Angående den pågående sopkonflikten i Stockholm kom jag att tänka på ett citat ur Peter Rollins bok ”Idolatry of God” där han beskriver hur den universalism som man kan läsa ut ur Paulus skrifter (kanske främst Galaterbrevets bevingade ord om att ”nu är ingen längre jude eller grek…”) står utanför den mer klanbaserade (eller ”vi mot dom”-baserade) universalismen som exempelvis konservatism eller liberalism står för. När Paulus i 1 kor 4:13 skriver att kristna har ”behandlats som jordens avskum, mänsklighetens drägg” läser Peter Rollins in en verklighetsbeskrivning ur detta:
For Paul, Christians were described as the trash of the world, meaning that which dwells outside, that which does not have a place within the walls. Christians were then understood to be the remainder that existed outside the social body, outside the various concrete identities of the day. They were that which did not have a place inside the body. Instead of the conservative and liberal understanding of universalism as that which brings us into some concrete identity, the universalism of Paul describes how Christianity helps us encounter a different universal reality, namely that we cannot be directly identified with the various markers we use to describe who and what we are. Both the conservative and liberal understanding of universalism simply offer the same logic we find in every other tribe, for both seek to retain their particular worldview as true. In contrast, the universalism that is captured in the idea of the Christian as the trash of the world is an expression of the notion that the one who identifies with Christ stands outside the very tribal systems that seek to define them. These people effectively give up the sense of mastery that these systems offer and embrace unknowing, mystery and those who see the world differently.
– Peter Rollins ”The Idolatry of God”, p 110f.
Det är inte ett citat som på något sätt löser sopkonflikten, men det säger ändå något om konflikter generellt. Att de kanske i mångt och mycket handlar om att påtvinga sin egen universalism på den andra. Och att ha en kristen identitet till stor del handlar om att ställa sig utanför ett ”vi och dom”-tänkande.
Sed contra:
”Here is offense. For anyone to claim that God is on one side of a conflict appears to late modernity as a despicable error; God, supposing he exists at all, must stand above the fray. But we must hope that this is not so. For the fray is not going to stop short of an end of what we now know as history, and if God does not fight the forces of evil, they must triumph incrementally.
Surely, after the twentieth century’s oceans of shed blood and the beginning of the twenty-first century’s even more threatening prospects, we can no longer entertain modernity’s great illusion, that our creaturely good intentions are a match for sin’s energy and cunning. Moreover, in the conflicts of actual history, there is never a moral equivalency, however flawed and infected both sides may be; and we must pray that God fights for the better side.”
-Robert Jenson