COMMENTARY
tvc.dsj.org | February 6, 2018
15
Overcoming the Divisions that Divide Us
By Rev. Ron Rolheiser, OMI
Theologian, teacher, award-winning
author, and President of the Oblate
School of Theology in San Antonio, TX
We live in a world of deep divisions. Everywhere
we see polarization, people bitterly divided from each
other by ideology, politics, economic theory, moral
beliefs, and theology. We tend to use over-simplistic
categories within which to understand these divisions:
the left and the right opposing each other, liberals and
conservatives at odds, pro-life vying with pro-choice.
Virtually every social and moral issue is a war-zone:
the status of women, climate change, gender roles,
sexuality, marriage and family as institutions, the role
of government, how the LGBTQ community is to be
understood, among other issues. And our churches
aren’t exempt; too often we cannot agree on anything.
Civility has disappeared from public discourse even
within our churches where there is now as much divi-
sion and hostility within each denomination as there
is between them. More and more, we cannot discuss
openly any sensitive matter, even within our own
families. Instead we discuss politics, religion, and val-
ues only within our own ideological circles; and there,
rather than challenging each other, we mostly end up
feeding each other in our biases and indignations thus
becoming even more intolerant, bitter, and judgmental.
Scripture calls this enmity, hatred, and indeed that’s
its proper name. We are becoming hate-fi lled people
who both fuel and justify our hatred on religious and
moral grounds. We need only to watch the news on any
night to see this. How’s this to be overcome?
At the more macro level in politics and religion,
it’s hard to see how these bitter divides will ever be
bridged, especially when so much of our public dis-
course is feeding and widening the division. What’s
needed is nothing short of religious conversion, a
religious change of heart, and that’s contingent on the
individual. The collective heart will change only when
individual hearts fi rst do. We help save the sanity of
the world by fi rst safeguarding our own sanity, but
that’s no easy task.
It’s not as simple as everyone simply agreeing to
think nicer thoughts. Nor, it seems, will we fi nd much
common ground in our public dialogues. The dialogue
that’s needed isn’t easily come by; certainly we haven’t
come by it yet. Many groups are trying for it, but with-
out much success. Generally what happens is that the
even most-well intended dialogue quickly degenerates
into an attempt by each side to score its own ideological
points rather than in genuinely trying to understand
each other. Where does that leave us?
The real answer, I believe, lies in an understanding
of how the cross and death of Jesus brings about recon-
ciliation. The author of the Letter to the Ephesians tells
us that Jesus broke down the barrier of hostility that
existed between communities by creating one person
where formerly there had been two – and he did this
“by reconciling both [sides] in one body through his
cross, which put that enmity to death.” (Ephesians 2, 16)
How does the cross of Christ put enmity to death?
Not through some kind of magic. Jesus didn’t break
down the divisions between us by mystically paying off
some debt for our sins through his suff ering, as if God
needed to be appeased by blood to forgive us and open
the gates of heaven. That image is simply the metaphor
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behind our icons and language about being washed
clean of sin and saved by the blood of Christ. What
happened in the cross and death of Jesus is something
that asks for our imitation not simply our admiration.
What happened in the cross and death of Jesus is an
example for us to imitate. What are we to imitate?
What Jesus did in his passion and death was to
transform bitterness and division rather than to re-
transmit them and give them back in kind. In the love
which he showed in his passion and death Jesus did
this: He took in hatred, held it inside himself, trans-
formed it, and gave back love. He took in bitterness,
held it, transformed it, and gave back graciousness.
He took in curses, held them, transformed them,
and gave back blessing. He took in paranoia, held it,
transformed it, and gave back big-heartedness. He
took in murder, held it, transformed it, and gave back
forgiveness. And he took in enmity, bitter division,
held it, transformed it, and through that revealed to
us the deep secret for forming community, namely,
we need to take away the hatred that divides us by
absorbing and holding it within ourselves and thereby
transforming it. Like a water purifi er which holds
within itself the toxins and the poisons and gives
back only pure water, we must hold within ourselves
the toxins that poison community land to give back
only graciousness and openness to everyone. That’s
the only key to overcome division.
We live in bitterly divisive times, paralyzed in
terms of meeting amicably on virtually every sensitive
issue of politics, economics, morality, and religion.
That stalemate will remain until one by one, we each
transform rather than enfl ame and retransmit the
hatred that divides us.