When I hear Mara’s story–a story of intimidation that led to flight that led to poverty that led to a waning hope–I understand, but I cannot imagine. I listen, but I cannot relate. I can say, “I am here,” but I cannot say, “I have been there.”
And yet, ours, too, is a history of wanderers in dire need of aid.Neither Slave Nor Free, Legal Resident Nor Refugee
The Christian Story is a Sojourner Story
God’s people have always felt the push and pull of personal flight and collective migration. From beginning to end, the Bible is full of people whose stories are not unlike those coming out of the Middle East, North Africa, and Southeast Asia today. It is a phenomenon unique to particular places and eras in the Western Church that, when it reads in Scripture about oppressed and uprooted people, it doesn’t know the feeling.
This is a blessing at the same time as it is a loss.
In North America, Christians are rich and privileged compared to the rest of the world. Even if we sometimes feel persecuted, it is not the kind of persecution that drives us from our homes. We should hourly express our thanks to God for all the unique blessings with which we’re showered—material resources, freedom of conscience, the general perception of safety, an overabundance of choice—but we can’t afford to lose a connection with our foreigner forefathers. The day we can no longer empathize with the refugees of the Word is the day we stop applying the Word to our response to refugees.
It must be noted that in our time, as in the days of biblical Israel and of Christ, there are many kinds of wanderers. We must know who they are.
Who Are Refugees?
Politically and legally, we talk about the difference between refugees and asylum seekers, stateless people, IDPs, and economic migrants of all stripes (e.g., guest workers, temporary migrants, the highly skilled). Categorizing displaced persons depends primarily on where they are (inside their home country or out) and why they fled (political, economic, or environmental reasons). In the popular discussion, we are more crass, referring to uprooted people with terms like “illegal” and “undocumented”, and applying almost universally derogatory labels: “boat people,” “job-stealers,” “cheap labor,” “shabab,” and “terrorists.”
When Westerners travel, they are called expats. When the down-trodden travel, they are something far worse.
In the final analysis, however, there is no reason the words “migrant” and “displaced person” should not be entirely neutral. It is only a product of our fallen times that we see the terms as inherently negative.
The Bible speaks about various kinds of displacement. The Old Testament speaks of ger, those “resident strangers” welcomed into the land.[1] It also describes nokri, who were usually ethnic foreigners in Israel and subject to some cultural and legal exclusions. The New Testament refers to allotrios and allogenes, foreigners and strangers like Abraham in Hebron and Samaritans in Israel, each stigmatized as those who don’t belong.[2] In Ephesians, Paul tells us how Jesus eliminated the wall between Jews and Gentiles, thereby making a way for all people, including refugees and foreigners, to coexist in the world and to experience the hospitality of Christ.
As with any important issue, we must spend some time defining our terms in our own context. If one man’s “refugee” is another man’s “illegal immigrant,” and one man’s asylum seeker is another’s “welfare baby,” how can we expect to come to any reasonable agreements?
There are, of course, sensible legal and political distinctions, and for some legal and political bodies these distinctions are important. But, first and foremost, the Christian and the Church does not recognize distinctions of material or social status. We first recognize that all people—incoming and outgoing and in-the-middle and lost and found—are, in fact, human beings. Their first identity is as an embodied soul created in the image of God.
Before we make any other separations, this is the vital starting point. In the family of Christians, there is neither Greek nor Jew, slave nor free—we are all one in Christ Jesus (Gal. 3:28). And in the broader family of humanity, there is neither insider nor outsider, neither legal resident nor refugee—we are all one in the image of God (Gen. 1:27).
[1] Stephan Bauman, Matthew Soerens, and Dr. Issam Smeir. Seeking Refuge: On the Shores of the Global Refugee Crisis. Moody Publishers. 2016. Ger could apply to Israelites or non-Israelites. There is a general distinction between “foreigner” and “sojourner” in the Old Testament, the latter having more rights than the former.
[2] “By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign [allotrios] country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise” (Heb. 11:9). “‘Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner [allogenes]? Then he said to him, ‘Rise and go; your faith has made you well.’” (Luke 17:18).
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