The Blunt Instrument of Zero Tolerance

Zero Tolerance is a concept grounded in atheism.

Yes it is. I don’t care if you disagree.

It’s a catchy idea, isn’t it? This is what happens. A scandal. Outrage. Denial by the culprits. Conviction. Confession. Apologies. Then, just to prove that we really are moral and upright, “zero tolerance”.

There is a power structure in every organization. The power structure is always responsible, in a real way, for what takes place in the organization. An organization that is shown to be rife with sexual harassment and discrimination against women must repair the public damage. Since the people in charge never fire themselves and never subject themselves to onerous rules and regulations and never find themselves at fault, and are perfectly able to cut a deal with their lawyers present when needed, they have to name a few scapegoats in middle management, fire them, and pronounce themselves purified. The company then passes “zero tolerance” rules.

Churches do it too now. Which is really odd, because “zero tolerance” is an insanely atheistic concept.

They can believe in zero tolerance because the essence of zero tolerance is not really zero tolerance. The essence of zero tolerance is that we will no longer make judgments or rational decisions or peruse evidence or measure credibility. There’s no question of not tolerating real sin. What we don’t tolerate is the appearance of sin. We think that if we eliminate the appearance of sin, we eliminate the sin itself.

We will not longer consider either the possibility that a person was wrongly accused, or that they might change, repent, or learn from their mistakes, with a reasonable, proportionate response to the infraction.

Waterloo Christian Reformed Church has “zero tolerance”. If any allegation of any kind of improper behavior is made, the culprit is immediately suspended from position or function in the church, before any investigation is made.

Sounds godly, doesn’t it? We are so holy that we punish people without determining if they have really sinned or not.

It’s the product of atheism. Here’s why.

The essence of Christianity is Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. I can’t and won’t go into a long, detailed theological discourse here, but I think most Christians feel they understand that this sacrifice was to make possible the forgiveness of sins, and bring about the redemption of sinful humans by a just God.

We are not worthy of redemption on our own. We don’t deserve it. We didn’t earn it. It is only through the sacrifice of Christ that we are entitled to it.

Zero tolerance makes sense if you don’t believe in redemption, or grace, or forgiveness. Zero tolerance leaves no room for redemption, no room for forgiveness, or repentance. You are done, toast, finished.

I guarantee you that most Christians in churches that have adopted zero tolerance will tell you that, oh yes, we do forgive the sinner, of course we do, amen, alleluia. And they will tell you, yes, we are all sinners. And they will tell you that if the allegations are proven false, the sinner will be fully reinstated. And the damage to his reputation will magically disappear.

But they don’t mean it. As I have argued before, when Christ demanded that his followers forgive those who wish them evil, he didn’t mean “forgive them, and then punish them anyway. If a man steals your cloak, take it back, and then tell him you forgive him. If a man strikes you on the cheek, hit him on the cheek, and say you forgive him”.

But of course, zero tolerance doesn’t mean that we have zero tolerance for sin at all. We don’t have zero tolerance for greed or materialism or arrogance or self-righteousness, or lust, or hatred, or hard-heartedness, or bigotry. We have zeroed in on one particular area of human behavior– sexuality–and because we’re all rather hysterical about sex and ashamed of our own bodily desires and feelings, we make it the scapegoat. Our church or organization is pure, because we punish people who are inappropriate.

I have learned something else through all this.  Once the leaders in a church become enamored of a certain idea that they want, they will stare at you blankly and nod and give you a few minutes to make your argument but they will not hear a single word.

Rome’s Peculiar Position on Zero Tolerance

As everybody knows, the Roman Catholic Church has a sexual abuse problem. It is besieged by lawsuits from former alter boys and others. It appears that many of the abusers, instead of being punished, were moved to other dioceses. Sometimes, they were ordered to seek psychiatric treatment or counseling, and sometimes not. In many cases, their crimes were covered up and hidden by the church hierarchy. In some cases, the church hierarchy simply denied that anything untoward had happened. In too many cases, priests went on to abuse other children after they had been caught once, twice, or several times.

There might or might not be a distinction to be made between consensual affairs between priests and teenaged boys, and younger boys who clearly could not or did not give consent. The church tried to make that distinction in many cases.

The American Bishops, prodded into action by wide publicity and a public outcry, have proposed a new set of guidelines and rules that is based on the principle of “zero tolerance”. Rome, astonishingly, has rejected it.

I say “astonishingly” because the mass herds of mindless conformists that comprise middle management in most companies and institutions flock to “zero tolerance” like lawyers to litigation. It’s how they earn their bread and butter. It’s the consensus. It’s the gist of popular opinion. It’s the bureaucrat’s hot-tub- a steaming, comfortable wash of feminist theory, righteous conservative paranoia, and muddled legalisms. It means that we are virtuous and pure and strong and moral. It really means, we have no ability to make a rational, reasonable judgment based on facts. If you deny being a witch, then you must be a witch.

Rome worries about two things: that the Bishop’s proposal doesn’t distinguish between types or degrees of abuse, or between real abuse and stupidity, and that it doesn’t leave any room for a rather fundamental component of the Christian faith: grace. In other words, forgiveness. Zero tolerance means that the slightest allegation against a priest, substantiated or not, will result in suspension or worse, and there can be no forgiveness, even for an offender who recognizes his sin and asks for grace.

And it must be said– some of the advocates of “zero tolerance” (like the fundamentalists who wanted Bill Clinton impeached) will argue that they “forgive” the sinner, but not the sin. That is a lie. That is not the Christian idea of forgiveness. Read your bible: when Christ demands that his followers forgive their enemies, he leaves no room for revenge or “justice” or retribution. Someone strikes you on the cheek? You turn the other cheek. You forgive the sinner and you do forgive the sin.

If you forgave someone who had assaulted or robbed you, in Israel in 33 AD, that person was freed: the sentence was over, because you forgave the offender.  Look it up: it’s true.

Rome also has expressed concern about the fact that the zero tolerance policy is adopted, rather wholesale, from public and private institutions in America. The church is not the government or IBM. It takes the word of God as it’s constitution, and the living presence of Christ as it’s inspiration. The American Bishop’s abuse policy sounds much like something that could have come out of McDonald’s Corporation or the YMCA.  If Rome accepted this policy, it would be to admit that the very wellspring of church leadership and authority is incapable of producing a authentic Christian response to the crisis in the church.

Some people would say, well, yes. It can’t. Rome, of course, could never accept that, the same way lawyers could never accept that laws could be simple and understandable.

But I’m not unsympathetic. In fact, I think Rome is right. Zero tolerance is one of the stupidest ideas of our society. It’s a code word, really. It’s bulldozer logic. It gives all of the power to accusers and strips the accused of all recourse. It treats offenses that really are minor the same way it treats serious offenses.

Thus, a kindergarten student is suspended from school and charged with “sexual harassment” for kissing a classmate.  Yes, this really happened.

It is a response to a real problem. There really are people out there who abuse positions of trust for sexual purposes. Too often, those people, when caught, have received trifling punishments, or no punishment at all. Sometimes, the person alleging the abuse received the punishment– losing his or her job, or being accused of lying.

The real solution is to do the hard work of sorting out the trivial from the serious, the truth from exaggeration, the substantial from the trite.

What zero tolerance means is that we now believe that accusers never lie and that is obviously not true, was never true, and never will be true.