Otherness

In a column billed as “Innovation of the Week,” a news magazine recently featured a report of an interesting new development in auto design. Toyota announced that a next-generation electric vehicle (EV) will include a software system that simulates the stick-shift and gear changes that have characterized automobiles up till this time. It will even be designed to stall if the driver mishandles the controls between gears.

And this is coming at a time when Dodge, for apparently similar market reasons, is working on an EV model to have “‘a synthetic exhaust tone meant to emulate the thunderous roar of the gas-engine muscle cars.’”1

Can anyone learning of this not be at least a bit amused, thinking that back there in time, someone, probably Henry Ford, may have thought it best to design the first muffler to have the exact opposite effect on the driving experience?

But then, too, this interesting development of human progress may bring other thoughts to mind. These first years of the possible expansion of the use of the electric vehicle have brought some various reaction, some of it less than enthusiastic—in fact, by some—outright opposition. For some it has even suggested political implications.

Efforts, then, of designers of EVs are apparently being made—for reasons of marketing—to minimize or obscure the difference in the sound of a vehicle’s engine. At its most subtle level, Toyota and Dodge are trying to address a very natural and basic human characteristic: the almost visceral negative response to difference. There is often in our nature a negative reaction to anything long accepted—even subconsciously—as normal.

Whether the dawn of the electric vehicle is a positive or a negative development to humankind is far beyond the scope of these thoughts. But may it suggest another look at the seemingly natural human response to difference?

In what ways may how we react to the difference in others affect our acceptance or rejection of them—even when there may be an implication that it may effect expected change in us?

This is a question that Jesus’ own disciples suddenly faced, the possibility of a change in behavior—of a response to differentness. They were uneasily accompanying Him through Samaritan country, and by midday, they came near the city of Sychar. This was a location—a plot of ground—that had centuries before been given to Joseph by his father Jacob. Jesus now, “tired as he was from the journey” (John 4:6),2 sat down by a well and sent His disciples into the city to buy food, itself a unsettling idea given the Jewish rejection of relating in any way to Samaritans.

And as Jesus sat there by the well, a Samaritan woman came to draw water. He looked at her and asked, almost casually, “‘Will you give me a drink?’” (vs. 7).

The woman, clearly shocked that an obviously different person would speak to her, much less ask a favor, responded: “‘You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?’” (vs. 9). She knew personally of the long-held traditions of the distaste of the Jews for difference of both religion and gender.

While this was going on, Jesus’ disciples returned from their errand into the city. They, too, were shocked. On another occasion, earlier in His ministry Jesus had sent “these twelve . . . out with the following instructions: ‘Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans’” (Matt. 10:5).

This time “they were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, ‘What do you want?’ or ‘Why are you talking with her?’” (John 4:27). They must have realized here, outside the city of Sychar, that the earlier instructions were not motivated by any kind of exclusiveness. There were other reasons as to timing that applied to entering “‘any town of Samaritans.’”

This incident at Jacob’s Well was clearly meant to show Jesus' inclusiveness—the utter rejection by the Master of any kind of disdain for otherness. In fact, it is difficult not to notice throughout the fourfold report of Jesus’ ministry His frequent acceptance of those who were considered by the current culture as other for whatever reason. There was Zacchaeus, of physical limitation; of the woman taken in the very act of adultery; of the blind man, considered to be suffering the result of his personal sin; of the man at the pool of Bethesda, isolated in his disability.

A heartwarming story of Egerton Young, one of the earliest missionaries to the indigenous peoples of central Canada, tells of his witness to the Cree and Salteaux tribes. On one occasion in Saskatchewan, as beautifully recounted by William Barclay, Egerton was telling them of God’s love. This was like a new revelation for these peoples. “When the missionary had told his message, an old chief said: ‘When you spoke of the great Spirit just now, did I hear you say, “Our Father”?’ ‘Yes,’ said Egerton Young. ‘That is very new and sweet to me,’ said the chief. ‘We never thought of the great Spirit as Father. We heard him in the thunder; we saw him in the lightning, the tempest and the blizzard, and we were afraid. So when you tell us that the great Spirit is our Father, that is very beautiful to us.’ The old man paused, and then he went on, as a glimpse of glory suddenly shone on him. ‘Missionary, did you say that the great Spirit is your Father?’ ‘Yes,’ said the missionary. ‘And,’ said the chief, ‘did you say that he is [our] Father?’ ‘I did,’ said the missionary. ‘Then,’ said the old chief, like a man on whom a dawn of joy had burst, ‘you and I are brothers!’”3

It is one of the greatest, sweetest truths of God’s love for all of humankind that beyond the “lightning, the tempest and the blizzard” of life together on this planet Earth, that through His love, we are all brothers. Our otherness must be recognized as only an expression of our own personal fear and self-centeredness.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. “Innovation of the Week,” The Week (June 30, 2023): 20.

2. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture references in this column are quoted from the New International Version of the Bible.

3. William Barclay, The Gospel of John, The Daily Study Bible Series (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1975), 2:64, 65.