BELONGING WITH DISTANCE

Who are we fighting against? Are we fighting against a god that allows for there to be the other? Are we fighting against those who embrace us? Are we fighting against the world that excludes us? Or are we fighting against them? An undefined group that pushes and pulls on our identify.

I have always lived in this reality that it is not just me. All of my children’s books growing up dealt with this idea that there is harmony in the world. We like to break away from our mother, but she is the sky, always watching over us. We want to hide from the sun, but the sun is our father and will not allow us to hide from his warmth.

I understood that I belonged to something greater than myself, but I didn’t know what that meant. How can we belong to the world as a whole when we hate the neighbor? How can we claim that “We Are One Human Family” if we seek revenge over love? And if we move past revenge, is love even enough? What does it mean to belong? What does it mean to have identity as ourselves, but also with the neighbor, with “them?”

Dr. Andrew Root suggested in a class that we often spread the Gospel with empty promises, like God is with you or everything is going to be okay. I think the same thing occurs when we think about belonging. Is it really comforting to hear “You are not along, you belong to others, too” (Volf 51). Because do we want to belong to other? The other is what has abandoned us. It is what has drawn us further away from embrace. Yet is this distancing necessarily negative. Is it harmful to society, and our identity? And do we find comfort in such a phrase?

I am ready to accept that we live in a world that will always have the “other.” Yet I do not think that is a bad thing. I have to agree with Volf that the other does not mean something negative and something to be hated. There needs to be this distance from the other and at the same time there needs to be a distance from our identity.

Volf goes on to share the story of Abraham. Abraham was called to leave everything. The Abrahamic Revolution shares that Abraham had to break cultural and families ties and leave. His identity was in Christ and not other things like family, country and culture. He became a stranger in all that was to come (38-40). Since Abraham took this step and left everything, we do not need to. Abraham took that step for us, but this does not mean that we are to go on with our identity untouched.

We need to be able to distance ourselves from that which defines us. Our identity needs to be examined. It is when we look at our humanity, we are able to see what divides us. It is the next step that seems almost paradoxical. We are to depart from that which binds us without leaving just that. How do we allow this to be a reality?

I am left thinking that this very idea can lead one to pride or disappear as we look to our inner being. But what needs to be understood is that it is not until we belong without distance that we are able to listen. Volf says that as Christians we must take a departure for Christ is not just living within our culture, but Christ is living among all people.

In this matter we are not losing our identity. What we are seeing is the very effect society holds on us. For we will begin to see that, “The blood that binds us is more precious than the blood of language, customs that divide. (54) For we have become too comfortable with the culture that surrounds us. Our own identity has made us blind to the injustice of the world. Our responsibility is to step outside that culture without abandonment in order that we allow ourselves to see. We are able to see that the neighbor is suffering, and maybe we too are suffering as we look out with compassion to the other.

It is through this process of belonging with distance that we begin to see that community gathers at the cross. For as we look at the other, we begin to see that the cross of Christ is there for others. Yet we are also the other. We too look for embrace from society as we begin to understand that it is the blood and the cross that unites us. Boyarin states “In the process of baptism in the spirit the marks of ethnos, gender, and class are all erased in the ascension to a univocally and universality of human essence which is beyond and outside of the body” (qtd in Volf, 46). Yet those distinctions are not erased. But as we are joined in the blood of the cross, we have an identity that goes past cultural distinctions.

Now I wonder what happens next. As we look to cultivate the proper relation between distance from culture and belonging to it, how do we allow Christ to be a part of this journey. When we begin to examine culture it is often easier to abandon this connection. We need to be reminded that in the midst of this despair we see the promise. A promise that is still unfolding around us. A promise that gives us an identity that surpasses that given to us by culture.