Life as an alien
Following university, I spent eight months living in Ecuador, volunteering for a charity, where I spent most of my time teaching English. It was a fantastic experience: learning a new language, adapting to a new culture, sampling the seven varieties of bananas that could be easily bought in fruit market. But I stuck out. To be fair I stick out here – I have had more comments telling me that I’m tall by children in school that I care to remember. However, Ecuador’s average height is a good three inches less than the UK. I was noticed. The choices I made were observed. Whether I conformed to a new culture was seen.
In the New Testament in the Bible, the letter of 1 Peter was written to followers of Jesus scattered through a variety of parts of modern-day Turkey. The writer addresses the epistle to “exiles,” which would have evoked in the original readers reminders of the Jewish people’s history of living in captivity to the Babylonians. This group were not the prevailing force: they were outsiders, lacking power, a minority. But this was not all. This section from the second chapter stands out to me.
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the excellence of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
Beloved, I urge you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the desires of the flesh that wage war against the soul. Conduct yourselves honourably among the gentiles, so that, though they malign you as evildoers, they may see your honourable deeds and glorify God when he comes to judge. 1 Peter 2: 9-12
There is an emphasis on identity here for “God’s own people” and the adjectives of ‘chosen,’ ‘royal’ and ‘holy’ almost stress the importance of seeing ourselves as we are seen by God. This then is contrasted shortly after with the use of “aliens and exiles” where the focus is on how life is “honourably” lived out. I wonder what that would have looked like for those original recipients of the letter and how we can apply it now. It seems to imply that there should be something distinctive about the life of faith but the reality is, it can hard to get the balance right.
When I lived in Ecuador, there were guidelines about how to avoid causing offence in a more culturally conservative society. A life of faith, however, must be more than just being bland and inoffensive – it means working out how to express our identity as an alien, an outsider of sorts in the society we find ourselves in. The choices we make will be noticed by others who know our faith identities, so we need to be intentional about how we express “honourable deeds” in our lives.
It’s difficult to be prescriptive about what sort of conduct is expected from us. It may involve our words or deeds. Our settings and circumstances will likely have an impact on what these might be. However, the purpose of our actions, it seems from verse 12, is to point others towards God. It is this principle that can guide us in our choices. Sometimes we may want these actions to flow naturally out of our personalities. Other times we may want to make deliberate choices, proactively seeking ways to demonstrate the love of God in practical ways, reflecting the light we have been called into. It’s possible this will feel awkward at times. Being a foreigner can be – you feel self-conscious and question whether you are doing the right thing. That’s ok. This is bound up in the identity of the alien and exile but it remains our obligation to pass on the mercy that we have received in the way we live.
