Foreigners and Strangers

During the last 31 years, Su and I have lived most of our lives as foreigners.

I am especially aware of this fact every time I go through an immigration check point in a country I am visiting. In this post-9/11 world I understand that any immigration agent (often young soldiers or policemen with little experience or training) can reject me for any reason, or, no reason. I must submit my passport and wait humbly for them to approve my entry. It doesn't matter who I am; what I have studied; or, what I have accomplished in life – I have no legal rights at this moment. They make the choice about whether I can enter their country, or not.

Interestingly enough, I once was refused admittance into the one country where I am a citizen. When an immigration official looked at my well-worn passport in Miami, she told me I would have to "continue my interview in a secure environment." Apparently I have lived so long away and been to so many places that I no longer have an immediate right to enter the country of my birth.

With that in mind, I was impressed by a poem I read this week by Raymond Foss, a lawyer/poet who began to write poetry during boring school board meetings. In a piece entitled “Living in the Foreign Land” he wrote:

More than making the most
the best of a bad situation
No this was more than that
This was a letter from the prophet
proclaiming the will, the judgment,
the word of God for the forgetful
the unfaithful children
sent to that foreign lands
subservient to another empire
used by God, instruments for training
A hard lesson, meted out in God’s time
Living in the foreign land
where God sent them
to live, planted, grounded
as citizens of that foreign land
residents, loyal to
their home, faithful
to their God

“Loyal to their home, faithful to their God.” That seems like a good description of a number of missionaries that I have known.

In Ephesians 2:19, Paul wrote, “Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints.”

Strangers and foreigners are both mentioned here, and, if you will have a little patience with me, there’s a gem of truth in understanding both of them. While synonymous, there is a real distinction.

Strangers is the translation of "xenos" which referred to a foreigner who did not belong to the community. It was also used describe a wanderer or a refugee. To the Greeks, a "zenos" was the same thing as a barbarian. This is where we get our English word xenophobia—a fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners.

Once, while in Central Asia, a group of about twenty children began to throw rocks at me while they screamed “kafir”, or, “unbeliever.” I have had a strange sensitivity to any hint of xenophobia since that experience.

Foreigner is the Greek "paroikos." This word described a foreigner who lived beside the people of a country or someone who was a neighbor and enjoyed the protection of the community. He was a “resident alien,” a licensed sojourner, someone who might have paid an “alien tax” to live in the area without being naturalized.

So, Paul was telling the Ephesians they were no longer passing strangers or licensed immigrants. Rather, he calls them fellow citizens. If a Roman citizen had great privileges during the time when the letter to the Ephesians was written, the believer’s must have had even more rights as citizens of Christ’s kingdom!

Hebrews 11:13 gives us another twist on this same subject. “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth."

Peter used this same term in his first epistle as he wrote “to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia" (1 Peter 1:1). In 1 Peter 2:11 he encourages his readers “as strangers and pilgrims” to “abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul.” Now, that should be both a challenge and an encouragement. The reason we sometimes feel different is that we are. Now, we need to act that way.

Vance Havener, used to say: “We are not citizens of this world trying to get to heaven; rather, we are citizens of heaven just trying to get through this world.”

Now I understand why I feel different! Now I understand why I have to BE different. Recognizing that you will never fit in gives you a certain amount of freedom.

In a song entitled, “The Foreigner Suite”, Cat Stevens (before he was Yusuf Islam, but after he was Steven Demetre Georgiou and Steve Adams), sang:

“Man must fight for freedom sure that's what most other people would say
Look for a body to lead them but there's too many to lead them away
Why wait until it's your time to die before you learn what you were meant to do?
Come on it's freedom calling but there's only one freedom for you”

Sometimes being a foreigner gives you an incredible freedom.