Inside versus Outside

In any group, collection of people, social organization, community, town or nation I have found that people fall under one of two categories: inside or outside. I know that this has been the case for me in my life. In every group, whether large or small, I have been either inside or outside--there is never any in-between.

When I lived in Arkansas, I always felt outside. I don't think I was ever invited to dinner by any person in the community I lived in who was born in the town in which I lived. I was definitely outside to them: no Arkansas accent, didn't loudly proclaim Christ as my Lord, didn't root for the Arkansas Razorbacks football team. Outside.

But there were kind people in that Arkansas community who did invite me to dinner and did nice things for me: they were all outside too, not a single person from the town inside that group. I was inside the group of outside people.

Same when I lived in Kentucky. I was definitely outside. So were all my friends. Inside the outsiders club.

When I lived in the Castle in the Netherlands, everyone in the community there treated me as though I was one of them. I was inside. I was also part of a close-knit community of students and staff in the Castle too. Inside again. I also was treated well by the government there as a legal immigrant worker and found myself very much in sync with the customs and beliefs of the Dutch--a stranger, yet an insider. Perhaps that's why I enjoyed my experience in the Netherlands so much and why the Netherlands is a good place to live--the focus is often on bringing people inside.

Japan, despite kind people here and there--I was as outside as a person could possibly be. With my looks, being only one of four white people in a community of over 100,000--I could not hide my outsideness from anyone. Actually, being completely outside, and openly despised by some in the community, can be a good experience: it makes you humble and empathetic with outsiders in your home community.

Where I live now, I am clearly an outsider judging by the looks I receive when I walk through the city bazaar. I am blessed, though, to feel inside, in the campus community in which I live and I love having a job where it is part of my mission to do whatever I can to help those with whom I live feel a sense of "insideness."

America. Used to be inside, but when I watch Nazis openly marching through America supported by the President and watch the foundations of American Democracy being destroyed by today's version of fascists, I am suddenly very much an outsider, an alien in my own land.

Inside and outside. I realize too that it just might be the great test of virtually all religions: treating the outsider as an insider is what distinguishes the righteous from the wicked.

Indeed solving the inside versus outside problem is the key to the fate of humanity: if we don't take care of everyone both inside and outside our individual circles and if we can't see that our destiny is tied to both inside and out, we run the risk of all of us destroyed in a world where no circle can be insulated completely.

Let us all bring together, inside of our communities and groups, those who are outside and let us all work together for the common good. Ultimately it will bring us to a better place than where we might end up if our energy is used to keep those we perceive as outsiders out.