The Shunning

During a summer Sunday afternoon in 1996, after a traditional (and excruciatingly long) church service, the men had gathered at the picnic tables to wait for lunch to be served. Children ran and played in the yard. Woman chatted and laughed as they prepared sandwiches with ham and Muenster cheese and laid out an endless array of pies. Off on a distant table sat a solitary man. No one talked with him. No one looked at him. He ate nothing. I asked my host what was going on, and in a whisper he answered, "He's being shunned".

Most of you probably already know that while in college I spent a month with 2 different Amish families. I stayed with a family in Lancaster Pennsylvania and the other family in Holmes County Ohio. During my time with the Esh family in Lancaster I was able to witness a "shunning" in progress. For anyone not familiar with the term — though I suspect most of you immediately think of this — the real life practice is something completely different (and not funny). The man being shunned had broken unwritten laws of the Amish culture. First, he worked as a teacher at a public school. Second he had a computer. Eventually he'll be forced to either repent of his ways or leave the community. All that he's grown up with, the simple and foreign way of life that he knows, will be gone.

While it might seem harsh, the Amish are actively practicing something all of us inactively do. How often do we avoid, ignore or passively gossip about someone who has broken "the rules" of our cultures. This seems to be especially true of my fellow Christians. Regardless of the sin, either specific things the Bible speaks again or perceived sins (like smoking, drinking, watched Rated-R movies), when we know of someone's faults, follies, foibles and failures; we often unconsciously "shun" them. Forget showing grace, mercy or forgiveness, or the fact that many of us are just a foolish  decision away from the very thing we're appalled by. The person that is struggling with depression, the person who has an addiction to porn, that couple who is divorcing (because of an affair). Once we have the knowledge of someone else's sin, we stay away. We put them on a table to sit alone with their problems. We shun.

In our self-righteousness we believe that we're better, or beyond, the struggles of others. That it could never possibily happen to us. Rather than find some grace and mercy, we silently cast our judgements, chatter with our friends, lift up our noses and turn our backs on the "sinner". And this isn't a pessimistic attitude about the human condition, it's a truthful and realistic view that all of us are capable of the worst sins. The people we push to the sides, the cast-offs, they are us. It's time we stop shunning others because of their sins, but find the grace to realize we're no better than anyone else, we're not without sin, and invite the back to the table.