The Intolerability of Intolerance

The title of the article.

That is what I read on some "memes" page and for those of you that do not know what a "meme" is, let us just call it a joke. For now.
I somehow think that such a statement did not deserve to be at such a page despite the humour
attached to the whole picture it was attached to.

At my age, I have had to do things which I did not have to do alone and my experience tells me that things work well when people work in unison towards a common goal.

Ironically, the same people do not always agree on a common way to do a single thing and sometimes, surprisingly that happens even when they are working towards a common goal. Somehow there are others who do not think that following others'
ideas would work out for some reasons; ranging from the lack of a listening ear to the lust for dominance.

It is to those people that this statement should go out first. Intolerance is intolerable.

When we work towards a common goal with others we need to find a way to being outcome oriented
other than process oriented because most of the time we argue about methods we end up losing precious time and resources.

Another group of people this message needs to
go out to? Politicians of course. The sort of "the rulling rules and the opposition opposes" spirit has killed us with underdevelopment; and I am
sure that is true for several African countries.

Probably some beyond Africa too. Right here in Malawi, we have seen how new regimes abandon whole big projects just to discredit the preceding regime. Necessary? Your answer is as good as mine if you think in terms of progress and if you look at the bigger picture.
Most importantly, the message of the intolerability of intolerance goes to the faith community. Somehow, we have managed to create some religions with the main ones having a thousands of factions within them. I belong to the Christian community and sometimes I get amazed at the sort of intolerance we are hurling towards each other. Right here on Facebook someone invented what he calls the
#ThingsJesusNeverSaid hashtag and one of the things he highlighted was the issue that Jesus never said that people will know His followers by the hate of improper doctrine [but rather by their love]. I don't have to say much on this one, but one statement surely won't hurt.

Jesus left us the great commission and that was to preach the kingdom and make disciples and I do not think Jesus will be pleased when we found a whole church based on anti-denominational doctrines.

The message I am preaching here is that of tolerance. We will have to work with people around us if we have to do anything for the benefit of many and accommodating other people's ideas becomes crucial under these circumstances.

My point? It is good not to be inflexible but rather to learn to listen to what others have to say especially when we are working towards a
common cause; becuase different as our methods might be most of the times we get busy shooting down people who want to achieve
the very things we want to achieve.

Maybe it is high time we forgot the credits and looked at the goal; the bigger picture; the prize at the end of it all.