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Topic: Hospitality (02/07/05)
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TITLE: The Hand of Friendship | Previous Challenge Entry
By Callum MacNab
02/13/05 -
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Individual communities are much less trusting than they used to be, which unfortunately is not surprising when you consider current crime levels. People live in their own little worlds, where they feel safe, ignoring what happens beyond their own self-imposed boundaries. Gone are the days of just popping round to see how friends and family are getting on. Neighbours barely even recognise each other. In short, we are all becoming strangers.
On an international scale, things are no better. Countries regularly threaten their neighbours, sometimes going as far as to declare war on the flimsiest of excuses. Nothing is allowed to threaten political allegiances.
Throughout the world, people who are regarded as different from what the majority of the indigenous population would regard as 'normal' find themselves cast in the role of outsider. Often, they are viewed as a threat to national security.
The consequences of failing to show hospitality towards minorities in our society can be tragic. In his controversial song 'John Walker's Blues', Texan songwriter Steve Earle suggests that feelings of alienation from the society around him led John Walker Lindh, commonly known as 'The American Taliban', onto his fateful path:
"I'm just an American boy - raised on MTV
And I've seen all the kids in the soda pop ads
But none of them looked like me
So I started lookin' around for a light out of the dim
And the first thing I heard that made sense was the word
Of Mohammed, peace be upon him."
Unfortunately, the particular version of the word of Mohammed that Walker Lindh heard was the hate-filled rhetoric of Islamic fundamentalism. He ended up being arrested and now faces a long jail term for fighting against American soldiers in Afghanistan.
Would Walker Lindh have taken this course of action if had felt that he 'fitted in'? Perhaps, but surely the chances would have been greatly reduced. We do not need to condone his actions to realise that by trying to really understand minority viewpoints we may avoid similar cases in the future.
There are many different ways in which we can fall short of Biblical standards of hospitality. Whenever we treat someone poorly because of his or her race, gender, class, political views or sexual orientation we are disobeying God's word:
"You will not oppress the alien; you know how an alien feels, for you yourselves were once aliens in Egypt." (NJB, Ex. 23:9)
According to the dictionary, 'foreigner' is not the only definition of 'alien'; it can also mean "different in nature" or "estranged". We may not agree with the views of others, but that does not excuse us acting cruelly towards them.
If we look at a photograph of Earth taken from space, we can see that there are no artificial boundaries between countries. Earth was created so that all nations could live together in peace. It is only on a political map that we are all separated, and even then we should still be able to love and respect one another.
Is there any hope for the future? Can we do anything to bring all of humanity together? I would suggest that we can indeed change matters. We should all ask ourselves, whether as individuals, churches or even countries, what we are doing to make strangers feel welcome.
By extending the hand of friendship to others, we may well find that soon we have fewer enemies and a much more pleasant society in which to live.
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"By extending the hand of friendship to others, we may well find that soon we have fewer enemies and a much more pleasant society in which to live." Good job.