By Jason Coker
Last summer I was at a conference in Italy with people from all over the world, and there were a handful of us who became very good friends. We would eat together, sit together during the conference, and talk about all the others who we didn’t like — good religious dialogue. Well, one of these friends — inner circle folks — told me that when she first saw me she thought I was a snob. We all laughed and applauded her intuition. We have all done this. We’ve all looked at someone and immediately held a judgment — for good or for bad. It is very human.
In social relations, we do this weird thing — maybe a holdover from our ancient survival skills — where we go through an instantaneous process of elimination. Snap judgments based on whatever — appearance to pheromones — immediately compel us to make assessments of others, and for whatever reason, it is generally an exclusionary reflex. It is a no, no, no, no, no, no, yes, process — generally. Except for those moments of immediate friendship or white-hot googoo-eyed love, it’s what I call the exclusion reflex.
A reflex is just that — a reflex. When the doctor taps your knee with a reflex hammer to check your reflex, if your reflex is working, your leg will jump. It’s an immediate and involuntary reaction. Our exclusion reflex is involuntary (and usually immediate). My new friend from the conference involuntarily thought I was a snob. It was a reflex — an involuntary response.
While the exclusion reflex is involuntary, it is also conditioned. Our environment and our culture condition our capacity to judge. The conditioning happens so intensely that the exclusion reflex feels normal, natural and right. I think, this is at the heart of bigotry, racism, prejudice, etc. These exclusions become the way we see and understand the world. The more these exclusionary borders are policed and maintained, the more natural and normal they become. As we do this, we layer the exclusion reflex with morality and it completely shapes and shades the way we envision our moral universe. Creating “good” and “bad” people based on appearance isn’t just judgmental, it is deadly as evidenced in this past year’s killing of unarmed black men and boys.
When we celebrate an American hero this weekend, and lift up Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream as a compass that points us into a better future, I would encourage us all to pay close attention to our own exclusion reflexes. The Reign of God — the content of Dr. King’s dream — is just the opposite of an exclusion reflex. The Reign of God is an inclusion reflex. Trying to figure out how to incorporate/include Gentiles into the covenant with God was one of the first major problems the earliest Jesus followers had. These women and men struggled to find ways to include. Or, they had to develop a theology of inclusion to explain what God was already doing among the Gentiles.
While we are separated by time and space from our faithful ancestors, we are reminded by our modern prophet in Dr. King that God still calls us to struggle for inclusion. How would the moral landscape of our world look if people of faith struggled to include each other? What would it look like for us to condition ourselves and our young ones to include rather than exclude? Jesus continually proposes something different than the all too human exclusion reflex. Jesus shows that the Reign of God is one of inclusion, embrace and belonging. You belong here! You are included here! You are embraced here! You are at home here in the Reign of God! This is the inclusion reflex.
I always marvel at people who see the good in everybody — it’s a rare gift. I’m the guy who jumps to conclusions, judges in a snap — for bad or for good. But some people have the inclusion reflex, which is characteristic of the Reign of God — it’s how God is. If our religion is exclusionary, it’s not a religion that is like the Reign of God. (I don’t say this to be exclusionary — truly!) We should resist this impulse to reject and exclude.
The world is tired of judgmental, mean-spirited church/religious people. If we are to be a church then we are to reflect the Reign of God with an inclusion reflex. I don’t think it’s natural; it’s supernatural — it’s God stuff; and the stuff that Dr. King so generously lived. Ask those who are lonely and lonesome what it feels like to experience real love and belonging. Ask the outcast what it feels like to have a home. Ask the marginalized what it feels like to know that they are in God’s center. Ask the downtrodden what it feels like to be lifted up. This is the Reign of God — an inclusion reflex.
We all have our own personal stories and testimonies of exclusion, abandonment, marginalization and exile. We have all felt that sting. Killed because of color, exiled because of sexual orientation, demeaned because of gender, ridiculed because of language — the list is just too long. We are all stories of exclusion at some level. Which is why we know down deep that inclusion is the better way; it is the way of the Reign of God — the inclusion reflex.