Exclusion and EmbraceLecture Notes1

The Cross, the Self, and the Other

Images of Three Cities
A World without the Other Social Arrangements, Social Agents How should we approach the problems of identity and otherness and of the conflicts that rage around them? Some of the main ideas have been these: Idea (1)=Universalist Option: We should control the free spread of differences, and instead support the spread of universal valuesreligious values or values of modern thinking. Only these can promise peace among people. Approving of differences without common values will lead to chaos and war rather than to rich and fruitful diversity. Idea (2)=Communitarian Option: We should celebrate the differences that make our own cultures special, and encourage differences between groups of people. The spread of universal values would lead to oppression and boredom rather than peace and prosperity. Idea (3)=Postmodern Option: We should escape both universal values (Idea 1) and group identities (Idea 2) and find freedom in the ultimate independence of individuals. We should create spaces (free opportunities) in which people can keep creating larger and freer selves by finding new identities and losing old ones. They will be like wandering nomads, sure of nothing, always on the move and never doing much more than making moves.

Intro for 2nd session Forgiveness, reconciliation is one of the most important things for us to practice, think on, of all that we have covered in ethics class. It is right in the center of the gospel, who we are to be as disciples of Christ and agents of reconciliation. Other things are undoubtedly important, but this is central. It has a great impact on other areas such as marriage, war, business, race relations, and even environment. I think we tend to underestimate the importance the NT gives to unity, reconciliation, and love. These are not optional, extras, but fundamental to the Gospel. Matthew 6:15 But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. John 13:35 By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. In other words, if people come up to us and cast in our teeth the judgment that we are not Christians because we have not shown love toward other Christians, we must understand that thy are only exercising a prerogative which Jesus gave them. (Shaeffer, Mark of the Christian, p 13) Jn 17:20-21 "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. We cannot expect the world to believe that the Father sent the Son, that Jesus claims are true, and that Christianity is true, unless the world sees some reality of the oneness of true Christians (Schaeffer, p. 15) The Cross at the Center Solidarity with Victims
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These notes are extracted from the main file of Exclusion and Embrace notes in \myfiles\books

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Atonement for Perpetrators as well as Victims There is solidarity, identification, that solidarity cant be separated from self-giving. God doesnt swoop down and blast the wrong-doers, but is drawing them to himself as well. (Father, forgive them) All sufferers can find comfort in the solidarity of the Crucified; but only those who struggle against evil by following the example of the Crucified will discover him at their side. A plain fact: if we are to follow Christs command, then we cannot be out for revenge, for destroying the ones who hurt and destroy. If we are out for revenge, then we are on the side of the destroyer, not the reconciler. The Scandal and the Promise The Scandal of the Cross for Modernity (27) Modernity believes that the world can be healed, and indeed is on the way to triumph. Evil will be vanquished. Modernity trusts in social control and rational thought. But the cross represents self-imposed weakness and self-giving.
But if design and argument are not to create larger wounds than the ones they are seeking to heal, design and argument will themselves need to be healed by the weakness and foolishness of the self-giving love. This weakness is stronger than social control and this foolishness is wiser than rational thought.

Distance and Belonging

Complicity (35) The church has been involved in oppression and exclusion. We have become so absorbed in our own cultures that we are blind to the evil of exclusion. Cultural differences loom larger than our unity in Christ, though the churches do not see their slavery to culture. Churches are so submerged in their cultures that they are unable to serve as peacemakers. They are so influencedblinded evenby the values of the culture around them, that they end up adding religious authority to social conflicts, rather than bringing different parties together. Departing (38) Abraham as the prototype, leaving his land He left his home for a God who is the God of all the world; universal. Without Leaving (43) (Paul) The end of genealogy as a privileged locus of access to God; faith in Christ replaces birth into a people. Does not erase differences or submerge them all into some spiritual essence. We are one in the body of Christ. Baptism and Eucharist. One body with many members, and all are not the same. What the Spirit does erase (or at least loosen) is a stable and socially constructed correlation between differences and social roles. This is not the end of tribes and peoples. No one can stand in empty space with no cultural traditions. At the same time, no culture can retain its own tribal deities; religion must be deethnicized so that ethnicity can be de-sacralized. Paul deprived each culture of ultimacy in order to give them all legitimacy in the wider family of cultures. Culture, Catholicity, and Ecumenicity (50) Given that Christians can depart without leaving, what is the point or purpose of that? What is the advantage of the distance from our culture given when we become born of the Spirit?

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There is a reality that is more important than the culture to which we belong. It is God and the new world that God is creating, Christians take a distance from their own culture because they give the ultimate allegiance to God and Gods promised future. We are not simply cut off from culture, floating in space, but we have given allegiance to a new kingdom, that of God. It creates a space in us to receive the other. A catholic personality is a personality enriched by otherness, a personality which is what it is only because multiple others have been reflected in it in a particular way. The distance from my own culture that results from being born by the Spirit creates a fissure in me through which others can come in. The Spirit unlatches the doors of my heart saying: You are not only you; others belong to you too. A catholic personality requires a catholic community. the many churches in diverse cultures are one, just as the triune God is one. No church in a given culture may isolate itself from other churches in other cultures declaring itself sufficient to itself and to its own culture. It entails a judgment against evil in every culture. There is evil in every culture, and we are not to just accept that or incorporate it into our identity. Jesus accepted people but judged their sins.

Exclusion (57)
The Dubious Triumph of Exclusion (58) The myth of modern Europe is that more and more people are brought into the fold of democratic, free society. Inclusion. But this is questionable for several reasons: much violence has accompanied the expansion (e.g. colonial conquests); the very goodness, civilization, and rationality are themselves sources of evil (quotes Nietzsche & Foucault) via repression, exclusion of differences (examples?). Tangent on the fact that we cant just throw away all boundaries (Foucault) as that would sink us in chaos.

Differentiation, Exclusion, Judgment Differentiation Image taken from Cornelius Plantinga of creation as a series of separating and bindings. Light from darkness, water from land etc.; humans bound to creation; male bound to female; humans as image-bearers of God. Differentiation consists in separating-and-binding. Identity is a result of the distinction from the other and the internalization of the relationship to the other; it arises out of the complex history of differentiation in which both the self and the other take part by negotiating their identities in interaction with one another. Exclusion Exclusion as a distortion or transgression of binding-and-separating. Can be (a) cutting bonds that should connect (b) obliterating otherness (i.e. assimilation) (c) subjugation (d) indifference. Judgment
Rorty and an ironic stance. But an ironic stance is clearly not what people suffering hunger, persecution, and oppression can afford. For they know that they can survive only if judgment is passed against those who exploit, persecute, and oppress them. A judgment that names exclusion as an evil and differentiation as a positive good, then, is itself not an act of exclusion. To the contrary, such judgment is the beginning of the struggle against exclusion.

The Self and its Center (69) The self becomes de-centered and re-centered on Christ in the conversion process. I am crucified with Christ

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The Anatomy and Dynamics of Exclusion Jesus re-named behavior falsely labeled as sinful, and re-made sinners. In renaming, he broke down false exclusionary barriers. But he did not deny the reality of sin; rather he forgave and transformed sinners. Central to both strategies for fighting exclusion is the belief that the source of evil does not lie outside of a person, in impure things, but inside a person, in the impure heart. The idea that evil is situated outside is a big source of exclusion and sin. The pursuit of purity by excluding others, without recognizing the sin in ourselves. Pure race, pure blood, pure government etc. Practice of exclusion: Exclusion as elimination Exclusion as assimilation: you can keep your life, if you give up your identity. Exclusion as domination Exclusion as abandonment: 1st world to 3rd; suburbs to cities; cities to slums; rich to poor Language of exclusion. Role of dysphemisms: first cast the other in dehumanizing terms (dirty, lazy, parasites, sluts), then they almost demand to be excluded, purified. Emotion of exclusion: Emotional response can be hate or indifference. Indifference can be worse than hate. Whereas the fire of hatred flares up in the proximity of the other and then dies down, the cold indifference can be sustained over time, especially in contemporary societies. Why do we hate or turn our eyes away? (77) We are uncomfortable with strangeness in ourselves. Scapegoating. We are uncomfortable with anything that blurs accepted boundaries, disturbs our identities. Others strike us like objects that are out of place, like dirt that needs to be removed in order to restore the sense of propriety to our world. We desire what others have. Isa 5:8: Ah, you who join house to house,/who add field to field,/until there is room for no one but you,/and you are left alone in the midst of the land! [see also James 4:1 3]

Contrived Innocence (79) The clashing perspectives give rise to a glaring incongruity: in a world so manifestly drenched with evil everybody is innocent in their own eyes. Even confession is couched in accusation and self-exoneration. perpetrators tirelessly generate their own innocence, and do so by the double strategy of denying the wrongdoing and reinterpreting the moral significance of their actions Guilt of the innocent Those who are the victims are seldom completely innocent. Even if they are in the beginning, they will be corrupted by violence. Evil generates new evil as evildoers fashion victims in their own ugly image. We naturally want to believe in the innocence of the victims, [because somehow it makes a better moral story?]. But Nothing suggests the innocence of the victims except our deep desire for the wronged person not to be in the wrong and the victims own tenuous sense of innocence. Jane Fonda fallacy: the idea that if one side is evil, the other must be good. So victims become good in our eyes. Solidarity in sin does not mean that all sins are equal, or that there are not victims and perpetrators. But it does mean that we do not have a stance of purity and sinlessness from which to judge others. (cf. Rom. 1)

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The Power of Exclusion (86) Violence breaks out, and then runs wild with a life of its own. [Kaduna]. Nobody is in control. The strategy and problems may have been understood or planned, but like a blast of explosive, there is a point where evil runs rampant. Ordinary people who had no particular desire to kill, maim and rape suddenly begin doing those things. A dormant beast in them was awakened from its uneasy slumber. What completes the vicious cycle is that The beast in others, however, enraged the beast in them. The moral barriers holding it in check broke down and it went after revenge. In resisting evil, they were trapped by evil. Jung said, the wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts. The Powers Institutions, governments, nations etc. Basically good, but easily turn toward power and domination. Background cacophony of evil exists all the time [with no particular direction?] and is just the way things work. Now and then, a confluence of directors orchestrate some of those themes in synchrony, bring them to the front, and start a wave of exclusionary violence. [Nigeria is seems to be at the edge of that continuously.] Why do people believe the lies? Because they tell people that all is well, and people want to hear that they are well, that the future is bright, not to be called to repentance. False prophets who cry peace, peace. [Jer 6:14, 8:11, Ezek 13:10]. Mk 2:17, the well dont need a physician; people dont want to face the radical cost of cure. Cains Assault (92) unlike the typical mythological texts, which take the perspective of the perpetrators in order to legitimize their deeds, the story of Cain and Abel takes the perspective of the victim and condemns the perpetrator . The story takes the perspective of the victim not only to condemn the perpetrator, as Girard claims, but at the same time to contravene the tendency of the victim to turn into perpetrator. Its greatness lies precisely in that it combines a clear judgment against the perpetrator with the commitment to protect him from the rage of the innocent victim. The names: Cain, the name of honor which means to produce, to bring forth; the birth of the second was a matter of course and he received a name whose meaning marked him as inferior: Abel, breath, vapor, sheer transience, worthlessness, nothingness. Envy: First came envy that Abel, who was clearly nobody, should be regarded, and he, Cain, who is clearly somebody, should be disregarded. Cain was confronted with Gods measure of what truly matters and what is truly great. Since he could not change the measure and refused to change himself, he excluded both God and Abel from his life. Anger: broke communion with God (excluded God) Broke community bonds Let's go out to the field where he would not have to have his work judged by others. Ultimate exclusion: murder. Why was it done? Cains identity was constructed from the start in relation to Abel; he was great in relation to Abels nothingness. When God pronounced Abel better, Cain either had to readjust radically his identity, or eliminate Abel. The power of sin rests less on the insuppressible urge of an effect than on the persuasiveness of the good reasons, generated by a perverted self in order to maintain its own false identity. Sin is not so much a failure of knowledge as a misdirection of will which generates its own counter-knowledge. To commit sin is not simply to make a wrong choice, but to succumb to an evil power. Before the crime, Cain was both a potential prey and a potential master of a

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predator called sin; Cain murdered, because he fell prey to what he refused to master. Geography of sin: outside the public sphere; no witnesses, no help, no communal witnesses. Ideology of sin: functions to deny both the act and the responsibility for it, preferably with a touch of humor. Also acts to quiet the conscience; self-justifying. Gods four insertions or interventions into the story: (1) warning to Cain; (2) questions of Cain after the murder; (3) judgment; (4) mercy, placing the mark, after Cain had acknowledged responsibility.

Embrace
Gods reception of hostile humanity as a model for our relations with each other. Four elements in the process: repentance; forgiveness; making space for the other; healing of memory. The Ambiguities of Liberation Modern model built on idea of freedom. Oppression and liberation. Divides humanity into those who are oppressors or oppressed. The categories of oppression and liberation provide combat gear, not a pin-striped suit or a dinner dress; they are good for fighting, but not for negotiating or celebratingat least not until the oppressors have been conquered and the prisoners set free. The longer the conflict continues the more both parties find themselves sucked into the vortex of mutually reinforcing victimization, in which the one party appears more virtuous only because, being weaker, it has less opportunity to be cruel. The categories oppression/liberation seem ill-suited to bring about reconciliation and sustain peace between people and people groups. Adieu to the Grand Narratives (105)
The Politics of the Pure Heart (111)

Injustice leads to hate. Quote on pg. 111. I am a Muslim, and I am thirty five years old. To my second son who was just born, I gave the name Jihad. So he would not forget the testament of his motherrevenge. The first time I put my baby at my breast I told him, May this milk choke you if you forget. So be it. The Serbs taught me to hate. For the last two months there was nothing in me. No pain, no bitterness. Only hatred. I taught these children to love. I did. I am a teacher of literature. I was born in Ilijas and I almost died there. My student, Zoran, the only son of my neighbor, urinated into my mouth. As the bearded hooligans standing around laughed, he told me: You are good for nothing else, you stinking Muslim woman... I do not know whether I first heard the cry or felt the blow. My former colleague, a teacher of physics, was yelling like mad, Ustasha, ustasha. And kept hitting me. Wherever he could. I have become insensitive to pain. But my soul? It hurts. I taught them to love and all the while they were making preparations to destroy everything that is not of the Orthodox faith. Jihadwar. This is the only way.... Jesus called both oppressor and victim to repentance Of course Jesus rebuked the oppressors. However he did not come just to comfort and encourage the poor, but to call them to repentance. I came to call not the righteous but sinners, and he forgave sins. Some would object that the sins of the victims, the oppressed, are non-existent, or are the fault of the oppressors, are understandable and excusable. In Gods sight, though, all are sinners, and we each have responsibility for our own attitudes and actions. The truly revolutionary character of Jesus proclamation lies precisely in the connection between the hope he gives to the oppressed and the radical change he requires of them.

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Because little Jihads along with their mothers and fathers need not only material and psychological help, but release from the understandable but nonetheless inhumane hatred in which their hearts are held captive. Without repentance, victims are caught in the cycle of sin sparked by those who sin against them. Repentance is a chance for freedom. Repentance thus empowers victims and disempowers the oppressors. It humanizes the victims precisely by protecting them from either mimicking or dehumanizing the oppressors. Without a politics of the pure heart every politics of liberation will trip over its own feetthe son who was named Jihad will infuse another mother with a hatred so pure that she too will inscribe revenge into the very identity of her offspring. Whether we are aggressors or victims, genuine repentance demands that we take ourselves, so to say, out of the mesh of small and big evil deeds that characterize so much of our social intercourse, refuse to explain our behavior and accuse others, and simply take our wrongdoing upon ourselves: I have sinned in my thoughts, in my words, and in my deeds, as the Book of Common Prayer puts it. [this is from next section] The Practice of Forgiveness (119) We seek revenge rather than forgiveness. It is built into the fabric of our lives. Something has been taken from us, we have been made not-whole, we have suffered, and we yearn to see that injury made right. Why is there the spiral of revenge? (1) differences in perspective, with both parties considering themselves the victim (2) irreversibilitythere is no way to undo the offense, even if the perpetrator wants to. If we could undo actions, that would solve the problem. But since we cant undo them, no amount of repentance or even restitution can fix things. Forgiveness is the only way out of this vicious cycle. A genuinely free act which does not merely re-act, forgiveness breaks the power of the remembered past and transcends the claims of the affirmed justice and so makes the spiral of vengeance grind to a halt. In the framework of strict restorative justice, no reconciliation is possible. On the contrary, the pursuit of such justice will deepen the conflict and reinstate the compulsion to evil deeds. Hence the need for forgiveness. How to forgive in the face of rage and demand for justice? Example of imprecatory Psalms. Place ones anger and demand for revenge in the presence of God. In Gods presence, we eventually see the enemy as another human, and ourselves as common sinners. Hidden in the dark chambers of our hearts and nourished by the system of darkness, hate grows and seeks to infest everything with its hellish will to exclusion. In the light of the justice and love of God, however, hate recedes and the seed is planted for the miracle of forgiveness. Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community of humans even as I exclude myself from the community of sinners. But no one can be in the presence of the God of the crucified Messiah for long without overcoming this double exclusionwithout transposing the enemy from the sphere of monstrous inhumanity into the sphere of shared humanity and herself from the sphere of proud innocence into the sphere of common sinfulness. Space for the Other: Cross, Trinity, Eucharist (125) Forgiveness is the boundary between exclusion and embrace, but it is not the completion. Forgiveness may end with the people going their separate ways, not as friends. The next step is reconciliation. Much more than just the absence of hostility sustained by the absence of contact, peace is communion between former enemies. At the heart of the cross is Christs stance of not letting the other remain an enemy and of creating space in himself for the offender to come in. Forgiveness is therefore not the culmination of Christs relation to the offending other; it is a passage leading to embrace.

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Christs response is neither inability for enmity (leaving perpetrator victorious; Nietzsche) nor enmity (desire for revenge, victim becomes perpetrator), but enmity toward enmity, i.e. the refusal to become entrapped in hatred and hostility. Meaning of the Eucharist, as Gods making-space-for-us-and-inviting-us-in. We would most profoundly misunderstand the Eucharist, however, if we thought of it only as a sacrament of Gods embrace of which we are simply the fortunate beneficiaries. Inscribed on the very heart of Gods grace is the rule that we can be its recipients only if we do not resist being made into its agents; what happens to us must be done by us. Having been embraced by God, we must make space for others in ourselves and invite them ineven our enemies. Orthodox liturgy at the end of paschal Matins: This is the day of resurrection. Let us be illumined by the feast. Let us embrace each other. Let us call Brothers even those that hate us, and forgive all by the resurrection. Paradise and the Affliction of Memory (131) Idea that forgetting is as important as remembering. The memory of wrongdoing superimposes on the image of the other a narrative of transgression; even a forgiven sinner is still a past sinner if her sins are not forgotten. Vivid or clouded, the memory of exclusion suffered is itself a form of exclusiona protective one to be sure, but an exclusion nonetheless. A remembered wound is an experienced wound. When the tears have dried up and death and pain are no more, what will happen with the memories of the wounds suffered and of the inhumanity of those who inflicted them? Even in Gods new world, we will either have to look back and see sense by making the impossible claim that all suffering was justified, or be deeply troubled by the non-sense of evil. Passing through the stages of mourning, we must ultimately reach the stage of nonrememberingin the arms of God. . Only nonremembering can end the lament over suffering which no thought can think away and no action undo. Mourning and crying and pain will be no more not only because death will be no more but also because the first things have passed away (21:4)from experience as well as from memory, as the text in Isaiah from which Revelation quotes explicitly states: the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind (65:17; cf. 43:18). The Drama of Embrace (140) Opening arms Desire for the other. I do not want to be myself only, isolated. A sign that I have created space for the other. A sign of a fissure in the self. They signify an aperture on the boundary of the self. An invitation. Waiting Opening the arms is an invitation, but not an assault, not an act of invasion. The waiting is an important step. Before [the embrace] can proceed, it must wait for desire to arise in the other and for the arms of the other to open. Waiting is a sign that, although embrace may have a one-sidedness in its origin (the self makes the initial movement toward the other), it can never reach its goal without reciprocity (the other makes a movement toward the self). Closing arms It takes two pairs of arms for one embrace; with one pair, we will either have merely an invitation to embrace (if the self respects the other) or a taking in ones clutches (if there is no such respect). In an embrace a host is a guest and a guest is a host.

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The balance of maintaining ones one boundaries and respecting those of the other. Binding and separating. a soft touch is necessary. I may not close my arms around the other too tightly, so as to crush her and assimilate her, otherwise I will be engaged in a concealed power-act of exclusion; an embrace would be perverted into a bear-hug. Similarly, I must keep the boundaries of my own self firm, offer resistance, otherwise I will be engaged in a self-destructive act of abnegation. Release The end is not to make two into one new being, to fuse them. Without the release, embrace would signal the final disappearance of the I into the we that is characteristic not only of totalitarian regimes but of many cultural movements and family relations. Four notable features of a successful embrace (145) Fluidity of identities: As individuals and communities, we live in overlapping social territories. Our selves and our communities are like our domiciles in which we feel at home, and yet keep remodeling and rearranging, . Nonsymmetricity of the relationship. One step more toward the neighbor, and the first stepmaybe even the second and the thirdtoward the enemy! the self shaped by the cross of Christ and the life of the triune God will seek to open its arms toward the other even when the other holds a sword. The other will, of course, have to drop the sword, maybe even have the sword taken out of his hand, before the actual embrace can take place. The reciprocity of embrace can be achieved only through self-giving, not through a struggle for recognition (cf. Hegels master-slave struggle). The equality and reciprocity that are at the heart of embrace can be reached only through self-sacrifice (Mark 10:4145), even if self-sacrifice is not a positive good, but a necessary via dolorosa in a world of enmity and indifference toward the joy of reciprocal embrace. Underdetermination of the outcome. Nothing can guarantee that the embrace will take place, or what the outcome will be. Only one outcome is not possible: a genuine embrace cannot leave both or either completely unchanged. Risk of embrace: I open my arms, make a movement of the self toward the other, the enemy, and do not know whether I will be misunderstood, despised, even violated or whether my action will be appreciated, supported, and reciprocated. I can become a savior or a victimpossibly both. Embrace is grace, and grace is gamble, always

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