By

Dr. Opiew Cham

Today, I would like you to think with me about the subject of Community and Conflict. These past months, I had the privilege of having some students at my class to discuss the challenges and realities of the multi-cultural community.  After reflecting upon that discussion, I have come to the realization that creating a pluralistic world is the job of individual communities. However, there is a fundamental question that must be asked before we can begin to create a pluralistic community. Do we want to get along?

In past years, I have seen some people in the community spent their entire lives trying to find every possible skill to refuse the demands of relationships; the demands of justice; the demands of accountability we have for one another. And yes, even the demands of love. Look around our community. What do you see?  Our culture would say that we are looking at this collection of individuals.

The individual is the fundamental unit of our reality.  But, let me suggest to you that what we are looking at in this very place is not a collection of individuals, understood as isolated community and individuals in some social reality. What we are looking at are lives that have been formed through community. Each of us is a moving intersection of many communities of influence. We move and live in communities. We are here as individuals, bearing the imprints of friends and lovers, bearing the imprints of enemies, bearing the imprints of strangers - strangers who we may never know but who have helped to shape their lives and  country.   And in this way the idea of community is inevitable.  There is no way out of it. We must learn to work within it.

At this time, you are striving to enhance your community in three distinct ways: Open doors, open hearts and open minds; helping to inspire members in this community to strive toward inclusiveness and hospitality. Now, before some people get worried, I want to say that community is not necessarily a warm and fuzzy thing. Community, indeed, can’t be a very dangerous thing. We think of community and families, loved ones; we think of churches that have nurtured us; we think of social gathering places where we are cared for and cultured as human beings.  But think of some of the other forms that community has taken in human history and in our lives. What we have to wrestle with, then, is the power of community. A power that can work for good or for evil, depending on how we understand it, and depending on what kind of courage we have in the midst of it.  Let me put it this way, community is created by forming boundaries.  If you do not have boundaries outlining your interests, you cannot be a community.

Therefore, it’s formed by creating edges, parameters, and by saying some folks stand inside those boundaries and other folks stand outside.  These boundaries are very powerful because these boundaries define for a given community its conception of truth and its conception of reality.  These boundaries are not about minor details, nor are they about how the world looks from where I stand.  How the world looks from where each of us stands today is very different depending on our community of origin and our community of orientation.  It is these boundaries that determine the most fundamental things in our lives, what is true, what is real, what is good, what is beautiful, and what is worth while.  This is where the intensity of communal membership comes from.

If you ever want to know about the intensity of communal membership, talk to someone who has grown up in a community and who has later tried to alter his or her identity relative to the truths of the community.  Talk to someone who has tried to change their political identity, their ideological identity.  Talk to someone who has come to a new understanding of their religious identity.  In talking to these people, you will realize that the power of community not only to support, but also to crush if we cross over that line.

That is the power to support or to crush. We are talking here about the fundamental human power. We have to move beyond an understanding of community that is something soft and fuzzy. As a result, the crucial question about any community is how it understands its relationship to the stranger.  There are three primary ways in which the community relates to the stranger.  First is by means of retreat. Some communities deal with the stranger by avoiding the stranger.  Second is the way of violence. Some communities deal with the stranger by killing the stranger; sometimes literally, but more often figuratively.  Third is the way of hospitality. Some communities have learned to deal with the stranger by welcoming the stranger.  So there is retreat, there is violence and there is hospitality.  Is there not some way to move beyond retreat and violence towards hospitality?

Now, if we ask the leper, he would tell us that he lived a life in which he often fell victim to the violence of those in the community.  People would pass by him and they would quickly walk to the other side of the street, retreating.  Or, they would just ignore him and whisper quietly amongst themselves.

Let us first look at communities that retreat from the stranger.  We all fall into this mode of retreat from time to time.  We have been able to buy our way into situations where we never have to face otherness; where we never deal face to face with multiple and plural realities of the world of strangers.  I am eager for you to understand that retreat is not some specialized mode.  The fact that we even are in this place that could even make one ask what we are retreating from.  When we make choices to be in communities where people have less than you and we question: "Why would you want to do that?"  "Why would you want be in this community" We often shape our lives so that we may have the privilege of retreating.

In one of our greatest challenges in facing the reality of retreating is that in today's society there is evidence that people are coming from more understanding the realty then ever before which causes us to ask why the realization of community. Often, when retreat doesn't work we resort to violence.  The model of community is not avoiding the stranger but rather kill the stranger. I want us to be very clear that we kill one another on a daily basis in ways that have nothing to do with guns and bullets and sticks and weapons. Those are only the more outrageous signs of this violent response to the stranger.  We often kill the stranger with words - let me repeat that - we often kill the stranger with words. We kill the stranger with attitude. We kill the stranger with labels.

Let me give you an operating definition of violence. We have to understand that violence is not just when I beat on your head with a stick.  A violent act is an act that violates the integrity of the other. A violent act is an act that violates the integrity of the stranger. 

The truth is that all of us have been in situations where we have felt our integrity has been compromised. Today, what happened in Gambella, Ethiopia, whether Anyuaks, Nure, Majanger, or others, have all been victims of having their integrity compromised and violated. We need to be in deep touch with the fact that the people of Gambella always feel violence on a daily basis. It can have the daily experience of having their integrity and identity violated by the people who don’t understand the right of the people. The third option for a community is one in which the relationship to the stranger is one of hospitality.  By healing the leper, Jesus made him a citizen of the community.  What was the evidence?  Once an outside, the leper ran about the community to tell everyone of his cleansing.

As you can see, the tradition of hospitality is an ancient tradition. Hospitality means more than being nice to you’re people or guest when they come to visit your home, or tolerating your relatives, quietly wondering how long they are going to stay.  Hospitality to the strange and to the stranger turns out to be one of the fundamental virtues of human civilization and also one of the fundamental virtues of the intellectual life

Do you know what the root of all this is? It is not that the stranger is needy for me, but I am needy for the stranger. The hospitality I offered to the other is not so much for his or her sake but my own.  Until we understand that, we will not be hospitable people. But why do I need to be hospitable?  If I only see the community through my own eyes and hear it through my own ears, I only perceive about two degrees of it. But, as soon as I can be open to the viewpoint of the stranger and can say, "Oh, that is how it looks to a person, that is how it looks to a single mother, and that is how it looks from the our cultural understanding," then my conception of truth is enlarged and my life is enlarged with it. I need the stranger to save myself.

Hospitality is when you move away from your comfortable existence and embrace the stranger. It is when you sit down around the table with someone who is different an expression of God's creation of unique individuals.  Hospitality has to do with Jesus asking Peter "Peter, do you love me?"  He said, "Lord, you know I love you." And Jesus says, "feed my sheep." What Jesus is really asking all of us are, "Do you love me?"  He is saying, "Do not retreat, do not show violence but show hospitality."  Peter is saying, "Oh Lord, you know I love you. God, I do all those things. I worship you. I care for you."  But still Jesus says, "Show hospitality."

In striving for hospitality we have to ask ourselves what do we have in common as human beings and will we chose each and every individual person from their inherent nature and their goodness. It is important to treat each other as we want to be treated from a level of respect, love and care, indeed, as we treat ourselves. We build community by treating each other with common decency, respect, love and care.

You see, if you really want to show and demonstrate that you stand for justice, equality, integrity, peace, and unity for all, if you really want to answer the question "Can we get along?" or answer the question "Do we want to get along?" then you demonstrate hospitality.  If we don't show hospitality then we all as community will be in conflict, a community that retreats when it is convenient to retreat. A community in conflict is a community that is involved in violence because someone is different or because someone has a different expression or because someone has chosen to be free and develop their individual identity.  The greatest commandment to all of us, if we are communities of hospitality, is to love humanity with all of our hearts; with all of our understanding; with all of our strengths; with all the richness in diversity and love one's neighbor as one's self.

In the end, the struggle against indivisibility continues because of retreat.  But if we desire to create a healthier community, we must not retreat, we must embrace difference.  The challenge is that we must commit ourselves to accepting difference and provoking genuine dialogue.  The beautiful thing about this is that if we begin to treat all with hospitality then we are all able to capture the new spirit of community, a new spirit because of the cross and the power of Jesus that lives within us. A new spirit of unity and a new spirit of hope. With others people, we can work together, pray together, struggle together, and dream of a community together, to be affirmed and to be challenged to grow in community and community of hospitality. " The choice is ours. Will we choose the community of conflict, retreat, and violence or the community of hospitality?  May God guide all those you desire and wish to be agents and servants of the community of hospitality.