“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of beauty is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, but indifference between life and death”. [1] “What hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor but the silence of the bystander”.[2]
A recent stance by a local Christian organization pitted people on two sides of an emotionally charged issue. It seemed that everyone had an opinion, and in the ‘many words’, it felt that offenses were being picked up. The one side were angry at the other side, and those on the other side felt that the first side were unloving. At one point, I just wanted everyone to be quiet, allow their emotions to settle, take their issue before the Great Judge of the Universe, so as to be able to love again, and in loving to listen. I recently read about a Gentile doctor who defended the Jews in her community and wore a self-made yellow paper star with “Friend of the Jew” on it. For that she was shipped to Auschwitz. She said: “Here we are all under a sentence of death. Let us behave like human beings as long as we are alive”[3] And it made me think about ‘the other’ that each of us have and how we can get over ourselves to love them.
What is meant by ‘the other’?! In her interesting book “Stones From the River”, Ursula Hegi[4] illustrates how easily each of us target another person as ‘less than’, someone we treat dishonorably or even cruelly. In it she was using the main character as a metaphor for how the Jews (and others) were treated in Nazi Germany. It made me think that each person has prejudices and stereotypes that simply must be addressed. This can be generational, racial, ethnic, economic, for example. However, it behooves each individual to ‘examine his or her heart’ to allow God’s spotlight to reveal to them what and where they judge erroneously.
Jesus confronts this type of hypocrisy head one by saying “judge not so that you will not be judged. For in the same way you judge, you will be judged. By your standard of measure, it will be measured to you”. Jesus illustrates this by asking “why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye”, first deal with yourself before you deal with your brother.[5] This requires some serious and brutal self- assessment and self-judgment. Some judgment is necessary – we have to call out wrong where we see it but we also need to ‘shout out’ when we see good things happening, such as kindness, gentleness, mercy, humility, justice, among others. But this judgment is about the errors inherit in prejudice and stereotyping.
If one does not allow the self-deception of prejudice to be revealed, then the temptation to view oneself as a victim and pick up an offense, has the potential to become a reality. The social consequence of being offended brings division. And if division has its way, then we play into the hands of Satan with his accusation in an adversarial role. The feedback loop of offence and victimization leads to bitterness and unforgiveness and perpetuates an increased woundedness. And simple religious platitudes are not the answer. One simply cannot break the cycle of woundedness with human experience, human tradition or human merit especially when phrased in “Christian-eze”.
I would venture to say that prejudice or stereotypes has its roots in some kind of woundedness experienced in either in one’s life or passed down from previous generations, either real or perceived. The way to directly approach the wounding that caused the prejudice is through love as expressed in truth and grace. And this is done by reaching our hand up to God in faith and our hands out to others in love. But it starts in the heart of one’s self through confession, repentance and forgiveness. 1 John 1 reminds us that ‘if we walk in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. However, if we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness”. Walking in the light means we are authentic with God, with ourselves, and subsequently with others. But it presumes that we first deal with our own issues before we can be in authentic relationships with others. And this presupposes that we deal with the issues of prejudice with God.
I once heard ‘that in order to authentically pray for the Jew, one should love the Palestinian, and in order to adequately pray for the Palestinian, one should love the Jew’. That is, one can simply never take sides in prayer. I agreed with this statement until God tested me on it, and I was undone by my own unconscious indifference. As a history teacher, I taught about the Holocaust for 15 years, 6 times a year. I became enmeshed in the horrors of industrial slaughter of a race. I picked up their offence, I dove in the pool of their woundedness. In essence, I was no good to them, or to God in my attitude against those who perpetrated such a crime. Until God. Attending an international prayer conference in the Negev Desert in Southern Israel, we had the opportunity to visit Sderot, the town against which most of the rockets were fired out of Gaza. We then went to a look-out point facing the Gaza Strip. Gaza is on the east coast of Israel and borders Egypt on the south. Its 141 square miles, houses over 2 million people, which indicates that they have a similar population density as Boston, at over 13 thousand people per square mile which is twice as much as where I live in the greater Seattle area. As we were facing the Gaza Strip, the Lord asked me – do you love these people? I had to honestly answer against my own self: “not really”. He then asked me, if I would love them and demonstrate it by making them a priority in prayer. He showed me a picture of the Palestinians in Gaza living in an Auschwitz type of concentration camp under the oppression of a brutal political system. I was undone by my own indifference and realized that I needed a change of heart which only He could do. I confessed, agreeing with God that my heart was cold and indifferent against these, people. I asked God to forgive me. But this walk of repentance takes one day at a time, one confrontation of my stereotyping at a time. I had to see how I had picked up an offence, I had allowed my heart to become wounded by what happened to the Jews during the war to the detriment of my prayers for others. I had put the Jews and the Palestinians in ‘us and them’ categories. I had made the Palestinians – the ‘other’.
I wonder if these recent political, social, or moral decisions, is God’s alarm clock in each of us. Are we willing to love ‘the other’ in spite of our own preconceived ideas of what the right way is? I’ve come to the conclusion, that while I cannot solve the greater issues that cause the divisions, all I need to do is love the person in front of me – whether they are in the ‘us’ or ‘them’ category. It has simplified the abstractness of so many of the issues, and gave me a concrete way to deal with my stereotypes, and ‘get over myself’ in demonstrating tangible love to ‘the other’.
[1] Laura Bult. “Nobel Peace Prize Winner Elie Wiesel’s Best Quotes on Survival, Activism and Humanity”. New York Daily News. July 2, 2016.
[2] Carol Rittner and Sandra Myers. The Courage to Care: Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust (New York, New York University Press, 1986). 2.
[3] Yad Vashem, “Dr Adelaide Hautval”. The Stories of Six Righteous among the Nation in Auschwitz: Flickers of Light. Yadvashem.org
[4] Ursula Hegi. Stones from the River. New York: Poseidon Press, 1994.
[5] Matthew 7:1-5 NASB
