Us and Them
There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Galatians 3:28 NIV
Neither – The Italian study tours are finished. Everyone has gone home. Back to the usual way of living. Back to the comfortable world of what has always been. But maybe not. Maybe we learned something important about the development of the West as we walked the streets of Italian cities and villages. Maybe we learned the depth of the divisions that give us identity—the “us and them” world of differences.
One of the striking lessons about Italy is that it really isn’t a country, at least not an old one. It is a conglomerate of dozens of small, distinct cultural identities, each with its own dialect, food, dress, and social expectations. Yes, Garibaldi managed to unite these tiny kingdoms in the 1860’s (thus birthing Italy as a nation), but his conglomerate had no real effect on the 1500-year-old ways of thinking, speaking, and eating. So you really can’t get spaghetti bolognaise in Parma because in Parma you don’t eat spaghetti like that. In Parma you eat tortelli, and tortelli is not ravioli (but it would be in another part of Italy). In Parma you drink Lambrusco, not Chianti, and you say your R’s differently than you do in Naples. And, of course, how you dress, what you believe, and what matters to you depends on where you belong, that is, where you were born, not where you choose to be. About the only thing that actually unites Italians is the Virgin Mary, who dominates nearly every church. I guess we could say that the pagan goddess of creation is the one common factor among those who were nurtured by the syncretism of the Holy Roman Church. Of course, she is a Christian version of an ancient fertility goddess (but don’t say that out loud here). The Church might be filled with syncretism, but the cultures of Italy certainly are not. Just try speaking Tuscan in Venezia or Romanesco in Napoli.
This experience would be comical if it weren’t so influential. In fact, even though we might think we are pretty much all the same, the truth is that we have inherited DNA differences in more than our biological frames. We are the products of significant divisions in cultural DNA. Our penchant for separatist identities is a function of “us and them” belonging. It follows along with the great Western mantra, “I’m right, therefore, if you disagree, you’re wrong.”
Here’s what I find so fascinating. The same patterns are alive and well today. We might think we are cosmopolitan, tolerant, and globalist, but the truth is that we seek the same kind of boundaries that identify those who are “not like us” wherever we happen to be. We cling to traditional ways, not because they are right but because we need them to prove we are right. We might leave behind some of the less important thoughts (the ones that we can survive without), but don’t threaten those identifying anchor points (like Jesus is God). We can’t live without those, no matter how they happened to make their way into our thought processes. We could say the same thing for the Virgin Mary cult. It was absolutely crucial for the population going through the trauma of the Black Plague and because it was so crucial, it made its way into the very ethos of Italian religion, never to be questioned again. Do you suppose that we have the same kind of idolatry implanted in our core identity? For example, the inerrancy of the Bible. The expectation of an apocalyptic return of the universal Messiah. The belief in a heavenly abode in the next life.
Every idea has a history. Do you know where the ideas that you hold so sacred actually came from? Or are they just ways of identifying “us and them”? And what did Paul really mean with his declaration that there is no division in the Kingdom when this world seems to demand division everywhere we look?
Topical Index: division, identity, Galatians 3:28
