A Better Way to Live

We usually live in the tension between hostility and hospitality. This is true of us all. It is true of nations as well. 

In her latest book, Grounded, Author Diana Butler Bass astutely observes that the “tension between hostility and hospitality remains the central conflict underlying the worst episodes of human hatred, oppression, terrorism, and war.” 

In other words we humans, even as enlightened and sophisticated as we may think we are in the West, have been unable to successfully resolve this persistent tension. Quoting one of my favorite spiritual writers from the 1970s Bass continues:

"Our society seems to be increasingly full of fearful, defensive, aggressive people anxiously clinging to their property and inclined to look at their surrounding world with suspicion, always expecting an enemy to suddenly appear or do harm" (Henri Nouwen).

Yet Bass offers what might be a solution to help us resolve the tension between hostility and hospitality. She points us to the ancient story of Abraham that offers some clues as to how we ourselves might better resolve this complex tension.

Abraham, formerly known as Abram, is the father of three major world religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. He lived in one of the most pivotal periods of human development and history. 

Abraham was the first, according to the Hebrew tradition, to recognize and serve one universal God. This was a huge development among ancient peoples of his time, whose gods were at best local tribal deities. Suddenly the idea of one universal God entered into the human experience. This idea was seismic.

Abraham’s God became the one true God of the whole world. The essence of God’s call of Abraham was to spread the word (blessing) of this one universal God. In other words, through Abraham (somewhere around 1200 CE) God would reveal himself as the God of one people who learned to live peacefully in God’s kingdom.

As we read the Biblical account of Abraham’s story we immediately see that hospitality would become the glue that would hold humanity together within this peaceful kingdom. 

Okay, that’s the ideal and we all know that making the ideal reality is never so easy. Throughout history we humans have chosen hostility over hospitality due to fear, a lack of vision for a better world, or the result of just plain ignorance.

Hubris always seems to be the fly in the ointment. Human pride coupled with fear seems to lie behind any meaningful attempt to practice a global hospitality that would lead to a more peaceful world.

Truth is we still think in tribal ways. We still cling to our own tight little niches in which we all look alike and think alike. I would suggest that this ancient tribal spirit is what lies behind any attempt to practice hospitality rather than hostility.

Yet Diana Butler Bass offers us a way to ignite the spirit of hospitality not only within our own individual neighborhoods but also on a global scale as well. This will require a good deal of humility that unfortunately is in short supply among those leaders today that could really make a difference in this world.

According to Bass we might learn to exhibit more “empathy” towards those who are not like us, or don't think like us, or who look different from us, or come from a different place. 

There’s an old saying that helps define empathy for us: “Don’t criticize another until you have walked a mile in his or her shoes.”

Look, I see the world through a lens that is much different from the vast majority of most people in the world, especially those who are scratching out an existence in developing countries or those living in poverty in my own country. 

I look at my world through the lens of an educated privileged white middle class male who was born American. I know that this can skew the way I see others not from my own world.

I confess this as my reality. I own my biases. I am not ashamed of this privilege but I recognize that it powerfully influences the way I see others and the rest of the world. 

Empathy, as simple as it may sound, is the learned ability to see as others see, feel what others feel, know what others know, from their particular station in life. It’s a learned ability to step outside of my own white middle class American tribe long enough perhaps to get a glimpse at how others live, what they feel, what concerns them, and what drives them.

I realize practicing empathy is not easy. But it is what God did for us in Christ: He became one of us in order to identify with us on our level. Christ gave up his privileged heavenly status and put on the sandals of a first century Jewish peasant in order to walk with us through a very dangerous and hostile world. 

One might say that Jesus came to the ghetto to raise us all to a better standard of living. He definitely entered the neighborhood and became a member of the HOA (this is how I would see it from my perspective).

This is hospitality at its finest; a hospitality empowered by Divine empathy. 

Empathy is our world’s best hope for survival. Hostility may indeed continue to be the modus operandi of the world, but it will sadly be our ultimate undoing.