Those Who Dialogue Are Those Who Have Suffered

One of the best treatise or cases for inter-religious dialogue is found in the thinking and writing of Miroslav Volf, a professor at Yale University.
       Volf is a Croatian whose country (Yugoslavia) was torn apart by civil war in the early 1990s. Croatia was the first republic to breakaway, triggering the first of numerous secessions. Volf knows firsthand who is the enemy (Serbs) and how to hate.
       That is why his book Exclusion and Embrace is so stunning. It is autobiographical more than it is purely theological. It is a deeply personal reflection with Volf's struggle to enter into relationship with those who are truly "other" than him.

"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 person's 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."

—Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace