this world can be all solved by, Tolerance.

Now, Tolerance is something we must leave in this world as without it we would have a world full of jumbled up arguments. Like a yarn ball overlapping all the issues that started the problems and creating new ones, until everything is a huge jumble of messed up string. Or for us, the path of tomorrow. I have witnessed many incidents of intolerance, leading to bitterness. And personally, I have something to share. It had all started back in the early days of 2015 when I just turned 10, and my young brain was awakening to the world of religious controversies simultaneously, the spread of atheism. I was a public school student. You know a regular school, no religious principle, gender-issue or anything. Students of all nationalities castes and religion were my classmates.

However, all of the students there found it amusing that people had the courage to challenge God. Being a child of reasoning I always wanted a reason to follow beliefs. However, having a group of popular religious kids as my friends hadn't helped my case. I didn’t really have an opinion on such things such as atheism, but one day when my friends and I were partaking in an enthusiastic conversation on religion I blurted out the question: “What’s the problem with atheism?" Silence followed the question and all eyes turned to me. I remember that was the last time I spoke with them. I had no idea that one simple question, would cost me the people I called friends.

Since I couldn't take back what I had done I was planning to try and make it up to my colleagues. So I went home that day and all day I was thinking of ways to do that. And my parents noticed of course and decided to ask me about everything that I had been thinking about. So after about an hour of explaining. My parents understood what I did but despite them being religious they asked me to be bold in what I stand for.

At the time I was contemplating what they had said and apologizing but what my parents said was like an opening of a new route that I could take to make things better for myself and maybe open up new routes for others in the process. In the next few months of school, we would turn out to have a project that was conveniently on religion since no one would work with me, teacher forced me to join my "friends'" group and so we began to work. No one spoke a word on what had happened before, we all just stuck to the project with no conversation or nothing just a room full of silence. Since people didn't want me to talk about religion I wasn't chosen to speak, however, on the day of our presentation, our chosen presenter could not make it to school so I had to fill in for him.

It didn't bother me that they hated me. With my tolerance, I had dealt with their indifference but, the look on their faces conveyed no belief in me. And to their astonishment, I not only presented the religious speech in the original format with conviction but did it well enough for my classmates to accept me with my opinions. The next day when I came back to school people were hesitant to speak to me as they felt that it would be difficult. After a while, after realizing how judgmental and intolerant they were they came to me and apologized. At the same time, I had learned that my tolerance had paid off in gaining me the friends I had thought I had lost.

“Tolerance isn’t about not having beliefs it is about how your beliefs lead you to treat people who disagree with you.” Timothy Keller