Chapter Two, pages 79-85

Contrived Innocence


I'll admit right at the beginning that I found this section to be a little weak. Maybe it's because Volf is "preaching to the choir," or because I didn't hear anything new or newly explained. Still, the understanding of sin as a universal experience is central to the struggle with embracing the other, so it is an important section to work through.

The underlying point here is that there is no such thing as "innocence." We are all stained with sin, either wrong thoughts, wrong actions, or wrong lack of action. Volf spends quite a bit of time showing how both the "perpetrator" and the "victim" are caught in this cycle of sin, with neither completely blameless. Even if a victim does nothing to warrant being abused at that precise moment in time, that person may well be the abuser at another point, and can never claim to be without sin.

The greater problem, I believe, is what Volf touches on at the beginning of this section. It's not that we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, but the claim that it's "not my fault." The inability to honestly assess our actions and call them sinful or harmful is a growing epidemic in this world. On the other side of the coin is the inability to honestly admit to ourselves and to others those sins, and sincerely ask for forgiveness. The more we pass off our problems as "someone else's fault," the further we get from being able to enter into life-giving relationships.

As with any difficult subject, the immediate tendency is to say, "I know exactly what you're talking about! In fact, this person I know never takes responsibility for..." This will never bring about any kind of change, because we can never change another person or how that person chooses to act. Instead, we have to look to ourselves, to our own shortcomings, our own failures, our own contrived innocence, and admit that we have tried to pass ourselves off as blameless. If each one of us can begin by seeing this tendency within ourselves, then we will be one step closer to stopping the cycle of sin and blame in our own lives.

Why does this matter? Assigning blame is an easy way to erect barriers between ourselves and those who are different in some way. Claiming innocence means that we don't have any moral obligation to improve or establish a relationship that is strained by difference. Seeing sin in everyone else and not yourself offers a handy reason to be removed and remote, in order to remain pure. By accepting the words of Scripture, "if you say you are without sin you deceive yourself and the truth is not in you," barriers begin to fall, pointing fingers can become open hands, and sinful people can begin to work together for the benefit of the world.

Chapter Two, pages 72-79

The Anatomy and Dynamics of Exclusion


In order to more fully recognize when exclusion is sin as opposed to when it is proper judgment of those things which should not be included, we must have a better understanding of exclusion itself. That is Volf's aim in this section; setting out the qualities of sinful exclusion so we can begin to discern those qualities in our own communities.

When Volf says, "An advantage of conceiving sin as the practice of exclusion is that it names as sin what often passes as virtue, especially in religious circles," we should take this as a warning. If we read the following pages with an open heart and mind, we will be convicted of how we commit the sin of exclusion, in our neighborhoods, in our school systems, in our faith gatherings, in almost every facet of life we can consider. Just as Jesus came to "afflict the comfortable," as a common saying goes, Volf is about to get down and dirty with us.

The life of Jesus is full of illustrations of the sin of exclusion being turned on its head. "By embracing the 'outcast,' Jesus underscored the 'sinfulness' of the persons and systems that cast them out." But Jesus was not interested in merely opening the doors to anyone who would walk through them. He was interested in redeeming those who came through those open doors. Volf calls this dual activity "re-naming and re-making."

By re-naming, Jesus broke down societal boundaries that separated clean from unclean. "The mission of re-naming what was falsely labeled 'unclean' aimed at abolishing the warped system of exclusion." There are some potential problems with this, because not everything can immediately be re-named as clean. For example, it should always be unclean for a person with power and authority to exercise that power to begin an intimate relationship with one who is powerless. Still, Volf looks to Jesus for examples, and examples of the woman with the issue of blood and a cup shared with a Samaritan back his point.

Re-naming alone is not enough; "Jesus made clean things out of truly unclean things." Jesus re-made the people he came across, each and every one of them broken in one way or another, as we all are. "The mission of re-making impure people into pure people aimed at tearing down the barriers created by wrongdoing in the name of God, the redeemer and restorer of life, whose love knows no boundaries."

Which brings us back to the need to more deeply understand the sin of exclusion. We need to be re-made, and the societal structures we created need to be re-named, because "the source of evil does not lie outside of a person, in impure things, but inside a person, in the impure heart." As we are re-made and re-centered in Christ, so the sin of exclusion becomes identified and eradicated in our lives.

The forms of exclusion that Volf identifies are all too recognizable in our time and age. It is too easy to come up with examples for each one, as he demonstrates in the following pages. Therefore, I will just list them here, with only brief descriptions.

1. Exclusion by assimilation-"You can survive, even thrive, among us, if you become like us; you can keep your life, if you give up your identity."
2. Exclusion by domination-You must understand that you are less than us; you must take the dirtiest jobs that pay the least and live in the most run-down areas of the city; you are not like us.
3. Exclusion as abandonment-We don't go into the inner city, or to the markets where the "poor" people shop; we have our places and they have theirs and they should never intersect.

These sins of exclusion are very good at sneaking into our lives, into our assumptions, into our language. We want to live in a good neighborhood for our children; we need a good school system for our children; we want to go to church where we are comfortable with other people who look like us. Of course, all of those "we's" assume that "we" are different from "they," whoever "they" are. "They" don't want to live in good neighborhoods, or maybe we're truly saying "they" don't deserve to. "They" don't need a good school system for "their" children, "they" should go to "their" own church, "they" should just leave us alone and then everything will be fine.

It is an unfortunate fact of our humanity that we have learned to be frightened and wary of anything, and anyone, who is different, and in that fear, we make assumptions and decisions, and we exclude. Volf very bluntly calls this "evil as ignorance," and catches us red-handed. "Symbolic exclusion is often a distortion of the other, not simply ignorance about the other; it is a willful misconstruction, not mere failure of knowledge. We demonize and bestialize not because we do not know better, but because we refuse to know what is manifest and choose to know what serves our interests." All we can say in response is "guilty as charged."

Why are we "guilty as charged?" Why are we caught so deeply in the sin of exclusion? Volf believes, "The 'practice of exclusion' and the 'language of exclusion' go hand in hand with a whole array of emotional responses to the other." We may have learned to hate what is different, or, with even worse results, learned to be indifferent towards the happenings of the world that do not directly effect ourselves. It is this indifference that allowed the horrors of the Holocaust to run unchecked for so many years; it just didn't effect us in North America.

We also exclude because we need a scapegoat, someone to blame for whatever ills have befallen us. It's "their" fault, not ours, and so we don't have to change anything. "We exclude also because we are uncomfortable with anything that blurs accepted boundaries, disturbs our identities, and disarranges our symbolic cultural maps... We exclude not simply because we like the way things are... or because we hate the way we are... but because we desire what others have."

To put it most simply, Volf says "we exclude because we want to be at the center and be there alone, single-handedly controlling 'the land.'" We want to be King of the Mountain, and that means there's no room for anyone else at the top. This is exclusion in a nutshell.

These descriptions of the sin of exclusion lead me to make one observation: this sin is a luxury of those who are white, middle-class or higher, and especially male. We, because I am part of this more privileged group, have the luxury of deciding where we will live, what education we will receive, what jobs we will take, and where we will spend our money. Those who are not as fortunate suffer from an enforcing of the sin of exclusion, which leads to this sin being recontextualized for their system. Thus the barriers first erected by the privileged are reinforced by those who have been outcast, piling sin upon sin.

Chapter Two, pages 64-72

Differentiation, Exclusion, Judgment


So we've agreed that exclusion is harmful and any kind of distinction drawn between people and cultures leads to exclusion. So everything goes, right? Wrong.

Volf immediately deals with this concern saying, "Vilify all boundaries, pronounce every discrete identity oppressive, put the tag 'exclusion' on every stable difference--and you will have aimless drifting instead of clear-sighted agency, haphazard activity instead of moral engagement and accountability and, in the long run, a torpor of death instead of a dance of freedom." His answer to this undesirable outcome are the practices of differentiation and judgment.

Differentiation is a term that helps us understand the lines that separate us naturally. Volf wants to take it one step further, though, so that differentiation focuses on both what separates us and what binds us together. He uses an illustration from Cornelius Plantinga in which God playfully creates us as separate beings, human, animal, and vegetable, while binding us together in systems of interdependence and relationship. Thus we are separate and bound, with both movements critical to our lives.

In answering criticism from some feminist theologians, Volf takes on the idea that separation equals exclusion and binding equals oppression. Volf argues that we cannot know who we are as individuals without knowing also the context in which we live. It is the relationships and realities that bind us, as well as the lines that separate us from others, that allow us to know our thoughts clearly, our feelings deeply, and interact fully with the world around us. In other words, without the other, there is no self.

Volf moves from defining differentiation to more fully defining exclusion. For him, exclusion is sin, and in the context of "binding-and-separating," sin is something that distorts the God-given interdependence of our existence. With this understanding, "exclusion can entail cutting of the bonds that connect, taking oneself out of the pattern of interdependence and placing oneself in a position of sovereign independence... Second, exclusion can entail erasure of separation, not recognizing the other as someone who in his or her otherness belongs to a pattern of interdependence."

Two illustrations of these movements of exclusion:

I believe that the "desert fathers" who removed themselves from humanity in order to live without any outside distractions committed the sin of exclusion by "cutting the bonds that connect." I do not believe that God intends us to be removed in such a way from God's good creation.

The second sin of exclusion can be seen when we travel to a culture that is strange to us. Instead of embracing the strangeness and seeking to learn and understand the differences, the sin of exclusion leads us to minimize those differences and instead to see all the similarities with our own culture, even when those similarities are almost non-existent.

The third movement of this section is judgment. If differentiation is God-given "separation-and-binding" and exclusion is the sin of breaking the ties that bind or binding together what should be separate, then judgment is the process of discerning what should be excluded because the inclusion would be entering into wrong binding and separating. This is the focus of the next section.

The Self and Its Center


Volf doesn't spend any time trying to defend the idea that the self has a center; it is something you will just have to accept. It's not hard for us to see his point, though, because without a center the self becomes a whirling dervish or a formless amoeba. So I think it's fair to move forward with this understanding.

This brings us to his question: what kind of center should we have? "Paul presumes a centered self, more precisely a wrongly centered self that needs to be de-centered by being nailed to the cross." The image we have for this as Christians is the death and resurrection of Christ, something we claim in our baptisms. In death, we are de-centered and in resurrection, we are re-centered in Christ. "The center of the self--a center that is both inside and outside--is the story of Jesus Christ, which has become the story of the self."

Since God is our creator, and God has created us in God's own image, we understand that our selves are meant to be reflections of that divine image. So when we are de-centered and re-centered, it is not a loss of self, but a re-alignment of our deepest self with God's deepest desires. "The new center opens the self up, makes it capable and willing to give itself for others and to receive others in itself."

It is from this "de-centered center" that we can begin to make judgments regarding exclusion and battle sinful exclusion where it occurs.

Chapter Two, pages 57-64

Exclusion

Volf now begins to explain the second half of his thesis, exclusion. As he rightly points out, "the chapter, however, is not so much about 'them out there' as about 'us right here' wherever we may be, not so much about the other as about the self."

Of course, this is easier said than done, and Volf acknowledges that there is significant inner tension in the "typically modern narrative of inclusion, a narrative which serves as a backdrop for much of the contemporary critique of exclusion."

The Dubious Triumph of Inclusion

What has been your reaction to the countries and peoples who have been caught up in the horrors of ethnic cleansing? One reaction, which we may not even be aware of consciously, is the thought that such a thing couldn't happen here, because we're civilized. It could only happen over "there" with "those people."

This is an act of exclusion, of separating our human nature from the human nature of others around the world. Instead of recognizing the fear and hate we hold towards those who are different from ourselves, we pride ourselves and our society on its inclusive nature. No matter that our inclusiveness is still functionally small exclusive communities living in the same areas (Chinatown, the ghetto, etc.). At least all have a place to call their own and we're not going around wiping other ethnicities and cultures out.

We tell ourselves this myth of inclusion in order to keep ourselves safe from confronting the realities of a world-wide economy and society. The truth is our inclusion is a brutal from of exclusion, because those who are outside our "sacred grounds" or who we feel don't belong within our boundaries, are lesser than us, and not worth our attention or care.

Only by facing this dichotomy honestly can we begin to break down the walls that keep our inclusion safe, and maintain a constant practice of exclusion. By understanding that we have adopted an "us vs. them" ideology, we can begin to trade that ideology for one that embraces the other as part of us.

The witness of the cross bears this reality out. The exclusion, through crucifixion, of Christ was done by those who were inside, who had the power, who had the voice of the people. Their sense of what it meant to be included led to the most dramatic moments of exclusion in our faith history.

Volf ends this first section of his examination of exclusion by setting out the tension he is going to address. "A consistent pursuit of inclusion places one before the impossible choice between a chaos without boundaries and oppression with them." The question of how to include without allowing those things which should truly be excluded, like robbery being a virtue, is the object of the next section.