Difference Should Make Us Curious
The Difference Course (‘the Course’, or Difference 1 ) is designed in its first form for churches. Its aim is enabling people to think for themselves about their attitude to those who are considered by the individual or society at large to be other. As time goes by it will be rolled out in adapted form for secular, other faith and interfaith groups, and in more culturally appropriate ways around the world.
The Reality of the Other
Our capacity to deal with difference is probably no less than it ever was, in many ways it is much better, but the scale of the challenge now appears vast as it is magnified by social media. However, our capacity to do so privately has gone downhill. At a recent Church of England meeting there was discussion about a phrase used by someone in a lecture that could be understood to imply that clergy were unnecessary. People phrase things badly the whole time. I should know as I do it myself. There are a number of rules for dealing with it that used to apply. The first was to ask yourself, ‘Did she/he really mean something so bizarre?’ and assume the best rather than the worst. The second is that one used to tell the speaker privately what one thought, get it off one’s chest and move on. Now people tell the world via social media. Instantly.
There is nothing new about dispute; what is new is the capacity to globalize it. A Convocation (the ancient gathering of clergy and bishops in the Province of either Canterbury or York) in 1689 went on for months, so bitter was the wrangling. But they did not have social media, which was a mercy.
The challenge of dealing with outsiders, or those within the group one belongs to whom one makes outsiders through disagreement, extends around the globe, through much of the natural world, and is not restricted to recent years and issues of racism. It is so much part of being human that for many people it is taken as a virtue, or at least a reality that cannot be challenged. ‘They’re not like us’ is very often a sufficient explanation for antipathy towards incomers.
When I was a parish priest, the wonderful and wonderfully dry-humoured parish clerk said to me once, ‘You’re not really local until your grandparents are in the churchyard.’ I must have looked nonplussed because she went on, ‘But you’re all right. You may just have arrived as Justin, but as Rector you have been here for 750 years.’ It was certainly the way it worked. Dates were sometimes set by reference to when Rector x was here, rather like the time of particular Consuls of the ancient Roman republic were the means of remembering a year.
The point was insiders and outsiders.
On a larger scale, the Church of England has its own gangs. They go by more sophisticated names, such as Evangelical or Traditional Catholic, or Liberal Catholic or Charismatic. There are ways in which one fits into the tribe. Many of these will be very friendly to other tribes, but they are still tribes. One training course run by the Church of England had good reviews, which included the comment from several participants that it was the first time they had worked with Anglicans from a different tradition.
To a large extent such diversity does not do much harm on the surface, and the historic reasons for it is important as well as the fact that each tradition brings value to the Church, but the underlying problem can be a deep sense of competition for control of it. The question often being asked is whether ‘they’ – whoever they are – obtain more senior appointments and greater control of things. At the extremes it becomes about unchurching people, treating them as outsiders entirely. At that point it becomes even more like political parties and less like the people of God.
Move a step further to political life in the public square and the problem becomes more complicated, and in recent years more damaging. Again, it’s an old reality. In Iolanthe Act II, a late nineteenth-century comic opera by Gilbert and Sullivan, a sentry on duty during the night at the Houses of Parliament sings,
I often think it’s comical – Fal, lal, la!
How Nature always does contrive – Fal, lal, la!
That every boy and every gal
That’s born into the world alive
Is either a little Liberal
Or else a little Conservative!
Today we would have to write socialist rather than Liberal, as Labour would not scan, but the reality of the two-party system in England (and the USA) still exists as firmly as ever. Again, the different views are not a problem – but the hatred of one for the other can be.
In 2021 my mother, in her nineties, was admitted to hospital in London. The care she received was wonderful. But when I arrived to see her, she was cross. The excellent Nigerian doctor who had cared for her was told by another patient that she wanted to be seen by an English (i.e. in her mind, White) doctor. Both my mother and I said how sorry and ashamed we were. The doctor took it in his stride. He was highly qualified, patient in attitude, caring in his values. Why would anyone prefer delayed treatment to being treated by him purely on account of his colour? The answer was simply that he was ‘other’. If we are easily capable of othering those we see and know – even those we need – how much more easily do we do so for foreigners far away? Asylum seekers, refugees, people in far-off countries of which we know little2 – all are easily forgotten and ignored.
The list can go on and get broader. Racism, factionalism and other ethnic differences remain among the most pervasive, most deadly and most challenging forms of othering. It may be regions of a country that refuse to let ‘settlers’ from another part of the same country attend university for both religious and ethnic reasons. In another democracy it may be steps taken to make voting more difficult or to gerrymander constituencies so as to pack all the opposition voters into a smaller number of seats. Either way the othering leads to attacks on human dignity.
It is the slide downwards from recognizing difference to fearing and then hating those who are different that becomes the corrosion that destroys a community or society. The call of Christ is revolutionary in this regard. It is to love God with everything we are. Second, we are then to love one another, those who are ‘one of us’. Third, we are to love our neighbours, those with whom we have the common connection of humanity. Fourth, we are to love our enemies.
The revolution goes further than that. We are to love others more than we love our lives. Neighbour is redefined in the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10.25-37) to be those whose need we see regardless of their otherness. In other words, the Christian community is called to turn away from all hatred. The capacity of Christians to love like this, when it is carried out, is so radical that it reveals the reality that Jesus Christ is God, coming from the Father (John 17.21). The global Church, should it learn so to love amid all the realities of rivalry and distance and desire for power and influence, would turn the world the right way up.
In a book published in 2021, Gordon Brown,3 the former UK prime minister, discusses global approaches to great problems that threaten large parts of humanity. Reasonably, the first chapter is about the COVID-19 pandemic. He points out that the return to the wealthy countries on money spent to enable a global response to the pandemic is almost US$5 for every dollar spent.4 In other words, it is an immensely good investment. If someone offered me an investment like that, I would probably turn it down on the grounds it was too good to be true. But it is true. Why then do we not invest as much as we can rather than cutting back on overseas aid? The return would pay the aid budget for years.
The answer is that it is always more difficult to feel a concern for those further away, and that the larger the group of which we speak the more we become consequentialist (what are the outcomes) and even indifferent to moral obligations. The late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, in his last book, Morality,5 makes this point powerfully. He puts it in a moral context where the moral obligation reaches beyond ourselves and ‘home’ – as in ‘charity begins at …’ – to the common good.
The first step in responsibility for others and thus participation in reconciliation is thus the question of distance, which is effectively where Difference starts.
The key response to distance and consequent lack of concern is curiosity. Whether it is our neighbour next door who comes from a very different background, the people moving into a new estate on what was the edge of town, immigration pressures or a foreign war, our curiosity is easier to engage nowadays because of good information and it offers a way of shrinking distance.
When encountering those who are other, the most important foundation for overcoming the sense of distance that comes from them being new or different is to listen to their story. The impact of story on who we are is huge. History is not destiny, but it is certainly very influential. The questions about behaviour or attitudes are answered not by seeking to know ‘What’s wrong with you?’, but by the much more open question: ‘What is your story; what has happened to you?’
A close relative of ours was a police officer. She was on a call with other officers to deal with a situation of an asylum seeker behaving oddly. He had crawled under a bed and was resisting all attempts to get him out. She lay down so he could see her and asked him about himself, his faith and his history. It turned out later that he had been arrested in his home country and severely tortured by the police there. The sight of police uniforms triggered a reaction. Telling the story enabled the police here to understand and see him as someone who had been a victim of abuse, not a problem.
Being curious brings people nearer as we begin to engage with them in order to understand their concerns and their priorities. Far more than that, it puts them in the category of those whose good we seek.
In the Old Testament in the Book of the Exodus, the Israelites are settled in Egypt where they have been for generations. Having originally gone down from Canaan in order to avoid a famine, they had been welcomed and settled through the agency of Joseph, who ruled Egypt for the then Pharaoh. Exodus 1.8 starts a new part of the story, saying: ‘Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.’ The Pharaoh looks at the strength and numbers and prosperity of the people of Israel and sees them as a threat. To be ignorant of a person or a group is to leave space for fear. In some cases, knowledge may justify fear, but in almost all circumstances it reduces it and makes space for reconciliation.
The result of the ignorance of Pharaoh is, first, oppression of the Israelites, the long-standing descendants of economic immigrants; second, their ill-treatment; and third, outright war against both them and God. Ignorance settles us into hostility.
Exodus is the story of the liberation of God’s people by God’s supreme power. Reading other texts alongside Exodus, Egypt becomes the symbol of several aspects of Israelite existence. It is the place of slavery. It is the place of refuge, as with Jesus himself as an infant. It is a place of betrayal, a hope for Israel when oppressed by others, but a hope that always fails, as with the exile when Egypt’s help is sought against Babylon, but Egypt does not deliver. Egypt contrasts with God, who is trustworthy and faithful, the place to turn for help. Finally, however, Egypt, like every other nation, will be called faithfully to turn to God in repentance and obedience.
All these stories are the stories of Israel. They define who they are, and thus how they are known, by the stories they tell about themselves. To keep them faithful they recount the story of the Exodus at the Passover. They are to teach their children, who are to be curious. In being curious they will meet the greatest ‘other’ that exists, God, and in knowing the story of God with God’s people they will hear the call to turn to God and be faithful.
The greatest reconciliation is between human beings and God. God is revealed in God’s story, through the life of Jesus Christ. Being curious is not just a means of overcoming ignorance and thus fear; it is the means of discovering the depths of love that are possible across difference.
The Difference Course applies the habit of being curious in five sessions, as with the other two habits of being present and reimagining.
The first session is about God’s command to be peacebuilders and reconcilers. How does our being curious show itself overall in our ways of living? Where do we get information from? Is it only one source or does it include those with whom we disagree?
I listen to podcasts and read publications that make me feel good because they agree with me and say that what I am doing is right – well, I have never found one of those, but one day, somewhere? – but I also read things or listen to podcasts that keep my blood pressure up, at least metaphorically. I look for intelligent criticism, out of curiosity about the views that I do not currently accept. Over time some of them change my views. I also try to mix with a variety of people who have very different views and to listen carefully.
We are all aware that the tendency of social media is to draw us into bubbles of the like-minded. Many people will know the somewhat illicit satisfaction emotionally that comes from hearing a good speaker telling them how right they are and how wrong their opponents are. Its known as preaching to the choir.
One of the most striking features of the debates around sex and gender and transgender is that, according to some, to disagree is not only to be wrong, but to be evil. Similarly, the questions about the levels of racism in the UK institutionally lead not merely to very robust debate, but to death threats and profound abuse of the individuals concerned.
The stirring-up effect of social media is critical in this area. Try doing an audit of those you follow on social media, of the podcasts to which you listen, of those you follow on Instagram, TikTok and all the other forms of media that spring up and die down. What proportion are those with whom you disagree?
The second session of Differences is called ‘Crossing Divides’. There are, speaking as a clergyman, certain ways of encouraging a congregation to take a Sunday off church. One is to announce that you are going to preach on giving. Another is to share a service with a different church, or to do a pulpit swap. There is nothing malicious about people being away; they like what they know, the familiar.
In John 4.1-30 we read how Jesus met and talked with a Samaritan woman at a well in Samaria. That encounter shocked his followers as he crossed gender and ethnic boundaries. He demonstrated the spiritual insights of curiosity-in-loving-action, which is far different from nosiness. It was a curiosity that spoke to her of hope and a future, of a better life than she had known and of one that could be lived by her whole village. Yet the first step for Jesus was to ask for a drink of water.
Where are the places that offer the chance to cross boundaries? It may be a local meeting of the Council of Christians and Jews. It could be visiting another church. A friend in the USA was aware of Dr Martin Luther King saying that Sunday morning is the most segregated two hours of the week in America because Christians all go to churches full of people like themselves. He therefore visited all the churches in his part of Virginia, of all denominations and all ethnicities. At the Black Pentecostal churches, he was very warmly welcomed. His own church was Episcopalian and very White. He tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to get the ministers to visit other churches, and then members of the congregations. Yet they all felt it would not be safe, and that they preferred to be where they had always been, not hating each other but not in unity-within-diversity either.
We are commanded to cross divides because you cannot build bridges without being on both sides of a divide. We are commanded to be boundary breakers, because you cannot bring reconciliation without crossing boundaries.
The third session is on disagreeing well. ‘Disagreeing well’ is a controversial phrase. Shortly after I used it for the first time (I have no doubt it does not come from me in the first place, but I picked it up somewhere), I was firmly criticized on the grounds that Christians should not disagree. To which my answer is, ‘But they do! Incessantly! And who says they should not?’
Paul is always dealing with disagreements in churches to which he was writing; look at 1 Corinthians 1, Romans 12-15, and the stories about Paul personally (e.g. Acts of the Apostles 15.36-41, but cf. 2 Timothy 4.11). He tells the church to be of one mind or to have the same mind in Philippians 2.2, but the context is to avoid destructive divisions of jealousy and anger.
Disagreeing well requires being curious about the real thinking of the person with whom you disagree. Instead of trolling, or cutting off contact, or ignoring and effectively cancelling, it is worth asking, ‘Please would you explain your reasons for what you think?’
The fourth session concerns practising forgiveness. All Christians are called to be forgiven forgivers, reconciled reconcilers. In the way that a doctor practises in their identity as a doctor so should we practise in our identity as forgiven forgivers. At the same time, we are generally very bad at it and thus practice is important in every part of life.
One of the schools that our children attended taught the very small pupils to say sorry when they had fallen out and then for the wronged one to say, ‘I forgive you.’ It spread, with some difficulty, into our family. Forgiveness is harder to give and receive than apologizing, saying sorry.
Sorry is a powerful weapon of passive aggression. It is also a well-established way of conceding with a non-concession. In a satirical political sketch, one of the leading politicians says words to the effect of, ‘If you feel offended by my accusing you of fraud and treason, then I am sorry.’ A genuine apology would be: ‘I accused you of fraud and treason, I was wrong. Please forgive me.’ Yet the ‘non-apology apology’ is the most frequently used. Anything that begins with ‘if’ and puts the blame for being offended on the victim is a non-apology. Anything that leaves the more vulnerable trapped into being manipulated towards forgiveness is not an apology.
Forgiveness is one of the toughest parts of reconciliation. It is often manipulated and usually misunderstood.
The manipulation comes, as I have said, through putting the pressure on the victim. For example, with regard to the need for racial and ethnic reconciliation in the UK there is often the explicit or implicit suggestion that Black people should forgive so that we can all move on. In the safeguarding of children and vulnerable adults, perpetrators have piled abuse upon abuse by requiring forgiveness or by using sacraments such as the confessional and saying that the victim/survivor is required to keep it secret. In a recent case the survivor was told that the perpetrator had sought the forgiveness of God and therefore the survivor must treat it as past. That is a blasphemous misuse of forgiveness by the perpetrator.
In these and many other ways the notion of forgiveness is distorted and the most precious of gifts, the greatest treasure, is soiled in the hands of the manipulators.
God calls us to be forgiven forgivers. Forgiveness is, however, not the same as forgetting the consequences. We can forgive someone who still is sent to prison for a crime against us. The indescribably awful national sins committed through slavery, through Empire and in war, by many nations, may by grace and goodness be forgiven by those who are the descendants of the victims and whose lives are still affected by what happened, directly and indirectly. Yet the offer of forgiveness is not the same as waiving justice. It will still be necessary to show repentance and make reparation, not to earn forgiveness but as a real sign of a change of heart. As I wrote earlier, actions, even of those long before us, have consequences. That is part of what the great Conservative political philosopher Edmund Burke6 meant by his speaking of the social contract as a covenant with those who have lived, those who are alive today and those who are yet to be born.
To be curious opens the way to practise forgiveness. It is to enquire into the state of mind of a perpetrator, to seek to understand their thinking, to sense their guilt and desire for change. It is also to understand one’s own feelings. I know the desire, when I have suffered wrongly, for the perpetrator to be made to regret deeply how wrongly they have acted. I wanted them to feel what I felt. It took time to set that aside, to battle with God in prayer in order to see my anger and to find his love. Psalm 137 speaks of the Jewish exiles in Babylon cursing their captors who saw them as entertainment: the exiles wanted their enslavers to see their own children murdered as they had murdered the children of Jerusalem. I have sat with Christian leaders in the ruins of their town by the mass graves of their families listening to them speak of their inescapable pain and desire for revenge.
The Quentin Tarantino film Django Unchained (2012) is a revenge story, full of blood and violence. Although the escaped slave Django kills many, one cannot help but empathize with his anger at the cruelty of his White oppressors. To be curious is not to reject justice. To be curious must mean that one seeks to enter the feelings of those who suffer and those who oppress, while also seeking justice. Archbishop Desmond Tutu was a passionate advocate of the oppressed, but sought to love their oppressors so that they might see their wrongdoing. He was never neutral between perpetrator and victim, but neither was he consumed with a desire for revenge.
Forgiveness frees the victim from the chains of hatred. It enables the victim to seek justice and campaign for righteousness. It is a liberation, it is a gift to us from God, but it is never a tool with which to oppress further the already oppressed, the abused, the weak and the vulnerable. It is a key to freedom, not a club for the powerful to impose settlement.
The final session of Difference is about hope. It is called ‘Risking Hope’ because it sets hope clearly in the context of offers made and expectations arrived at, but with the risk of neither being fulfilled.
As the epistle to the Romans says in 5.5: ‘hope does not disappoint us because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us’. The Difference Course says: ‘we need to know that we are called to be part of God’s story of restoration in the world’.7 In C. S. Lewis’s book The Great Divorce, hell is full of those without hope and with regrets, and heaven is a place of ever-growing joy in an ever-greater place, journeying together in forgiveness and hope to an ultimate destination. The journey begins in pain, with the reality of heaven making even grass as sharp as glass, but eases as progress is made. Lewis paints a similar picture in the final part of his Narnia Chronicles, The Last Battle.
Hope is, however, often unexpressed and in short supply. To be curious is to ask yourself about your own hopes and to ask your community about theirs. The curiosity will be fed by the act of crossing boundaries, of practising forgiveness, of disagreeing well. All these build community and communities are built to grow on hope. Churchill’s speeches in 1940 were great for many reasons, but chief among them was that they gave hope. His capacity for great errors was huge, but his capacity for inspiring hope was even greater. In any community, reconciliation will be strengthened by hope, but hope must be made known, declared and owned.
Summary
• The first of the key habits of reconciliation is curiosity, being curious.
• We need a lively but not busybody curiosity in order to build bridges and cross divides, so as to understand the stories of others.
• We need a curiosity that listens carefully to those with whom we disagree so that we may disagree well and be able to tell their story and put their argument as well as we can our own, even when we disagree.
• Being curious about our own feelings and the reality of the motivations of others will enable us to practise the hard work of forgiveness. Forgiveness is not the same as allowing injustice.
• We need to be curious about our own and others’ hopes, so that in community we may grow in faith and love.
Points to ponder are to be found in the Difference resource and website.8 The only one I will mention now is whether you know of a group that would like to try the Difference Course together.