Christianity and the Other
Christianity and the Other
Some days when I read or watch the news, I am surprised and somewhat shocked at the lack of understanding or awareness in our world of ‘the other’. In an age of social media, instagram, selfies and on-line interaction the ‘self’ has become our master, and that which affects our neighbour has become something to avoid.
Yet, last week my Year 10 class was doing a piece of writing called What matters? It was in response to a writing competition put out by the Whitlam Institute that asked students to write about something that matters to them. We spoke at length about the issues in our world – from gun control, climate change, gender equality, friendship to feminism. But what struck me in this class was the amount of students who wanted to write about poverty, homelessness or injustice. Here was a bunch of teenagers who genuinely desired to look outward, beyond what they knew and to think about others.
I love poetry and lately, I am loving performance poetry. So to inspire their creativity I played my class this piece by a Christian guy called Joel McKerrow.
Watch – Stand Up For Tomorrow
Joel McKerrow is an ambassador for TEAR Australia. In relation to this piece he writes;
“I have heard it said, that the best way to destroy a people is to take away their stories. To make them forget. Get lost in the smallness of their own predicament. Today it appears as though we have indeed lost ourselves somewhere between the Western dream rat-race and our desire to be part of something larger. Many years ago I made a decision that whatever I do in life I would seek for it to be part of this something larger. To look beyond myself. To draw people beyond themselves.
My class were already doing this – looking beyond and towards others. But sometimes I forget, just how much God desires us to do this.
As we open our bibles, all throughout the Old Testament – God is revealed as one who cares for those who are fleeing, who are persecuted, who are suffering, who are widowed, who are poor, who are sick.
The bible tells the history of God’s people in exile and exodus. Last year I read through The Jesus Book with my sons and on each page I was reminded of how God, no matter what his people did, was constant and always led them where He wanted them to go. Think about their escape from slavery in Egypt, or their eventual…and I mean eventual entering into the promised land. Such events revealed to the Israelites the nature of God and defined their relationship with Him. He loved them as slaves, as whingy and weary travellers, when they were “the other” and he demanded that they in turn show such love to those around them. He encouraged them to ‘look beyond’.
In the book of Jeremiah, we see God’s prophet pleading for fairness and justice especially on behalf of those who have no one to speak for them.
Jeremiah 7:3-7 says;
3 This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Reform your ways and your actions, and I will let you live in this place. 4 Do not trust in deceptive words and say, “This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord!” 5 If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, 6 if you do not oppress the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, 7 then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your ancestors for ever and ever.
Here Jeremiah, situated outside the temple and as God’s spokesman, pleads with the people of Judea to be just, to look outward and to look after the foreigners, fatherless, widows. He pleads for the most vulnerable in that society.
Later Micah 6:8 implores us;
“And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.”
Written in around 700 BC, these words were a call to action. Both then and now.
Micah reminds God’s people that he has shown them what is good. He has delivered them, time and time again. He has revealed himself to them over and over. And so in return He “requires” their obedience in action – to act justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with Him. To look outward.
In the New Testament, God continues to uphold his people through the birth of His son. And he does this, while also showing His call to solidarity with the homeless, the stranger and the poor, ‘the other’ in society. Mary and Joseph became this when they were forced to take Jesus and flee to Egypt in order to escape Herod, on his mission Jesus travelled through strange lands, choosing to call on, share meals with, and do life with the most marginalised and oppressed people within society. He spoke on loving ones enemies, giving all material and wordly possessions to the poor, and offering hospitality to strangers. Jesus proclaimed and taught that obedience to Him was seen in such actions. Actions that were beyond themselves. In fact, he went one step further and taught that people would know who God is through his people and the way his followers responded to strangers and to the poor. They would be identified as His by the way they looked outward.
In the gospel of Luke, Jesus commands us to do to others as you would have them do to you (6:31) and to love others as He has to us (13:34).
And later in chapter 10 he tells the story of the good Samaritan and ends with the question and directive;
36 “Which of these three do you think was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”
37 The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”
Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”
Jesus, controversially, encourages the teacher of the law to not only help a Samaritan, but to serve him, love him and treat him as a neighbour. Loving the stranger means to see them as human, to take care of their needs and love them as God’s chosen people.
About 10 years ago, my husband and I joined a little ministry in Lalor Park. Our aim was and still is to love and serve the people in the community through a café mission. Lalor Park, if you don’t know is tucked in between Seven Hills, Kings Langley and Blacktown. It has a high rental demographic and particularly high housing commission. Socially, it therefore has its challenges. We decided to move into the area, to live amongst those we were ministering to and to ‘do life’ with other Christians around us. From our little café bible study group we now meet in the local hall and have around 30 – 40 people coming each week (with a lot of children!). For me, this experience was and still is challenging – whether that be with knowing how to help a single mum who is struggling, conversing with people with addictions or those suffering from Mental health issues. Each week I am forced to look outside myself and to the needs of those around me, and to see these people as Jesus does – His children.
As Christians, there cannot be any question about our response to God’s love for us – We must be people who ‘look out’. We are to be people of welcome, providing care and comfort to those who come to this land as strangers, or those who desperately need what we have. Recently during Easter we reflected on the unconditional love offered to us through the actions of Jesus on the cross, let us remember to offer that same love to others, and seek out those who perhaps need that love in a very real and tangible way.
Let me leave you with The Passion version of 1 John 4: 7-12
“Those who are loved by God – let his love continually pour from you to one another, because God is love. Everyone who loves is fathered by God and experiences an intimate knowledge of him. 8 The one who doesn’t love has yet to know God, for God is love. 9 The light of God’s love shined within us when he sent his Son into the world so that we might live through him. 10 This is love: He loved us long before we loved him. It was his love, not ours…
11 Delightfully loved ones, if he loved us with such tremendous love, then “loving one another” should be our way of life! 12 No one has ever gazed upon the fullness of God’s splendour. But if we love one another, God makes his permanent home in us, and we make our permanent home in him, and his love is brought to its full expression in us.”
Amen.
By Jo Lapointe
