RG’s Reviews > The Gift of the Stranger: Faith, Hospitality, and Foreign Language Learning > Status Update

Man, ch. 6 has engendered some self-reflection (and perhaps even suspicion). I am really looking forward to ch. 7.

OH MAN, crying at Miroslav Volf right now. His theological metaphor of embrace is so freaking beautiful.

“We do not reach the goal of cross-cultural understanding when we understand & explain the other merely as a cultural product but only when the process of communication leads us to experience the other as a subject, a center of consciousness different from our own...we achieve that goal only when we encounter & cherish the person from a different culture as a responsible, responsive person made in God’s image.”

“Do thou, everlasting wisdom, who dost play in this world & whose delight is in the sons of men, ensure that we in turn may now find delight in thee. Discover more fully unto us ways & means to better understanding of thy play with us & to more eager pursuance of it with one another, until we ourselves finally play in thy company more effectively to give increasing pleasure unto thee...our everlasting delight!”

Chapter two hummed right along and made me reconsider the merits of studying biblical languages, harumph. I am ready, though, for the impending rise of vernaculars. ♥️♥️♥️

Favorite quotation so far came from Brueggemann, heh, on unity and diversity: “The purpose of God is neither self-securing homogeneity as though God is not Lord, nor a scattering of autonomous parts as though the elements of humanity did not belong to each other.”