Rejection
There are few things in this world that feel as bad as being rejected.
I guess we all have to deal with it at different times — it has happened many times over my life. A girlfriend drops you. Your husband leaves you. The bank doesn’t approve your loan application. The college sends a short letter that basically says “no thanks.”
In my business program, there was a ship’s bell mounted in our mail room. During our last year, everyone was interviewing for jobs, and whenever someone received a rejection letter, they would ring the bell. It made a loud clang, and at mail time it sounded like the bell tower before a church service. It was comforting in a strange way to hear that bell sound, because you knew you were not the only one. That’s what rejection does. It makes you feel alone, like you will never fit in.
When I was in college, I wanted very much to join my roommates as members of what was called a finals club, which operated somewhat like a fraternity. There was a series of events that candidates were invited to attend, which were basically tryouts. You got to meet the current members of the club, and hear about how wonderful it was. My roommates got me invited, but that was the extent of their influence. When it came to a vote, little red marbles meant yes and black marbles meant no. All the marbles were placed in a bag, and if the bag contained no black marbles, you were in. I got “blackballed” by someone. I will never know who. It was devastating to me. My roommates tried to be supportive, but I felt excluded from them and their group. I wondered what was wrong with me.
I know now that I would not want to be part of such an exclusive group. There were no women, of course, and as a non-member, I can only guess at the other groups that were excluded. I only know that I want to be inclusive, not contributing to others’ feelings of being marginalized.
Maybe this is why I value inclusivity in the church, and work toward full acceptance of people who feel unwelcome in other places. It pains me to see our country moving away from policies that welcomed immigrants, that provided protections to LGBT+ individuals, and toward the greater exclusion of racial and ethnic minorities and women. This is wrongheaded and cruel. Our country will be weakened by greater homogeneity, and many will suffer painful hardships.
The theologian Paul Tillich writes, “The most irrevocable expression of the separation of life from life today is the attitude of social groups within nations towards each other, and the attitude of nations themselves towards other nations. The walls of distance, in time and space, have been removed by technical progress; but the walls of estrangement between heart and heart have been incredibly strengthened.”
Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!
— Paul Tillich
Separation is what rejection creates. We’ve all felt it, and we’ve all participated in it. It can feel impossible to change the opinions of others, and difficult to change our own old learned habits. Tillich goes beyond our human abilities to make a difference.
He is writing about separation as sin, and about grace as an antidote. In what is perhaps his most famous passage he goes on to say: “[Grace] strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage. Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: "You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!" If that happens to us, we experience grace.” (Tillich, You Are Accepted, https://wedgeblade.net/files/archives_assets/20810.pdf).
We can help others to feel this acceptance. Acceptance of differences will lead to greater loyalty, stronger bonds, and less division. Those of us who are seeking peace in the world recognize that we must be more concerned with inclusion than self-interest. Perhaps it will be grace that brings us to this conclusion.
