"Getting to Know 'the Other' Doesn't Work"

The Galli Report email
Feb. 9, 2018
Mark Galli
Editor-in-Chief, Christianity Today

Getting to Know 'the Other' Doesn't Work
There is a very common solution regarding people who harbor prejudice or resentment against those of another race, class, religion, or ethnicity. The solution hinges on the idea that we suspect others if we don’t really know them. If we could view them less as an “other” and more as a neighbor, as part and parcel of our common life together—then we’d all be able to get along with one another.
The only problem is that it doesn’t work. This is shown in some detail in Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz by Omer Bartov. A book review on Smithsonian.com begins,

There’s a common misconception about genocide that’s bothered Omer Bartov for a long time. “We tend to talk about genocide as something that calls for dehumanization,” says the Brown University professor of European history. “We think of it as a process where you have to detach yourself from the victims, to distance yourself from them as much as you can, and to create a system of detachment.” The reality of mass murder, he says, is far more intimate. …
“You can take a society in which people had lived together for centuries, and that very proximity, that very relationship between neighbors can have a dynamic of violence and self-justification,” Bartov says.

On a lighter note, it reminds me of a line in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The line comes after one of the characters describes the Babel fish, which when placed in the ear could translate any language in the universe for the listener: “Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything.”

This brings to mind another pungent line. Ruth Graham was asked if she ever considered divorcing Billy. “I’ve never considered divorce,” she replied. “Murder, yes. But not divorce.”

Such are the humorous ways of dispelling our sometimes-naïve bromides about solving conflict. Intimacy is not the answer; sometimes it’s the problem. It’s just hard, really hard, figuring out how to get people to stop killing each other. I’m tempted offer the out-of-fashion answer, naïve in its simplicity and improbable in its execution this side of history: the transformation of the human heart by Jesus Christ.