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.