Reading people we do not know

Occasionally I find myself on the outside of a conversation about The Blind Side the movie based on the better book based on the life of Michael Oher, the American football player. These conversations usually go as follows...

Person A, "I love The Blind Side it's such an amazing story!"

Person B, "I hate that movie it's so racist!"

Strangely at that point the conversation ends without any discussion as to why Person A loves the movie or why Person B considers it racist. The story of the movie strikes home with me and at some point I'd really like to know what makes it racist, but alas no one has told me and I am not interested enough to look it up on the Internet. I suspect it has something to do with the "white savior" trope that is all too common within American cinema. Nonetheless, I like the movie because I think it is a great example of the practice of hospitality.

Hospitality is the act of making room for the the other within the confines of your life. In the movie the Tuohys made room for Michael in their lives that had been fairly sealed off from the rest of the world around them. It is this very act of hospitality that brings them to a place where they are entering and welcoming more of the world than they had previously been associated.

When hospitality is a way of life, the strangers and guests we welcome seem to become increasingly diverse. A life that is open to surprise and contingency has room for the refugee family and the elderly woman down the street recovering from surgery. The door is open to the teenager with developmental disabilities and to the student with questions about life's meaning and purpose. The hospitable church finds room for the homeless man and for the family that has just arrived from a distant state. Obviously, as finite persons, there are limits to how much we can do, but welcoming different kinds of strangers usually equips us to open the door wider and more often, with less fear and more confidence. ¹

Hospitality welcomes people into the place that was once held as a fortress against the rest of the world. The philosopher Derrida argued that absolute hospitality "requires that I open up my home and that I give not only to the foreigner...but to the absolute, unknown, anonymous other, and that I give place to them, that I let them come, without asking of them either reciprocity (entering into a pact) or even their names"² In other words, for Derrida, hospitality requires that I welcome in everyone without judging whether they might murder my family in the middle of the night or not. He sets a pretty high bar, one that most are not likely to clear. For most people there will need to be some sort of judging what people we provide hospitality to or not.

Much like reading and discussing a book that we have not read, evaluating who to provide hospitality to is reliant upon a library of knowledge of behavior. There is going to be a level of judging that happens no matter what, unless you are able to conform to Derrida's standard. The only way to do that well is to have a library of knowledge on how people act and the behaviors that follow those actions. The majority of the time you are not going to have the time to get a full history of the person or group needing hospitality. The practice of reading people will serve to help expedite the practice of hospitality. Initially our library is small resulting in us being cautious as we seek to provide hospitality. But as we continue to provide hospitality our library of knowledge grows and our level of caution becomes less protective.

Much like the Tuohys in The Blind Side evaluated Michael based upon his behavior and saw that he was a good fit, we must learn to evaluate humanity and welcome them into our places of refuge. Over time we will be willing to welcome more and more types of people. It is okay to start out small because, much like Pohl describes above, as you enter into the practice of hospitality your doors will eventually be opened wide.