Been reading Exclusion and Embrace as prep for Justice paper this month and its been slooooow going but I just realised why - its cos something is finally making me really really think at a level thats questioning my belief systems wow.
Sooo I was just reading a piece about repentance and I gotta process it so here goes: Volf is arguing that repentance is necessary most for people sinned against initially. Yes people oppressed, down trodden, abused - they need to repent. The reason given is this: if you are in a position of oppression under people who are abusing you, you are not responsible for their actions or their sins in anyway at all BUT you are responsible for the way your soul changes in response to their sin.
Our reaction is typically to hate: to embrace enmity and envy. Enmity for them and anyone involved with them who tacitly approves and allows their sin to continue, and envy for the control/authority/power/methods of oppresion they have access too. (Random thought: this may well include desiring their punishment and incarceration - not for the purpose of redemption and restoration but rather to make them pay ie having power over them and showing them their behaviour was so wrong it deserves their freedom and indeed life as payment - desiring/longing for the day when we have power over them and more freedom than they do). Volf states it is this enmity and envy we must repent of and indeed resist.
The reason is this, if we finally get to a point where their oppression and sin against us ends and we gain the position of victors/superiors/opportunity to exact revenge AND we have not resisted and repented of this sin of envy/enmity THEN we will use these methods of oppression/control/authority/power on them and theirs probably in more creative and destructive ways... they and their followers will learn enmity/envy of us and so the cycle continues and continues. Extreme examples include the long issues found between Israel and Palestine and between the Serbs and Muslims.
In order for social change to occur, for our full human dignity to be restored, we must repent therefore. We must resist envying and hating those who sin against us and all that defines them not for their sake but for our own for fear that we become like them and lose aspects of who we are. This does not EVER mean condoning someones sin or readmiting to our lives people who abuse us and sin against us repeatedly, it does mean choosing the path of forgiveness and repentance of our own sinful responses. Challenging.
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