6 - STRANGERS IN A STRANGE LAND?

October 10, 2024

What does it mean to be a “stranger” in a “strange land?”

Typically, a stranger is simply a person you don’t know and vice versa – one would be a stranger among those you had not met. But “stranger” also has an edgier meaning: an alien; a foreigner; someone with a different outlook than the mainstream culture, different customs, different values; someone who, thus, doesn’t belong.

And, for the most part, the idea of the “strange land” parallels that: a place that is foreign, a “land” where people’s outlook, values, and customs are alien to mine; a place where I am an outsider, where I do not fit, and have the sense that I do not belong.

The phrase “stranger in a strange land” is intended to sound Biblical. Throughout scripture we find various mentions of strangers: “sojourners” – temporary residents – and “exiles” (see, for example, Ex. 2:22; Ps. 119:19; 1 Chr. 29:15; 1 Pe. 2:11;).  Abraham sojourned – was a stranger – in Canaan; his descendants sojourned in Egypt for 400+ years, and most of that time as slaves; the Jewish exiles sojourned in Babylon for 70 years.  (In Psalm 137:4 their lament asks the question “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?)  And Peter, among other early Christians, saw the early Church as sojourning in the Roman Empire.

In God’s providence and plan, this is the status of His people in this world; and so it should be, for, Paul writes in Phil. 3:20: “our citizenship is in heaven.”  Paul has the Christian’s ultimate citizenship in view.  

Only recently I have come to see that being a stranger in a strange land is not, properly understood, situational.  In the Biblical examples cited above, the strangeness looks situational – the circumstances in each case are difficult, challenging, and even oppressive – but the underlying issue is structural.  A Christian may feel comfortable in the broader surrounding culture, but he or she is still living in a strange land as a stranger/sojourner/foreigner.

As I look back on my life – which covers a little more than six decades – I can see that I have long failed to appreciate this reality.  Living in a place and time where I have enjoyed a fairly affluent and peaceful life, I have expected things of this world that it cannot deliver because – as good as God’s creation remains – this fallen world, and everything in it, is cursed.

It has taken events of the past few years – the culture’s spiraling descent into sexual and social chaos, and the many revelations exposed by the response to Covid, to name two, - to strip away the illusions under which I had long lived. I have awakened to the fact that my Christian faith makes me a stranger in this increasingly strange place.

Periodically, in occasional fits-and-starts, I have written down some thoughts related to this change in my thinking, and toyed with the idea of blogging… And so this blog begins in earnest, after a “false start” a couple of years back.  You see the evidence of this in the previous posts.  We shall see if I have the self-discipline to keep this going for any length of time. 

Next time: From Pillar to Post-