Beauty and the Beast

[Belle, the Beauty, does not want to come dinner with the Prince, the Beast.]

You can imagine to a degree the Beast's outrage at Belle's "unavailability."  The point I want to pull out of this clip is tolerance, and this point is so crucial for us in the society we live in.  Tolerance seems to be held up as what is mot important today.  When tolerance is held up as the ideal though, to then what is the criteria for tolerance, and what do we mean by it.  And when it is held up as the ultimate then things begin to become muddled because their is no objective standard to go by.  It will then eventually lead to Totalitarianism, because we oriented only by those in power, rather than by reason.  So often people do this today, if you don't accept everything I do then you are not tolerant.   Did the Beast really tolerate what was going in Belle's heart and mind? He tried to be tolerant, doing something outside himself and he did not get the result he wanted, he became intolerant and mean.  He did the same thing as our society by creating a divide then rather than a ground to be able to discuss and reason.  

The case in society often is that we think in ideologies rather than about the people in front of us. We forget that people are not their ideas.  I can love you and yet disagree with your thoughts, and your actions.  The true point of "love is to will the good of the other as other." -St. Thomas Aquinas The Beast did not show love to Belle because he was looking out for his desires, not taking the time to consider hers.  He has not even begun to think about what her situation is like and the struggles she is facing.  He gets angry and storms away and refuses to be open to her in her current situation.  This is the trouble sometimes with the Church and with other organizations - we forget we need to meet people where they are, not where we would like them to be.  Sharing and spreading truth and beauty is not about feeding my ego, it is about something greater than myself.

 We must also recognize that the Beast is not the complete villain here.  He has the opportunity to become a hero, and he actually does. The Beast did something amazing, he reached outside his comfort zone by saying please and trying to be polite.  It was a very big step for him from where he had been before.  We need to celebrate these steps for ourselves and others.  This does not mean that the Beast was in the right, but we can forgive his anger, and approve of his stepping outside his comfort zone.