Some Thoughts on Religious Shunning
Religious shunning can inflict a particularly deep kind of pain. I believe there are religions out there in which people could be shunned for reasons that seemed tragically disproportionate—for example, simply leaving the religion, questioning doctrines and rules that are obviously wrong, even though they continued sincerely to worship God. The loss involved can be enormous. Parents may cease normal association with their children; children may become separated from parents; brothers, sisters and lifelong friends can suddenly become strangers. A person may lose, almost overnight, the human world in which he or she once felt at home.
For those who have suffered this, there is a remarkably tender incident in John chapter 9.
Jesus had healed a man who had been blind from birth. Instead of rejoicing over this extraordinary act of mercy, the religious authorities became preoccupied with the fact that Jesus had performed the healing on the Sabbath. They repeatedly questioned the man and even questioned his parents. His parents were afraid to speak openly because, as John explains, the authorities had already decided that anyone acknowledging Jesus as the Christ would be “put out of the synagogue” (John 9:22).
The healed man, however, refused to deny what he knew to be true. He could not answer every theological accusation thrown at him, but he could testify to what he had experienced: “One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see” (John 9:25).
Eventually, the authorities turned on him. They insulted him and “cast him out” (John 9:34).
Those few words can easily be read too quickly. Being expelled from the synagogue was not merely losing a seat in a religious building. Religion, family and community were closely intertwined. Whatever the precise social consequences of this particular expulsion, John presents it as a painful rejection by the religious authorities of the man's community.
And then comes one of the most beautiful sentences in the account:
“Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and having found him...” (John 9:35).
They cast him out.
Jesus found him.
There is something profoundly comforting in that contrast.
The religious authorities regarded the man as troublesome and disposable. Jesus regarded him as someone worth seeking. When others pushed him outside the boundary of belonging, Christ crossed that boundary to meet him. The man had lost the approval of powerful religious figures, but he had not lost the approval, attention or love of God.
This distinction matters enormously for victims of religious shunning. Rejection by a religious community is not the same thing as rejection by God. Human beings may close a door and sincerely believe that they are acting for God; that does not mean God has closed His door. Religious authority and divine authority are not automatically identical.
Indeed, Jesus repeatedly placed mercy above the rigid application of religious rules. When challenged about healing on the Sabbath, he asked, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?” (Mark 3:4). Elsewhere he reminded his critics of God's words, “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice” (Matthew 12:7; compare Hosea 6:6).
That should give any religious person reason for humility. Discipline may sometimes have a legitimate place within a faith community, but when religious practice becomes indifferent to mercy, conscience, family affection and human suffering, Christians should remember the character of the One whose name they bear.
And for the person who has been shunned, John 9 offers something gentler still.
People you loved have walked away from you. People who once prayed beside you now cross the street rather than speak to you. You have wondered in lonely moments whether their rejection means that God has rejected you too.
John 9 answers with a picture rather than an argument.
A man stands outside, rejected by religious authority.
And Jesus goes looking for him.
There may be no immediate remedy for the empty chair at the family table, the unanswered telephone call, or the ache of being treated as though years of love can simply be switched off. Those wounds are real, and faith does not require us to pretend otherwise.
But neither does another person's rejection determine your worth before God.
The final word in John 9 does not belong to those who expelled the man. It belongs to Christ who found him.
For anyone left “out in the cold” by religious shunning, perhaps that is the thought worth holding close: being cast out by people does not mean that you have been cast away by God. Sometimes it is outside the door that we discover Christ was already coming to find us.