Strangers in a Strange Land: How to Make Friends and not Estrange People

Leviticus 19:33-34 – "When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as a native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the LORD your God."

Leviticus 19:24 – "There shall be one standard for you; it shall be for the stranger as well as the native, for I am the LORD your God."

I recently spent nearly two weeks in Palestine enjoying the hospitality of my friend, Dennis Sobeh, and his family. I considered posting while I was there, but for security reasons I refrained. Now after four hours of security questioning at entrance customs, one and a half hours at Qalandia Checkpoint and three hours of security checks of my person and luggage to leave Israel, I believe I can safely reflect online about my trip.

You may think I’m joking or paranoid, but customs first held me under suspicion of being a political activist, because I was traveling alone to Ramallah, West Bank. The last person to question me about my reason for traveling said he wouldn’t be so kind if I wound up in his office again. When I returned to the airport they took every precaution: checking the taxi, my luggage, my luggage, my person, my luggage, and my person again at different checkpoints in and out of the airport. As such, I decided to avoid any potential links between anything that could smack of political criticism/activism of Israel and me.

These events drastically differed when I was with Dennis. His family and friends treated me as one of the family and as the guest of honor. People were interested to learn about me and made certain I had whatever I needed. When I traveled alone to Jerusalem (Dennis’ family is not permitted to travel to Israel like most Palestinians living in the Palestinian Territories) I stopped by a shop to introduce myself to my friend’s uncle, Sammi. He made sure I had anything I needed as soon as I explained that his nephew from Illinois, Alex, told me to stop by.

Having been treated so differently got me thinking about strangers for the rest of my trip (I had only been there 2.5 days when I went to Jerusalem). How should we treat strangers—as security risks or as guests of our hospitality or both? Miroslav Volf reflects upon the treatment of strangers in his Exclusionand Embrace: Theological Explorations of Identity, Otherness and Reconciliation.

The will to give ourselves to others and “welcome” them, to readjust our identities to make space for them, is prior to any judgment about others, except that of identifying them in their humanity. The will to embrace precedes any “truth” about others and any construction of their “justice.” This will is absolutely indiscriminate and strictly immutable; it transcends the moral mapping of the social world into “good” and “evil” (29).

We don’t get to choose whether or not we will encounter strangers. We only choose how to respond—exclusion or embrace. But embracing the stranger is no simple task. We must consider whom we are making space for and embracing. What is a stranger? Is it someone unfamiliar to us, someone who doesn’t belong?

When the stranger’s identity confronts ours, we position their identity in some intelligible context and respond accordingly. The Israeli customs connected my identity to the Arabs I was to visit and to previous foreigners who traveled for political demonstration, so they greeted me with suspicion. My hosts connected my identity to their son’s and so accepted me as one of the family. If we fear the other’s identity, then we exclude and estrange. If we are comfortable with the other’s identity, we welcome and embrace. The hospitality demanded by YHWH’s law and by Jesus’ command to love the neighbor and enemy, however, requires us to reverse this action. We let our perception of the stranger determine our response. Rather than letting the context of the stranger’s identity determine how we treat her or him, we must be willing to embrace regardless of the connections of a stranger’s identity with what we ‘know’ about him or her.

So what does this embrace look like? This radical hospitality takes its form from the crucified God who makes space for a world in contradiction to him. Jesus came to his own, but they treated him like a stranger (John 1.11). Estranged, Jesus made space in household for the world. Jesus’ hospitality looks like treating strangers as friends. Rather, it means turning strangers into friends. This is the goal of making space for others’ identities and embracing them. To follow Jesus then means we don’t get to pick our friends—we simply bear the responsibility of embracing a stranger and gaining a friend.

Theology of Disability (Part I): The Problem of Disability

“The most stringent power we have over another is not physical coercion but the ability to have the other accept our definition of them.” – Stanley Hauerwas

No one asks the hard questions quite as well as Ivan Karamazov in Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov.

Imagine that it is you yourself who are erecting the edifice of human destiny with the aim of making men happy in the end, of giving them peace and contentment at last, but that to do that it is absolutely necessary, and indeed quite inevitable, to torture to death only one . . . little girl . . . and to found the edifice on her unavenged tears—would you consent to be the architect of those conditions? Tell me, and tell me the truth! (Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov).

Ivan's words are the protest of atheism (protest atheism) against God for the existence of evil and suffering, particularly innocent suffering. Protest atheism is the response to theodicy—a word coined by Leibnitz that describes the attempt to justify God in the face of evil and suffering. Humans have always wrestled with the presence of evil and suffering, because neither seem to fit, they don’t appear to have a purpose. As such, theodicy attempts to resolve this conflict. Both theodicy and protest atheism nevertheless fail us as adequate responses. Theodicy inevitably justifies the presence of evil and suffering in order to get God ‘off the hook’. Protest atheism, though helpfully pointing out this problem in theodicy, rids us of God.

If this is a post about theology of disability, why am I going on about problems of evil and suffering and our typical responses to these issues? Most thinking about disability until recently has taken the form of a theodicy. Why would God create someone with disabilities? Perhaps disability is the result of sin, a punishment, or simply a tool God uses to bring about good. It’s difficult for us to understand why God would create someone with disability. The reason for this is that we assume that disability is a tragedy. But is it tragic? No, this is not a rhetorical question. Why do we consider disability tragic?

Theologian Thomas Reynolds writes in his Vulnerable Communion,

A community’s perception of disability is the inverse projection of its own framework of normalcy. Disability is a factor of the cult of normalcy. An image is cast onto those whose lives disrupt the status quo, manifesting a lack or deficiency of what is construed as standard, ordinary, and familiar . . . Accordingly, disability is deemed an agential defect, a tragic dysfunction or illness in need of allaying and curative efforts. And because it is presumed to have no overt purpose, no satisfactory social meaning, disability is alleged to involve frustration and pain. This is precisely why persons with disabilities are seen as victims, patients, or liabilities. The real tragedy, then, is not intrinsic to disability; it is socially imposed. It lies in how disability functions as a socially sanctioned category based upon the experiences and expectations of non-disabled persons, which in effect coerces disabled persons into playing roles inadequate to their own experience and which distort their sense of themselves as persons.

Society’s normal defines the abnormal. Of course, disability often includes physiological and/or biological factors that lead to loss of bodily function. But we call such persons disabled or handicapped to qualify their personal capacities (or incapacities) to be human in and contribute to society. Defining disability thus inevitably defines a person’s identity as sub-human, because they lack wholeness.

Shamefully, the Church has appropriated this understanding only to imbue it with theological meaning—normalcy reflects God’s intention for humanity. Reynolds explains, “Among Christians, disability is commonly represented as something to be healed or gotten rid of—a fault, a lesson in lack of faith, a helpless object of pity for the non-disabled faithful to display their charity, a vehicle of redemptive suffering, a cross to bear, or fuel for the inspiration of others” (28). In every case, a person’s disabilities eclipse the person’s identity as a human being, because their being is disabled.

The problem with disability is not so much that it exists, but that we don't know how to accept it. Before my studies I thought, if I thought about disability much at all, that disabilities were a part of the fallen world. This line of thinking too easily ignores the human identity of others. I can conveniently consider myself normal and be content. But what’s the alternative to thinking about disability if not as theodicy? We must ask whether disability represents an incomplete humanity or a different way of being human. Have we fooled ourselves about what is essentially human? Theology of disability is about identity. Have we reduced the identity of a person with disabilities to the sum of their incapacities—as we call them? Does disability reduce one’s humanity? I suggest that disability refuses the 'normal' definitions and 'normal' thinking we’ve previously employed for thinking about life and humanity. Disability requires us to rethink what we believe it is to be human. This will be the topic of part II.

Real Humanity: Regarding Others in Their Suffering

In my last post I quoted Dietrich Bonhoeffer on how to regard others. I’ll share the quote again, but in a better translation from the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works collection.

The danger of allowing ourselves to be driven to contempt for humanity is very real. We know very well that we have no right to let this happen and that it would lead us into the most unfruitful relation to human beings. The following thoughts may protect us against this temptation: through contempt for humanity we fall victim precisely to our opponents’ chief errors. Whoever despises another human being will never be able to make anything of him. Nothing of what we despise in another is itself foreign to us. How often do we expect more of the other than what we ourselves are willing to accomplish. Why is it that we have hitherto thought with so little sobriety about the temptability and frailty of human beings? We must learn to regard human beings less in terms of what they do or neglect to do and more in terms of what they suffer. The only fruitful relation to human beings—particularly to the weak among them—is love, that is, the will to enter into and to keep community with them. God did not hold human beings in contempt but became human for their sake. – Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papersfrom Prison.

Following Bonhoeffer, I said, “The Church always ought to regard others the same way that God regarded humanity in Christ. The Father did not regard the world according to what it did or didn’t do, but according to what it suffered.”

Bonhoeffer elaborates on the nature of contempt for humanity in his Ethics. He explains that both the wicked and good human fall into contempt for humanity thus: “We exert ourselves to grow beyond our humanity, to leave the human behind us, [while] God becomes human; and we must recognize that God wills that we be human, real human beings.” The wicked despise humanity by taking advantage of its frailty and temptability for their benefit. The good despise humanity by withdrawing from others in disgust at the other’s frailty and temptability. In a sense, Bonhoeffer is saying that we require others to meet a standard of super-humanness (inhuman), which we ourselves couldn’t meet, before we will love them by entering into community with them. True love acknowledges real humanity and wills “to enter into and to keep community with them,” regardless of the price. It is a love that does not find the significance of one’s humanity in successes or failures, but in God’s love for a real humanity.

Contempt for humanity boils down to a desire for perfection that finds its way by leaving behind humanness—finitude, contingency, and frailty. God considered it worth the price to live with and die for real humanity. “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly . . . God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ did for us . . . While we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son” (Romans 5.6-10, NRSV). Perfecting this humanity is not ceasing to be human in deification. Jesus’ perfection came through suffering, which means that perfection was humbly remaining contingent to God in faith. Even in the resurrection, humans are still human. Perfected humanity is not self-sustaining individuality with no regard for others. It is complete vulnerability to God and in a community of brothers and sisters that exists in trinitarian love that gives itself for the other in forgiveness and truth. Too often the goal of perfection is based on an idea of human potentiality devoid of human reality. No goal for humanity can leave behind a human because of the risk their frailty or temptability presents—the risk their humanity poses.

So, if we were to rephrase Bonhoeffer it would look like this:

When we regard others according to what they do or neglect to do (according to their successes and failures) we are passing a judgment upon them that measures their humanness according to some standard beside real humanity. To regard others according to what they suffer confronts us with the other’s real humanity. God did not embrace humanity outside of true humanness. Only a love that will exist with others in their real humanness can hope to experience the reconciliation and newness of life in Christ.

Living Together

"We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer. The only profitable relationship to others—and especially to our weaker brethren—is one of love, and that means the will to hold fellowship with them. God himself did not despise humanity, but became man for men's sake." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

“Saints cannot exist without a community, as they require, like all of us, nurturance by a people who, while often unfaithful, preserve the habits necessary to learn the story of God.” - Stanley Hauerwas, Critical Reflections on Stanley Hauerwas' Theology of Disability

Reading the works of theologians throughout history changed my identity over four years at university. I went in thinking that the debate between Arminianism and Calvinism over free will was the most pressing issue for the Church, or at least for me. A professor who would spend the next four years challenging me only smirked and told me there was so much missing from my questions.

This blog will deal with questions, but not questions like the one I had when I went to university; I prefer the ones I had when I left: How does Christ resolve issues of suffering, identity and hospitality in his body? What is the eternal significance of human work and play in the here and now? What does it mean to be human from the perspective of persons of disability? Stanley Hauerwas says that all theology is ethical and therefore political, so I care about reflecting theologically on life’s questions in a way that challenges the ethical and political presumptions of our societies.

The title of this blog is an adaption of Bonhoeffer’s Life Together, and this blog will reflect on what it means for the Church to image the Trinity in our world and societies. In a world of clashing identities, fraught with questions and suffering, the Church is the community of hope in this life. This community doesn’t make life easy or provide answers to all life’s questions; it just promises to work and wait together in the life of God’s Spirit, while anticipating his kingdom. As such, the Church always ought to regard others the same way that God regarded humanity in Christ. The Father did not regard the world according to what it did or didn’t do, but according to what it suffered. If the world is to receive this love of God, it must come from Jesus’ body, which he gave for mankind—his Church. This community can only perform this purpose the same way that Jesus did himself: by inviting a suffering world into its community.