The Power and Spirituality of Relationship
“It is difficult to hate someone whose story you know.”
In Scripture, we hear Jesus constantly challenging us to step beyond the boundaries we create for ourselves. He calls us out of our comfort zones and our isolated lives and invites us to see one another differently—to look beyond appearances, background, race, status, politics, or any of the other labels we so easily place upon one another.
This is at the heart of Emmanuel Katongole's powerful book Mirror to the Church. A priest and professor at Duke University, Katongole examines the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Though he is from Uganda, his father was from Rwanda, giving him a deeply personal connection to the tragedy.
Katongole reminds us of something that is difficult to comprehend: the people who were killing one another were often not strangers. They were neighbors. They lived alongside one another. They worked together. And many were Christians who worshipped together.
As Katongole writes, when Hutus were told to kill their Tutsi neighbors, they faced a terrible choice: either participate or risk being killed themselves. He observes that if Christians in Rwanda had been slaughtered by non-Christians, it would have been tragic—but perhaps easier to comprehend. Instead, Christians killed other Christians, sometimes in the very churches where they had worshipped together.
The horror of Rwanda, then, is not only a story about violence. It is also a story about identity.
Katongole makes a profoundly challenging observation: the blood of tribalism can become more powerful than the waters of baptism.
Those words should make us stop and reflect.
Who are we, really?
Are we first and foremost Christians? Or do other identities have a greater claim on us? Nationality? Race? Political party? Economic status? Neighborhood? Culture? Our own particular group or “tribe”?
Tribalism does not always look like violence. More often, it begins quietly. It can begin with the decision to stop listening. It can appear when we reduce another person to a label. It grows when we assume that someone we disagree is not only disagreeable, but evil or dangerous or a criminal. It takes root when we begin to see “them” as fundamentally different from “us.”
And if we are honest, we can see this kind of tribalism in our own society.
It can divide families. It can create tension among friends. It can enter our parishes and our neighborhoods. It can even find its way into the Church, where people who share the same baptism can sometimes find themselves separated by identities and loyalties that seem more powerful than their identity in Christ.
Jesus does not ask us to pretend that our differences do not exist. He asks us to encounter the person who is different from us. He asks us to cross the road. To listen. To see. To recognize the humanity of the person standing in front of us.
Relationship has spiritual power because relationship changes the way we see.
It is difficult to hate someone whose story you know.
It is harder to dismiss someone when you have sat at the same table, heard about their family, learned their hopes and fears, shared a laugh, or walked with them through a moment of suffering. Encounter has a way of breaking down the walls that abstraction builds.
This is one of the great spiritual gifts of relationship: it makes the other person real.
There is no doubt that it can be challenging. There are people in our lives who because of what they say or do, cause us to shun them or label them or harm them. At Precious Blood Ministry of Reconciliation, we see this over and over. The trauma that someone carries can cause them to lash out. Reconciliation is not just some nice idea. It is not simply a program or a set of principles. It is a choice to value relationship; it is a choice to live in communion with one another – even those we disagree with. It can only happen when we are willing to step out of our comfort or tribe or experience and try understand the brother or sister in front of us.
A young person becomes more than a mistake he or she has made.
A person who has been harmed becomes more than a victim.
A person who has caused harm becomes more than the worst thing he or she has done.
The Christian life calls us into this deeper identity. Before we are members of any tribe, we are God's beloved. Before we are divided by our differences, we are connected through our common dignity as God's children. We are claimed by Christ and called into a communion that is larger than any boundary we might construct.
Perhaps this is why Jesus so often brings people together who would not naturally choose one another.
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