Once concept I might add to yesterday’s look at the theology of foreignness is the concept of the Diaspora. Originally, the term “diaspora” just meant scattering. Then it came to refer to the scattering of Jews away from the Promised Land.
Christians appropriated that term to refer to themselves. James uses the term in the first verse of his letter, though given the Jewishness of his writing, he may have been addressing Jewish Christians primarily. But there’s no doubt of the meaning when Peter uses it at the beginning of his first letter; a quick read of 1 Peter shows that Jews were not the primary audience Peter had in mind, yet he calls them the Diaspora, “God’s elect, strangers in the world, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia” (1 Peter 1:1)
The term “strangers” in that verse was usually described to mean resident aliens; the ESV uses the term “exiles.” That’s who we are, citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven, scattered among the nations.
I’m working on a summary of the biblical teachings on “foreignness.” Here are some initial thoughts. I’d really like your feedback:
In past discussions about Christians participating in the affairs of earthly kingdoms, I’ve pondered at times the situation of Roman soldiers, like Cornelius in Acts 10, who became Christians. I’ve long known that the church was strongly pacifistic during the first four centuries of its existence, but I also knew that military men in the New Testament became Christians. The Bible doesn’t give us much of a hint as to what they were instructed to do.
Do you remember Gershom? He was Moses’ oldest son. When Gershom was born, Moses was a fugitive. He had killed an Egyptian for mistreating one of Moses’ fellow Hebrews and had fled the country to escape prosecution. Moses ended up in Midian and settled there for forty years. He married a Midianite girl named Zipporah, and they had a son. Moses chose the name for the boy and called him Gershom, which sounds like the Hebrew phrase “a stranger here.” The explanation for the name that Moses gave was that he called him Gershom because “I have become an alien in a foreign land.” (Exodus 2:22) All of his life, Gershom carried the reminder of his father’s alien status. Moses had grown up in the Egyptian palace, adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter, yet he was not Egyptian. He was Hebrew, a descendant of Abraham, of the lineage of Israel. He, along with his people, belonged in Canaan, not in Egypt, yet they had come to live in Egypt in slaves. Moses could have lived life as an Egyptian, a comfortable life. He could have denied his alien status and made himself at home in what was, at that time, the most powerful nation in the region.