Of all the rooms in my old school, the cafeteria was by far one of the most interesting and one that I remember vividly. Admittedly, the fact that it was always noisy at lunchtime reminded me of one reason why I rarely wanted to eat there. Despite the noise and bustle, though, it was always a fascinating place to listen and look around.
Whenever I glanced at my surroundings, one thing in particular stood out to me: the way groups of students tended to split up. Much of the time, students of one particular ethnicity would sit together. Or perhaps it would be a group of students of the same year. Somehow, people sat together based on some trait that they all had in common. During my junior year, my French teacher talked about a concept that explained this pattern. In an assembly, he spoke of “affinity groups,” clusters of people that tend to form based on something they all have in common. If you have ever been at a relatively large party with people you’ve never met before, you may have experienced this phenomena. If I’m among strangers, for example, more often than not I feel most comfortable talking to people who are of a similar age.
Affinity groups reflect a basic human need to belong. We seek out people who have shared interests when trying to establish friendships, and we feel most comfortable around people we can relate to. Forming such ties is one way to make sense of the complex social interactions we have to deal with regularly. Unfortunately, this behavior causes divisions between people to sprout easily. Since we look to distinguish those who are akin to us, we also rely on an innate ability to categorize others. Our efforts to do this fall short at times, for one because some people don’t fit into the imaginary boxes or labels that we’ve made for them.
Gender identity, the way a person defines their own gender, is one area where this problem surfaces frequently. Some people don’t fit into the traditional view of gender as either male or female. Instead of using conventional gender pronouns (she, he, him, her, etc.), they may use gender-neutral pronouns such as ze, zim, and zer. Needless to say, trying to grapple this topic can become incredibly confusing as more labels are made to include people who don’t fit into currently existing ones. But I digress.
This tendency to separate others out creates implicit barriers between people and what they believe in. Taken to an extreme, “us” vs. “them” mentalities can form and prejudices can persist for a long time. It is so much easier to interact with those like us than to try engaging with individuals who have little in common. This presents a significant obstacle to interfaith ministry, and it is an important issue to learn how to deal with. Addressing it involves moving beyond a state of personal comfort and easiness. This entails throwing oneself into unfamiliar, perhaps uncomfortable experiences–moving outside the barriers between faith communities. It also requires willingness to ask others questions about their faith and to have one’s own faith questioned–breaking through the guards we have already built around our own beliefs. Finally, there must be a sense of introspection and understanding of one’s own faith and its shortcomings–removing the veil that separates us from our own beliefs. In order to understand difference, you have to break apart similarity and then see how it was tied together to begin with.