Galatians 3:28 “There is neither Jew nor
Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all
one in Christ Jesus.”
I have come across a term that I like –
Reject the Binary. I see our either-or
thinking as being the root of so much of what ails us. For much of the world around us, I see as
living on a continuum. So with that in
mind I offer the following:
It
seems to me that we as a group of people are becoming more divisive. It very
well could be that our divisiveness is simply becoming more noticeable. We have
been watching a political process in the United States that seems embroiled in
an us-versus-them mentality. This I think accentuates that style of thinking.
The divisions are many, gay or
straight, black or white (morality and race), rich and poor, lost and saved,
male and female, right and wrong, left or right (politics not handedness - both
revile the other), and the list could go on; how we divide people seems
endless.
I have seen that divisiveness in so
many groupings. In 12 step communities we
separate the world into addicts/alcoholics and normies. The idea being that the misery us addicts
have experienced and the way we now live sets us apart from the rest of the
world. So as Wanna has decided to not
drink, there are the requisite questions as to whether she has come to accept
her alcoholism; even though she has quit for different reasons. These days, most Sundays I go to one of the
most segregated organizations in existence – church. Despite all of our rhetoric, churches still
remain divided by race and ethnicity.
Many of these divisions, such as race,
do not actually exist; except for our insistence that they do. Other divisions
exist only for the few that live in the extreme opposites - most of us live
within the balance between the opposing ends of spectrums. Think of life and
death - yes that binary does exist, death is real and lies in wait at the end
of a continuum. Birth, life, exists at the other end. But our lives are lived
in the space between.
Yet, unlike the dichotomy of life and
death, those that we create are the breeding pits of hatred and violence. When
we fall into us-and-them thinking it is the “Us” that is the correct and valued
side. The other, the “Them” are wrong and to be despised. It is that separateness that we use to justify
all sorts of vile acts.
Consider gender, apart from simple
biology - which too often is actually not that clear - is a sociological
construct. I can tell you that what is permissible as a man has nothing to do
with having a penis. And what is permissible at times is alarming. White male
privilege can only exist in the context of either-or binaries.
My
point is not that such binaries do not exist - rather that it is how we live
with those binaries that is so important. So I propose a concept that I draw
from my pagan days. Embracing our paradoxes, contradictions, and opposites.
It is when I stop playing the male vs
female game that I am free to embrace my life. When I am free to express myself
as I am, is when I can be truly who I am. The only way that I know of to be
free, is to stop playing us-and-them, and embrace what lies between. Thus, I am
feminist for rather selfish reasons, I know that my freedom lies within the
freedom for women. But in doing so, I must be willing to part with the
privilege that I have been afforded.
Such
an approach does not call for a homogenizing of the world. Rather it celebrates our differences. It is moving from a black and white view of
the world to a kaleidoscope of colours not to simply a gray scale. To put this into terms that I celebrate – it is
shifting from my family’s meat and potato approach to food to the multicultural
experience of food that is Vancouver.
I will leave you with that, I hope I
have made sense, there is more to explore.
