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Miroslav Volf at Cornerstone: Us and Them

Posted Monday, July 07, 2008 by Charlie Trimm
Categories: Culture and Theology  
I just got back from a week camping in the hot Illinois sun at Cornerstone Music Festival, a Christian Rock/Alternative Festival. I've always wanted to go it, but since it is rather a far drive from Seattle, I had never gone. But now that we are in Chicago, it is much closer. And not only that, but a friend of ours plays in a band who did several shows there, so we got to spend the week with some good friends whom we have not seen for quite some time (Hi Tim, it was great to see you!). But Cornerstone is not just for the young adults, it cultivates a distinct family atmosphere, offering lots of activites for kids and older adults. One of the highlights of the festival for me was the seminars, for which the brought in some high-class speakers, most of whom had PhD's in their field and were quite well published. My favorite sessions were given by Miroslav Volf, a professor at Yale Divinity School. He gave a three session series on Us vs. Them. Follow the link for a short summary of this fascinating presentation.He was a great speaker and did a great job in an unusual environment. He said this was the first time speaking at a music festival like this, and after speaking for about a minute he stopped to inquire whether the noise in the background was his breath on the microphone or a drum beat from another stage (it was the latter). 

The first session dealt very broadly with us vs them. Us and them are simply any kind of difference between people: cultural, linguistic, religious, gender, etc. But us vs. them is when we take those differences as being cause for opposition. We "other" people when we think we know them, but we do not. In our age of globalization, the exotic other no longer exists, but in some ways we are in a worse situation:we now think that we understand the other, but we only understand them according to our (wrong) projection of who they are. So we need to immerse ourselves in the lives of the others so that we can truly understand them. Conversely, we sometime "selfize" ourselves in us vs. them by removing from ourselves any trace of the other. He gave an example from his own background: since the Serbians drank Turkish, then the Croats rejected drinking it. Or when France refused to support the USA, French fries became Freedom fries (naturally, the thought of actually not eating them didn't occur to people). This selfization thus strips ourselves of part of ourselves. The second session dealt with two further points. The first is that boundaries are not bad of themselves. In Genesis 1 God works by setting boundaries and dividing. An example he gave is that only four million people speak Croatian: if there were no boundaries Croatian would become English in only a short time (a similar process is happening to modern Hebrew in my experience). Boundaries are neutral of themselves: they can be either good or bad. The second point developed was that the greatest us and them boundary is between God and all humans: this divide is greater than any divide between any human. But God has overcome this divide through the Incarnation, giving hope to any inner-human divide to be overcome. When we interact with non-believers, we should not view them as the other, but as one of the us for whom Christ died. On that basis we can seek to overcome the boundary between us. Volf never suggested that we follow a universalistic view of salvation, but that we seek to help people overcome the divide between them and God. This thougth was clearer in my head a day ago, but it is already getting fuzzy. Sorry. 

The third session wrapped up some of the ideas. The primary focus was on forgiveness and reconciliation.  Two points from the Gospels were presented. First, Jesus clearly labeled sin as sin: he did not beat around the bush when it came to such issues. But the larger context of these situation is the movement of Jesus toward the cross: at the same time as he is showing sin to be sin, he is also moving to destroy sin and to bring forgiveness. Second, the prodigal son played an important role. The father ran towards the son even before the son offered his repentance. From this and several other sources, Volf presented his view of forgiveness. Forgiveness is not a one time even or a one-sided event, but a communal process. The person injured should forgive even before repentance is given. But forgiveness is not complete until reconciliation happens. Sin should not be passed over lightly, but it should be clearly shown to be sin. But justice is not required in every detail: we should forgive. I have written similar thoughts in the past, but Volf helpfully clarified what I was trying to say and presented it more clearly than I did. 

 He gave another lecture based on his newest book "The end of memory." This does not mean that memory ceases, but that he is looking at why we remember. He builds on the work of Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor who has dedicated his life to making sure people remember. If people do not remember, according to Wiesel, then the victims are dishonored and a new generation could potentially reenact the Holocaust. But Wolf thought to himself: most wars are caused by remembering. If we could just forget past wrongs, then the number of wars would be reduced. So the key is not simply to remember, but to remember in a correct fashion. He didn't have enough time to develop his points very well, though, so I won't go into those. But he did have one good point that was more of a tangent which I will mention. He said that in this age of globalization, we sometimes feel the pressure to immerse ourselves and know about all the various wars and violence worldwide, or else we will feel guilty that we are ignoring some genocide somewhere. But he said that we should instead immerse ourselves in one particular conflict, and that will give us a feeling for many other conflicts. Deep is better than broad. I felt this point with my very small immersion in the Israeil/Palestinian conflict and how I was able to resonante with much of his description of the Balkan Wars based on my experience in Israel. 

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