No Longer Strangers or Aliens: “Otherness” as a Binding to Be Loosed in Christian Tradition

Abstract

No Longer Strangers or Aliens: “Otherness” as a Binding to Be Loosed in Christian Tradition Jay T. Rock (bio) “other-making”, reconciliation, memory, metanoia Differences among people are undeniable, and meeting people as yet unknown to us certainly includes the experience of their difference from us, or “otherness.” But, if differences among us are inescapable and diversity is a part of the fabric of creation, do such differences constitute an “otherness” that is an ontological category rather than simply a dimension of experience? This issue came into focus for me at a conference to which I had invited a traditional Native American healer to speak to us about the concerns and hopes of the Native community in relation to those of other faiths. Following a format that had produced titles such as “The Faces of Oppression,” this session was called “The Face of the Other.” After the introductions, Mr. Kenny Moses came up to the podium, which nearly hid his small frame. He looked out at us for a few moments, and said, “Well, I guess I’m the ‘other.’ ” We all laughed, but the point had been made: We had decided that he was “other.” “Otherness” as difference is a reality; we do encounter people and practices that are strange to us. But, however great the initial jolt, this experience of otherness is not a valid conclusion about another human being. Rather, it is a starting point for asking ourselves how we ought to behave toward people who differ from us. What is our responsibility toward them? What sort of hospitality is it appropriate to give or to receive? The experience that we call “otherness” is also a starting point for asking questions about our frame of reference. Viewed from the outside, we also are likely to be experienced as “other.” So, in using the term, are we somehow [End Page 113] claiming that our understanding of reality and our way of life are the standard in contrast to which the understandings and ways of people different from ourselves are incorrect or of less value? Moses pointed to the danger lurking in our construction of otherness. “[O]ne of the principal ways human beings choose to draw boundaries that secure their safety and identity,” said Robert Schreiter, is “by exclusion, placing beyond the boundary those who are ‘not us,’ who are ‘them.’ ” 1 To label something or someone as “other” can be the first step in making them “other.” “Other-making” is central to alienation among us as human beings, and we have developed a wide variety of ways by which to frame people conceptually and emotionally as “other.” Are we willing to examine the narratives we bring with us as we meet people of differing culture, language, and religion? This danger of “other-making” and the necessity of examining our own narratives of ourselves and the people around us are central preoccupations of at least one stream of the Christian tradition. Paul proclaimed to the church in Ephesus, struggling with a membership both Jewish and gentile in origins, “through [Christ] both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone” (Eph. 2:18–20; N.R.S.V.). Recognizing and overcoming other-making is a central focus in the teaching of Jesus as well. The Christian tradition includes a strong emphasis on confronting and transforming the perception and experience of “otherness.” It recognizes and honors difference as a reality but calls on its practitioners to dissolver barriers between “us” and “them” and to move from constructions of “self” and “other” to the building of the one human community in relation to the One-all-lovingGod. In this strand of Christian thinking, the condition of being strangers and aliens is a dimension of our unreconciled state. In that state, we practice the drawing of boundaries that exclude certain groups of people. These are the aliens and strangers—the ones we make “other.” Schreiter identified seven ways of “other...