By Kim Thoday

I was so saddened to hear of the recent death of Mike Yaconelli, a prophetic voice to the American and international Christian community. He died as a result of a road accident in late October 2003. Yaconelli will also be remembered as a gifted speaker, writer, co-founder of Youth Specialties (a resource ministry for youth workers) and editor the quirky but refreshingly satirical magazine "The Door" (formerly "The Wittenburg Door").

What I liked about Yaconelli was both his passion for Biblical faith and his ability to tell the truth to the Church. Yacconelli once commented that real Christianity is characterised by "oddness." I had never heard anyone say that before, well not in so many words. He also wrote: "Christianity is home for people who are out of step, unfashionable, unconventional, and counter-cultural." There are echoes here of the strong song-lines of a very unconventional man from Galilee, some two thousand years ago. Traditional and "pop" religion had a big problem with that unconventionality then and so Jesus was promptly executed. One of the things that I think is still a huge problem for the Church is its intolerance of difference. But lets not be too hard here, because the issue is intrinsic to human being. It is a phenomenon that has deep roots in human society and psyche. We know that social cohesion is one of a number of embryonic elements necessary for human survival and development. And social cohesion by definition requires a fair degree of conformity. But then, an over balance of conformity is when we get into trouble. For instance, we have known for centuries about the dangers of inbreeding. And so the laws of most contemporary societies forbid incestuous relationships. Societies and other human organisations such as Churches also need to guard against a homogenous conformity that will retard human development in terms of new ideas, healthy relationships, maturation and so on. In short, sociology tells us that there needs to be an on-going refinement for the equilibrium between conformity and diversity.

However, there is yet a deeper level to the problem of intolerance and the tendency to demand conformity and even uniformity. That deeper level exists within the human psyche. And inevitably we begin to discuss those iconoclastic manifestations of conformity - those who have engaged in genocide of one form or another. It seems from the scholarly literature, that it is here, we confront the darkest depths of human depravity and evil. One can rationally explain conformity from the point of view of social science. One can explain with a fair degree of persuasiveness that in times of war, or in our era of terrorism, there is of necessity a need for greater conformity with some significant limitations on freedoms and tolerance. Yet there is another mysterious, darker force that operates which seems to defy rational explanation. If we are honest with ourselves, by degree, it exists within each of us. There is an impulse that exists within the human psyche that desires the elimination of the other, the murder of that which is different.

The study of genocide is imperative because it throws this suppressed (seemingly unimaginable) impulse out into daylight in all its magnitude, horror and reality. The most recent genocides against the Tutsis in Africa and the Croats in Eastern Europe, vividly expose an evil or destructive impulse that defies logical explanation. New scholarly studies are published each year, sixty years after the attempted Annihilation of the Jews, to explain Hitler. The explanations range from the historical, to the social, to the psychological, to the genetic, to the para-normal. But as Ron Rosenbaum, in his epic study: "Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of his Evil," so convincingly demonstrates, all these explanations have tended to absolve Hitler and the Nazis from the responsibility of their crimes against humanity. I think, philosophically, that explanation in of itself subtly (or not so subtly) begins that very process of absolution. Yet morally we need to understand ourselves. And understanding requires explanation. The forces at work behind genocide can to some extent be explained. However, the concept of genocide also has its limitations. Genocide ostensibly says: "you no longer have the right to live as you are; we will no longer tolerate your differences." But with these particular crimes against humanity we are dealing with something that goes beyond even the evil of genocide. For Adolf Hitler, and it seems likely now for Pauline Nyiramasuhuko*, "you no longer have the right to exist as you are," became: "you no longer have the right to exist; we no-longer tolerate you absolutely." Where is the genesis of that leap into oblivion? Can that leap be explained?

One may be able to explain a sudden outburst of violence, for instance - of the cathartic explosion of mob violence, but how does one explain the dedicated, obsessed, gratified, commitment to exterminate the other. How does one explain Conrad's, "Heart of Darkness"? As Philip Gourvetich** asks of the mass murder of the Tutsis, what sustained ordinary Hutus after their first frenzy of mass murder? How was it, he asks that "... at Nyarubuye, and at thousands of other sites in this tiny country, on the same days of a few months in 1994, hundreds of thousands of Hutus had worked as killers in regular shifts"?

Perhaps in a country like Australia, such images of genocide and extermination may seem distant and irrelevant. I think it is never too far removed and it only requires certain social, political and economic conditions to change and we find the impulse to destroy the other, or at least vilify the other, those who are different, lying close to the surface of consciousness. Aboriginal Australians would be more familiar with this reality since the white invasion of their land. And that simple vision, the White Australia Policy, lies not far distant in our collective psyche. Perhaps that is partly an explanation: a simple vision. A simple, compelling and absolute (absolving), vision: the eradication of the other as an absolution/ purification of the self. If this is so then the human impulse of intolerance is the stuff of religion.

The desire to separate, to incarcerate, to differentiate, to exterminate, then at its deepest level, is a religious impulse. Think of Hitler's ideal of Aryan purification and perfection. Yes it is a twisted, demonic distortion, but it is the matter of religious zeal for redemption and salvation. It is here that the Christian Gospel is compelling and persuasive. For in the primal stories about Jesus Christ, we discover that the solution to these pervasive religious longings for purity and salvation are to be found and experienced in a construction of humanity that is antithetical to the vision of self as distinct/ separate from the other. Part of the Christian narrative is that God's very nature is inclusive; that is, God, the ultimate other/ alien, becomes human through his son, Jesus Christ. The Biblical stories about Jesus reveal that he comes as the other, as a stranger, as odd, in so far as, his lifestyle and teachings are at odds with the prevailing expectations of a great ruler, or religious teacher, or saviour. And his ministry begins with, and largely continues amongst, the odd ones, the outsiders, the illegals, the poor, the foreigners and the outcasts. It is as if the divine imperative for real salvation must begin with those who are not included. Jesus' ministry is about inclusion. Yet his ministry has about it a divine force of equilibrium. That is, to be truly inclusive of all, his ministry prioritises those who are victims of a socially constructed world that marginalises, a world constructed by those who would absolve themselves through separation, ironically those who would become 'gods' over the lives and destinies of others. Jesus Christ demonstrated in his life, ministry and Death, that redemption and salvation comes not through the justification and separation of self. Life, Jesus teaches, comes through a radical love of the other. Fulfilment comes to a self that serves the other, to a self that is prepared to give away itself for the sake of the other and from a self that is prepared to accept the reality and power of the ultimate other - God, in Jesus Christ. Salvation comes through a self transformed by the other. It's a little odd though, isn't it?

* Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, was a top level official of the Rwandan government, and now is the first woman ever to be charged with genocide and using rape as a crime against humanity.

** Philip Gourvetich is a jounalist and author who wrote an important account of the Rwandan genocide in his book: "We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families" Picador, 1998.

Yours in Christ,

KIM THODAY, Hewett Commnuity Church of Christ, South Australia http://www.hewett.org.au