Life as a Foreigner
When I was travelling home to Belfast a few weeks ago I presented my British passport to the Delta agent at the airport. That’s the passport I have on record with them to fly internationally. When I landed in Ireland I pulled out my Irish passport, skipped the international entry line, showed it to the immigration officer and walked straight into the country without a problem. On the return flight I once again showed my British passport to the airline to board the plane and after landing in Minneapolis I walked up to a global entry kiosk, scanned my Permanent Resident card and walked straight through immigration and customs and headed home.
When I say I travelled home, it’s a strange thing in that I leave my home to go home and then when I’m home, I leave home to head home. I often feel like a stranger in a strange land.
An exile, a foreigner, an alien, someone who knows how to communicate and live in a variety of cultural contexts, but who doesn’t quite fully fit in any of them. I am a man with two passports, some would say conflicting passports, British and Irish. I am also a man who lives in neither of those places, my permanent residency is considered to be in a third place where I am not a citizen. I struggle with spelling, is it color or colour, realise or realize, or is it centre or center?
I resonate with Peter’s reminder in the opening words of his epistle, “To God’s elect, strangers in the world … .”
What really makes me a stranger in the world is my citizenship in the kingdom of God. My allegiance to Christ prohibits me from declaring full allegiance to any kingdom of this world. This is the main reason why, after almost thirty years of life in the USA I am still not a citizen. To become a citizen you have to take the oath of allegiance in which you state,
I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same …
No nation of this world can claim my “true faith and allegiance.” I will always work, as Jeremiah calls us to, for “the peace and prosperity of the city” in which I live as an exile, but I will always stand as a foreigner who has thoughts and ideas that are strange in this world. Thoughts and ideas that are grounded in Scripture and centred in Christ.
I try to be careful to avoid conforming the Scriptures, or my understanding Christ, to my preconceived understanding of the world, but rather I try to be faithful to Paul’s call to do the hard work and, “Not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of [my] mind” (Rom. 12:2).
This desire to be faithful to the Scriptures and centre my life in Jesus makes me very much a stranger in the world.
The world does not understand grace. It does not understand that “while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son” (Rom. 5:10). Or how this translates into us loving our enemies, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer says, “loving those who love no one and whom no one loves. It is love for one’s religious, political, or personal enemy.” Too many who call themselves Christian, want to deny this call to love the enemy and are happy to see them struck down and killed.
The world does not understand the imago Dei. That all people are created in the image of God. As a result the world does not appreciate the consistent cry of the Scriptures for justice. As the challenge is issued to national leaders from the prophet Jeremiah, “The Lord proclaims: Do what is just and right; rescue the oppressed from the power of the oppressor. Don’t exploit or mistreat the refugee, the orphan, and the widow. Don’t spill the blood of the innocent in this place” (Jer. 22:3). Too many who call themselves Christians, just as many who called themselves faithful Jews in Jeremiah’s time, continue to support injustice, oppression, and exploitation of the foreigner in their midst, creating second class humans.
The world does not want to understand that in Christ, “There is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all” (Col. 3:11). No the world, and too many who call themselves Christians still want to maintain old racial, tribal and national divisions.
The great hunger is on me more than ever for Him and His work. O, how few love Him and how feeble is my most passionate love. I scarcely know anyone who is consumed for Him. It is all for creeds and phrases and belief, but for Him how few! To know Him- that is it. How I fear and hate the pattern and print of the age. - Oswald Chambers
