혐오사회 속에서 환대를 실천하는 기독교교육 : 경계 긋기에서 경계 넘기로

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore directions for Christian education aimed at overcoming situations of disgust and exclusion and practicing hospitality. First, the meaning and background of disgust were examined, along with the phenomena and issues present in a disgust-ridden society. The contagious nature of disgust leads to boundary-drawing tendencies, where social groups often serve as the medium for defining these boundaries. Due to binary thinking that separates those within and outside the boundaries, individuals or groups outside are at high risk of becoming targets of disgust. The essence of modern social disgust lies in otherization, which impoverishes both the subject of disgust and its target, resulting in negative impacts. Social neglect arising from pluralism and neoliberal competition has further fueled disgust, manifesting as shame and humiliation, and has contributed to the rise of gender-based, migrant-targeted, and group or religious-based disgust. To counter these trends, this study considers biblical understandings and philosophical discussions of hospitality, presenting them as an alternative. Unconditional hospitality, where the host does not ask the guest's name or nationality nor impose obligations or conditions, centers on the other, allowing them freedom of choice. The Old Testament presents hospitality toward strangers as part of the covenantal identity between God and the people of Israel, reflecting their role as both strangers and caretakers of others. In the New Testament, Jesus exemplifies hospitality, which became crucial in the spread of the gospel and the expansion of the Christian world by the early church. Hospitality toward the other lies at the heart of the Bible and Christian faith. Based on this concept of Christian hospitality, the study proposes both embracing hospitality and just hospitality to move from drawing boundaries to crossing boundaries. Embracing hospitality involves making space for others, just as God made a space within himself by giving himself. Just hospitality fosters empathy for the lives of others through questioning and imagining, allowing shifts in the host-guest dynamic. In a society that drawing boundaries, we can move beyond those boundaries through education that practices God's hospitality as a hospitable being.