Opening session:
"Visions and Dreams"
In the biblical book of Acts (chapter 2) we find the story of the inaugural coming of God's Spirit on the followers of Jesus. The people who received God's spirit exploded with enthusiastic behavior. The critics attributed their apparent aberrant behavior to being drunk. But Peter, a leader in the church, stood up and proclaimed, among other things, that this behavior could not be attributed to drunkenness seeing that it was only 9 o'clock in the morning. Interesting that God's Spirit should show up at 9 in the morning. Rather, he noted, this was a fulfillment of an earlier prophecy, and he quoted a former prophet of Israel: "In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams." (Acts 2:17, quoted from Joel 2:28) Hence, I would observe, when empowered by God, it is possible not only for the young to have visions--given the idealism of youth, one might anticipate that--but also for the old to dream dreams, and that may be more of a miracle, particularly at 9 o'clock in the morning. But it is a possibility.

We live in a century in which problem solving has been idealized in American education and culture. John Dewey set the course in the first decade of this century. Toward the end of that decade he published a book entitled How We Think, in which he introduced the notion called "the reflective pattern of thinking." This pattern was rooted in the notion of problem solving--we begin with a "felt need" and work through a logical sequence of exploration leading ultimately to a solution. Our century has come to be be dominated by this notion of problem solving. And among the problems to be solved is crime. And our dominant approach is to ask how we are going to solve the problem. We frame the issue mostly in problem terms.

Now, problem solving is a useful skill. But problem solving disconnected from visions and dreams leads to diminished human possibilities. Problems and dreams motivate in different ways. When I am turned toward problems, my interest is to eliminate them. When I am turned toward dreams, my interest is to realize them. Problems motivate by repelling me; dreams motivate by drawing me. We may back away from crime as a problem, without a clear sense of where we are going; or we may turn around and walk toward a vision such as restorative justice, which draws us and gives us direction.

American history is replete with attempts at reform. What has motivated these reforms? Ralph Waldo Emerson, a participant in and observer of reform movements in the 19th century, noted that reform is motivated by an "idea" against which present reality is found wanting. Martin Luther King knew we had lots of problems in America, but he had a dream which pointed the direction toward which America needed to move. The ancient wisdom literature of Israel declares: "Where there is no vision, the people perish." (Proverbs 29:28, KJV) Problems abound, and without vision we muck around without direction.

Restorative justice is rooted in the Hebrew Christian tradition in both its concept and its visionary form of thinking. When God's Spirit came on those early believers back in the book of Acts, it was not said of them that they suddenly became great problem solvers. Rather, they became visionaries and dreamers. And in being visionaries and dreamers, they also solved problems. In the process, they also created some. But it was the dreams and visions that provided the impetus for the reform they participated in. And they were truly participants with God in reforming and transforming both persons and communities. That possibility remains ours yet today, and I suggest provides motivation for our work together during these days.

Beginning the second day:
"The Value of Persons"
The biblical book of Genesis has recently been catapulted into national fame thanks to Bill Moyers of public television. Among other things, Genesis has even made it to the cover of Time Magazine this week. Bookshops across America are now marketing works on Genesis. Genesis has turned into a well orchestrated, national media event. Amazing what sometimes happens in our media driven society.

Genesis is an amazing collection of stories, mostly family stories, that will forever challenge the interpretative imaginations of humans. Many of the stories have to do with injustices. One of these stories is of a rape. Permit me to share a brief version of that story with you. (See Genesis 34 for the full story)

Dinah was the daughter of Jacob and his wife Leah. Jacob and his family lived amongst Gentiles, and one day Dinah went out to visit her Gentile women neighbors. As she was out visiting, Shechem, the son of the local Gentile prince, seized her and raped her. But we are told that he also was drawn to Dinah, and that "he loved the girl, and spoke tenderly to her," and asked his father, the prince, to obtain her for his wife.

The brothers of Dinah were outraged and very angry when they discovered what had happened to their sister. So when the father of Shechem came to negotiate with Jacob and the brothers for Dinah's hand for his son, the brothers made a deal with him. They would agree to give their sister Dinah, and indeed other daughters also, to the neighboring Gentiles in marriage if all of the neighboring men would become circumcised as they were. The Gentiles agreed, and all the men were circumcised. On the third day after this mass circumcision, when they were still in pain, as we are told, Simeon and Levi, brothers of Dinah, took their swords and sneaked into the city in which the Gentiles lived, and killed all the men in revenge. The deal had been a trick.

Father Jacob was alarmed by what his sons Simeon and Levi had done. His initial response is recorded as follows: "Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, 'You have brought trouble on me by making me odious to the inhabitants of the land... My numbers are few, and if they gather themselves against me and attack me, I shall be destroyed, both I and my household.' But they said, 'Should our sister be treated like a whore?'"

Jacob's pragmatic response raises the question of how one judges the rightness and wrongness of the brothers' behavior. Measured against Cain's earlier question in Genesis, "Am I my brother's keeper," Simeon and Levi had a point. In this case they saw themselves most definitely as their sister's keeper, or at least avenger. Cain's denial of responsibility for his brother was not their problem. But were they right in killing their Gentile male neighbors among whom the rapist was found?

A closer examination of the stories of Genesis reveals a two-fold ethic--one for the family or insider, and another for the outsider. For example, within the Hebrew families of Genesis, Cain's question, "Am I my brother's keeper?" becomes a continuing point of reference. Abraham's negotiation with his nephew Lot when they came into conflict, for instance, was premised on the notion that being brothers they must not quarrel. (13:8) Joseph's brothers' restraint in not killing him was premised on the notion that he was their brother. (37:26-27) But this perspective is limited to the insider. Another ethic guides relationships outside of the family.

2 - Meditation

The issue that is at stake here is stated succinctly by Joseph Campbell, the student of myths, in conversations with Bill Moyers a few years ago. Campbell observed at one point in those conversations as recorded in The Power of Myth: "Now brotherhood in most of the myths I know of is confined to a bounded community. In bounded communities, aggression is projected outward. For example, the ten commandments say, 'Thou shalt not kill.' Then the next chapter says, 'Go into Canaan and kill everybody in it.' This is a bounded field. The myths of participation and love pertain only to the in-group, and the out-group is totally other. This is the sense of the word 'gentile'--the person is not of the same order." (p. 22)

A rape is an awful thing. But is there one ethic that shapes one's response when the offender is an insider and another when the offender is an outsider? Joseph Campbell suggests that in most religious and mythic traditions he is familiar with, the value given to insiders vs outsiders differs. The result, to extend Campbell's notion of bounded fields, is what we might call boundary thinking--thinking in which humans are valued differently depending on whether they belong to my group or another--whether they are insiders or outsiders, of my tribe or another.

Jacob's initial response to his sons' vengeful acts against outsiders seems to be a strategic, pragmatic one, as I have noted. His own existence had become precarious because of their deed, and now he might expect the peoples around him to seek their revenge. Years later and miles later in Egypt upon his deathbed, Jacob provides a deeper interpretation of this event. In a final prophetic survey of each of his sons, he has this to say about Simeon and Levi: "Simeon and Levi are brothers: weapons of violence are their swords. May I never come into their council; may I not be joined to their company--for in their anger they killed men, and at their whim they hamstrung oxen. Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce, and their wrath, for it is cruel! I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel." (49:5-7) Jacob's initial, earlier response was motivated by self-survival; but his more seasoned later response seems to move to a deeper recognition of the intrinsic wrongness of the sons' vengeful response without any distinction between insiders and outsiders.

Restorative justice seems to me to be premised on the assumption that all humans are of intrinsic value--whether insider or outsider. But if Joseph Campbell is correct, we can't assume that this is an accepted assumption, even in religious communities. Indeed, religious communities or communities of conviction, which hold strongly to a core of beliefs and values, are easily tempted to depreciate the intrinsic value of persons beyond their borders who believe, think, and act differently. We see evidence of this in religious communities around the world these days.

And it is nothing new. Boundary thinking in this sense of valuing humans differently was prevalent in the time of Jesus, and he constantly exploded such thinking--whether in reference to Gentiles, Samaritans, prostitutes, children, women, tax collectors or the two criminals--bandits they were--who hung on crosses on either side of him as he and they died together.

Boundary thinking of this nature is a challenge for us today. Restorative justice will more likely become a compelling option if the communities in which we live and have our being, whether religious or otherwise, will first of all become genuinely convicted that all humans have such great worth that the great energy and time and resources required to do the work of restorative justice are worth the effort. For Christian communities, this is the imperative that Jesus has set forth. For all communities, it is the model most likely to lead to Shalom in the sense of personal and societal wholeness and health.

Page constructed and maintained by Duane Ruth-Heffelbower Last update 9:28 AM on 11/15/96.

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