The twin Genesis creation myths paint a picture of initial chaos transformed into order, in which God and all creation – including the man and the woman, created equal because equally in the Divine image (Gen 1:27) – live in peace and harmony; “and God saw that it was very good.” In the second story we are first reminded of the mutuality or complementarity of the couple: together they are one body, one flesh (Gen 2:24). Disobedience by eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil brings disaster, disharmony and dispersal. And yet, there are two critically significant and positive by-products of the Fall: first, “The Lord God said, ‘See! The man (that is, male and female) has become like us, knowing what is good and what is evil’” (Gen 3:22); and second, though the human ones were disgraced, they did not lose grace entirely. These two things, conscience and moral knowledge contain the potential both for humanity’s greatness and its shame.
In the story, God brought animals and birds to the man and permitted the man to name them: “And whatever the man called each of them would be its name” (Gen 2:19). This power – astonishingly and gratuitously granted to the man – will also become a measure of human control and discrimination: it represents what I call the “cultural flaw.” The ability to use language to name and define gives the user great power. “Light!” says God, and there was light. “I name this ship Invincible, says the Queen, and it becomes reality; “I declare you husband and wife” says the minister, and the words actually make it happen. This is the “performative” power of words, as J.L Austin demonstrated brilliantly in his classic How to Do Things with Words. But when we use language to define something or someone, we do so by distinction as well as by inclusion, as God separated light from darkness and sea from dry land. An Englishman is not a woman, English or not; not Australian or Vietnamese, and so on. I am not
7 This is dealt with in greater detail in Anthony J Gittins, A Presence That Disturbs: A Call to Radical Discipleship. (Ligouri, MO: Liguori, 2002), 94ff.
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you; Catholics are not Protestants, and Christians are not Muslims. In the mythical harmony of paradise there was inclusion and a community of “we”; after the Fall there was exclusion, confrontation, discrimination, and polarisation. By identifying oneself as the norm we can then identify others as abnormal. This is dangerous and demeaning. If I am a literate, white, British, Catholic, I can too quickly label others as illiterate, non-white, non-British or non-Catholic, thereby defining them negatively, where identifying someone as an oral, Chinese-American Presbyterian would be both more correct and more respectful, but we often define other by assumed deficiency as a matter of course.
Every culture and language, by naming and taming, labeling and bringing under verbal control, distinguishes, separates, opposes and excludes every bit as much as it includes, joins, or harmonises. God’s multiform and diverse creation is good, but the cultural flaw is the perverse tendency to see difference through the distorting lenses of discrimination, distinction, dissimilarity, divergence, discord or disparity. In their native Persia, the magi were revered as the most influential and respected people; by their neighbors the Jews, they were defined as foreigners, idolaters, and both ignorant and contemptuous of God’s ways. The Law served to mark and maintain the boundaries between them, lest Israel and its people became contaminated and fell from grace.
Culture is what humanity does to the world in which it lives and cultures produce, to some degree, the sundering of nature, creating the very separation and division that Genesis warned about. Explicitly or not, from the raw materials in Genesis and the gospels, from “have dominion” or “be masters” (Gen 1:28), from “the two become one body” (Gen 2:24) and from “what God has joined together, humans must not separate” (of Mk 10:9 and Matt 19:6), human cultures have remade the world and often ridden rough shod over the earth and its people. As soon as “We” is split, ruptured, riven and then re-named as “me” and “you, “mine” and “yours” or “us” and “them,” the cultural
flaw or tendency to reconstruct by deconstructing, and to advance by avoidance or competition rather than encounter and collaboration, is revealed.
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Four quadrants
In order to create and maintain an inner identity or social order, a culture or community will define itself first by drawing a real but vertical line between itself and the other, so that “insiders” are clearly distinguished from “outsiders,” natives from foreigners. In some cases the line may be as concrete as the Berlin Wall or the architectural monstrosity that forms the border between USA and Mexico, but it may also be a natural feature like the sea or a mountain range. In other cases the line may be invisible but no less real, marked for example by differences of language, ethnicities or cultures within the borders of a single nation, as in this country and many others. The more porous the line, the more likely it will have both a conjoining and a separating function; the less porous and the more tightly patrolled, the more its exclusionary function becomes evident.
Within the “insider” community itself, every society draws another line, horizontal this time, sometimes very visible and sometimes less obvious but no less real. This line separates “insider participants” from “insider non-participants”; and different societies create and maintain it in such a way that it divides these into two equal or unequal groups. In some cultures, the “insider-participants” are the majority, while the minority, substantial or not, are “insider non-participants.”
If that horizontal line were projected to cut across the vertical line, it would create a
figure of four quadrants. Top left (#1) would be “Insider Participants” and bottom left
(#2) “Insider non-participants.” Bottom right would be “Outsider non-participants” (#3) and top right, “Outsider-participants” (#4). The diagram illustrates this social construct, created by the insiders and – implicitly but very dangerously – from the patriarchal perspective, two facts that are of enormous importance for our understanding of mission.
Human cultures are patriarchal. There is no record of a truly matriarchal culture, in which women alone would exercise authority and control and men would be subordinated. One may think of a “default matriarchy” in extreme and atypical
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circumstances (the men are all away at war, deported, imprisoned or incapable), or indeed of matrilineal societies that constitute about 16% of the world’s cultures. Matriliny, however, is about tracing descent and some privileges through the maternal line and not about the control of authority. Moreover, even though there may be some very high status women in a society (like a Queen Mother), men still exercise authority, though it is the brother rather than the husband of the influential woman. Sadly the truism holds universally: “It’s a man’s world.” Accounts of true matriarchies are thoroughly discredited by academic anthropologists. Even when women do occupy the pinnacle of power, they become, in traditional societies, “sociological men”: they must be beyond childbearing age, and can sometimes become the sociological father (pater rather than genitor) of children born to women obtained as their fictive wives.
This is rare but real. I lived in such a culture in Sierra Leone. It is attested long before the gay marriage question arose.
Turning to the diagram, quadrant # 1 is occupied by the holders of authority who, in principle, are adult males. Some have moral and/or legal authority, predominantly at the domestic or local level and some have the authority associated with public law- keeping, such as military or religious figures. These are the “participant insiders”, VIPs responsible for the maintenance of domestic and public order.
Quadrant #2 consists of the people regarded in a particular society – by, of course, the VIPs or “number ones,” and there will be variation here from one society to another – as expendable, useless, or without authority within the community. There are three primary groups: first, the immature (the as yet unborn, infants, and children); second, those regarded as deviant (physically, mentally or morally); and third, women. Some of these “have their uses” as is sometimes said: the unborn (“non-viable”) can be brought to term, be born, and grow to maturity; infants (literally, “those without language”) can acquire language; and children (“those lacking sexual identity”) can become sexually mature adults. Likewise, criminals might reform, and some others, deemed “deviant,” may become rehabilitated. But those who do so can only graduate into quadrant #1 if they are, or become, adult males. Throughout history, women have never – or only very rarely and under socially prescribed conditions – been able to cross from quadrant #2 to quadrant #1. They do, of course, have a place within the domestic sphere, but their primary function is considered to be their contribution to the honour of their menfolk, for they cannot accrue honour for themselves. Women are also deemed dangerous, however, because they may bring shame upon their menfolk and for this reason they must be controlled and kept in their place.
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Contemporary instances of so-called “honour killings” exemplify this social fact perfectly: men are in control. (This is not to say women are totally powerless, as every woman, and some men, are well aware, but to pursue this here would take us too far afield). In short, women are confined within, or certainly on the margins of, their quadrant, for the simple reason that they can never become men.
There is one other group identifiably in quadrant #2: “non-participating males.” This would include everyone, even able-bodied men, who contribute nothing whatever to the common good; they are effectively social parasites. It is important to identify such people because they can, and do, exist universally. Unlike many women, who live thankless and unacknowledged lives of service, or some of those identified as “deviant” or with other disparaging names – who are not capable of contributing more – these non-participating men are a burden and a bad example.
This portrayal – especially my identification of many women and other “non- participants” – may seem bleak or even cynical but it is simply an attempt to sketch “la condition humaine,” the cultural lot of people throughout history and across cultures: it is the “cultural flaw,” the ‘original sin’, the universal cultural bias, Its existence or reality poses a direct challenge to anyone committed to the Christian mission.
The two quadrants on the right side of the diagram contain the people – seen as such, of course, from the perspective of the insiders – as “outsiders.”
In quadrant #3 they are identified as “non-participating outsiders.” In those cultures whose boundaries or borders are non-porous and whose members are extremely xenophobic, there may be virtually no such people, They are either irrelevant or simply unknown. Even today, there are some small social groups virtually cut off from contact with or concern about who or what might exist beyond their own little world, but in today’s globalised world there are three categories that deserve mention. One includes outsiders who are social parasites and perhaps transients. A second category is tourists who pay their way. Most tourists are clearly non-participating though in the sense that their purpose is entirely selfish if relatively harmless. They may be said to be important contributors to local economies but that is certainly not their raison d’etre: they arrive, remain, and leave, entirely on their own terms. A third category we can identify as unwanted outsiders: invaders, imperial agents, or interfering busybodies, including, sadly but historically, some missionaries.
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In these days of short mission trips this raises a question: given both the good intentions of those who take such trips and the patent fact that they are outsiders to the people they seek to encounter, how do the insiders perceive them? It takes time to be granted the status of “outsider participant” and such status is ascribed rather than simply achieved. So, what is the social identity of are those undertaking short “mission trips,” largely on their own terms? Are they outsider participants or outsider non-participants? And what are the implications here?
We now look more closely at quadrant #4: “outsider-participants.” Their specific purpose is to contribute – precisely as outsiders and with their particular perspectives and the gifts they bring – to the well-being of the insiders, especially the “nobodies” or “number twos” – the “non-participant insiders.” Such people can become their champion when many insider-participants exploit or ignore this underclass. In quadrant #4, the operative words – “outsiders” and “participant” or “participating” – are held together in tension, as each component contributes something very particular to the interaction between insider and outsider, “us” and “them.” Sociologically, the classic outsider-participant is the person initially identified by the insiders as one of “them” (a rank “outsider”) but who, through a discernible and chartable process, passes, by structured stages – identified as preliminal, liminal and postliminal – to a new status. No longer simply “the outsider,” nor an interloper or tourist, they now have the new ascribed sociological status of “stranger.”
“The stranger” here, is different from the sojourner or bird-of-passage and now has the status of permanent resident, and as such fulfills prescribed and appropriate roles that are both clearly delimited and structurally and socially different from any role or status occupied by the insiders. Biblically, this is the stranger or “resident alien” (gēr), who has specified rights and duties, quite different from the biblical nokri: the sojourner or transient, who is accorded safe passage but who must not tarry and who has no permanent status within the community. Would-be strangers or resident aliens (gēr) cannot force or foist themselves on the community and must of necessity pass through the period of trial and testing before becoming accepted by the host community. One very significant reason for the insiders’ caution is that although the stranger’s contribution can be life-giving for the community, experience shows that strangers can also be deadly. (“I fear the Greeks bearing gifts” is the well-known opening line of Virgil’s Aeneid). Both the insiders and the stranger must, for a long time, act with caution. The stranger lives in a state of some ambiguity precisely because they are
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not entirely integrated, are never an insider, and are thus inherently marginal. Yet, to repeat, the potential of the ambiguous or marginal stranger is enormous.
In paragraphs 70 and 71 of the recent Statement on Mission from the World Council of Churches entitled “Together Towards Life” (TTL) it is worth noting that the stranger is identified with someone from outside, but not with ourselves as the outsiders in other communities.8The paragraphs assume that “we” are the insiders and “they” are
the outsiders and urges us to treat them, the migrants, with kindness and respect. This is commendable, appropriate, and quite biblical, as far as it goes. But it does not go far enough because it does not go as far as Jesus went. Paragraph 71 identifies God as the host and ourselves as guests, invited into God’s mission, but Jesus went much further, identifying his own kenotic, self-emptying role and status: “I was a stranger,” said Jesus (Matt 25:35). Because he became a stranger himself, this puts Jesus in quadrant #4 or on its margins, whereas, if he were only and always the host, he would be only and always in quadrant #1. This has profound implications for his way of doing mission and for our way of imitating him.9