Gospel and Sociology

For my undergrad I studied Sociology. Sociology is basically the studied of human injustice at a macro-level. No other discipline has diagnosed and defined the system of darkness that results in oppression and violence better than sociology. When faced with the sheer magnitude of social injustice an automatic response is rage, passion begins to surge from deep within, passion that then is channeled most often into one revolutionary movement or another. Re-acting to rage through what is perceived to be positive social action such as resistance or revolution is often portrayed as the best response to institutional injustice. The problem with this perspective however is that it ignores completely the depths of darkness that resides within each of our own souls. Even if successful in overthrowing that which seems to be the source of evil we only become the new agents of injustice because all along we ourselves were driven by darkness.

In his book Miroslav Wolf explores the sociological issues of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation from a Gospel perspective. No other book has helped me to make connections between the things I learned in sociology and how they relate to the Gospel better than this book. Below is a quote on the miracle of forgiveness and its power to break the reign of darkness in society.

"For the followers of the crucified Messiah,the main message of the imprecatory Psalms is this: rage belongs before God, not in the reflectively managed and manicured form of a confession, but as a pre-reflective outburst from the depths of the soul. This is no mere cathartic discharge of pent up aggression before the Almighty who ought to care. Much more significantly, by placing unattended rage before God we place both our unjust enemy and our own vengeful self face to face with a God who loves and does justice. Hidden in the dark chambers of our hearts and nourished by the system of darkness, hate grows and seeks to infest everything with its hellish will to exclusion. In the light of the justice and love of God, however, hate recedes and the seed is planted for the miracle of forgiveness. Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community of humans even as I exclude myself from the community of sinners. But no one can be in the presence of the God of the crucified Messiah for long without overcoming this double exclusion, without transposing the enemy from the sphere of monstrous inhumanity into the sphere of shared humanity and herself from the sphere of proud innocence into the sphere of common sinfulness. When one knows that the torturer will not eternally triumph over the victim, one is free to rediscover that persons humanity and imitate God's love for him. And when one knows that God's love is greater than all sin, one is free to see oneself in the light of God's justice and so rediscover one's own sinfulness." - Wolf, Exclusion and Embrace, 124