The Theology of Monsters: Part 7, Extending Hospitality to Monsters

The theological richness of monsters comes from the fact that monsters allow us to reflect upon notions of otherness, alienness, strangeness, and alterity. More specifically, monsters ask us to confront and analyze our fears of the Other to determine if those fears are misdirected.

To review, many of things feared in monsters are aspects of the self. As Richard Kearney writes in his book Strangers, Gods and Monsters: Ideas of Otherness monsters remind us that the "ego is never wholly sovereign...Each monster narrative recalls that the self is never secure in itself." Monsters are "tokens of fracture within the human psyche."

Feeling this fracture, we've noted how we project the transgressive aspects of the self onto the Other. Kearney writes that "we often project onto others those unconscious fears from which we recoil in ourselves." We handle our own evil by attempting "to repudiate it by projecting it exclusively onto outsiders." This creates "the polarization between Us and Them" resulting in the Monster/Hero duality we discussed in a prior post, a duality where I am Good and the Other is Bad. Kearney summarizes, "all too often, humans have [allowed] paranoid delusions to serve the purpose of making sense of our confused emotions by externalizing them into black-and-white scenarios."

This process of externalizing the evil aspects of the self creates the religious impulse known as scapegoating. The Other, the stranger, the alien, and the alter are selected for sacrifice or expulsion. As David Gilmore writes, a monster is "the demonization of the 'Other' in the image of the monster as a political device for scapegoating those whom the rules of society deem impure or unworthy--the transgressors and deviants." These deviants are considered to be "[d]eformed, amoral, [and] unsocialized to the point of inhumanness." But we should also note that these scapegoats, as objects of aggression, are also means of expelling collective guilt. Recall the whole point of the scapegoat ritual in Leviticus 16: The removal of communal guilt. As Gilmore summarizes: monsters "serve also as vehicles for the expiation of guilt as well as aggression: there is a strong sense in which the monster is an incarnation of the urge for self-punishment and a unified metaphor for both sadism and victimization (after all, the horrible monster is always killed off, usually in the most gruesome manner imaginable, by humans). We have to address this issue of dualism, of emotive ambivalence, in which the monster stands for both the victim and the victimizer."

In sum, the processes of projection and scapegoating create the notion that evil is exterior. As Kearney notes, "the experience of evil has often been linked with notions of exteriority." Once this move has been made Otherness becomes demonized. "Evil was alienation and the evil one was the alien...the other is an adversary, the stranger a scapegoat, the dissenter a devil."

I'm reviewing all this to raise, in the last post of this series, the most important question concerning monsters: Should we extend hospitality to monsters? The notions of hospitality, embrace, and welcome are central concepts in the missional church conversations. But if hospitality sits at one pole then monsters sit at the exact opposite pole. The issue of the monster is the issue of the Other and, thus, the issue of hospitality and the mission of the church in the world. The Problem of Hospitality is the Problem of the Monster.

Should we extend hospitality to monsters? Based upon all that we have been discussing the answer seems to be a clear "Yes." As Kearney writes, "friendship begins by welcoming difference." We must "de-alienate" the alien. Further, "[p]eace requires nothing less than the decoupling of the stranger and the scapegoat." This doesn't mean we eliminate all difference. We need difference. As Kearney notes, "Otherness is a horizon of selfhood." We need Others, capital O. So, we must "let the other be the other...acknowledging difference between self and other without separating them so schismatically that no relation at all is possible."

In short, yes, we must extend hospitality to the alien, the stranger, the Other. To welcome the other is to bring peace and to become a complete Self.

This much seems easy, but Kearney's discussion raises an important issue. He asks, "How can we tell the difference between benign and malign others? How do we know...when the other is truly an enemy who seeks to destroy us or an innocent scapegoat projected by our phobias?"

This, I think, is a question often unasked in conversations about hospitality. Is hospitality to be relative or absolute? We are sent out into the world to give and receive acts of welcome. But we are called to do this while being "shrewd as snakes" and being wary of "wolves in sheep's clothing." Phrased in the language of monster stories, a vampire has no power over you in your own home. That is, unless, you invite the vampire into your home. That act of hospitality leads to your destruction.

The point being, hospitality is a difficult practice. It involves discernment. Should we extend hospitality to monsters?

Let me be concrete by giving three examples. One social, one political, and one involving the church:

Social:
Should sexual offenders be nationally registered and tracked? Should you, personally, go to the National Sex Offender Registry and locate which of your neighbors are sexual offenders?

Political:
Should the prisoners at the Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp be brought to US soil and given due process?

Church:
Should churches practice closed or open communion? For example, how should your church deal with gay members who wish to join and journey with your community?

I bring up these issues simply to raise the problem of extending hospitality to monsters. It's a complicated issue, one that I think is getting overlooked in the missional church conversation. In this, I've found monsters to be an important location for theological and missional reflection.

My reflections will end here (for now). May your theological adventures with monsters continue. And may your acts of hospitality toward monsters be filled with wisdom and grace.

And, finally, I hope your church let's you do a Bible class about all this...