Human Boundaries are Temporary

Human Boundaries are Temporary

Written by Dan McDonald

 

 

            Did the fact that the Apostles lived in a multi-ethnic empire affect how they thought through matters of theology?  I am not saying that living in a multi-ethnic empire was anywhere near to being the primary influence on their theology.  They had come to believe that God had shown his love for the world in the sending of Jesus Christ to die for our sins and to bring us into his resurrection into new and eternal life.  This was primary, but for the apostles living in a multi-ethnic empire this teaching had implications for redefining the categories of human life.  No longer were men and women to be known as Greek, Syrian, Hebrew, Scythian, or Barbarian.  No longer were men and women to be defined by being men and women; but their primary identification was for the Apostles to be defined by life in Christ; a whole new identification that transcended all the previous human identifications that had served to place walls of barrier between human beings.  That did not mean that all the previous identifications were jettisoned as St. Paul still understood himself to be a man, a Hebrew of the tribe of Benjamin, and a Roman citizen.  But each of those descriptions and identifications had been transformed by his life in Christ.  For most of the Apostles, this was being worked out within an empire of multiple ethnicities surrounding a sea in the middle of their empire, connected by a road system beyond anything to be built prior to the Roman Empire and never to be surpassed until the industrial age.  I suspect that the Apostles had thoughts about things that reflected that they lived in an empire where matters of ethnicity were always being promoted and compromised in ever changing ways within an empire made of many ethnicities.  I suspect also that if this shaped in some manner the Apostolic thinking it was because by the Spirit’s careful plan Christ had been born in what was in the divine plan to be “the fullness of the times.”

The Roman era of human history became known for its drawing upon the contributions of numerous ethnicities.  Roman thought began gradually to integrate Roman concepts of law with Greek ideas of philosophy with the monotheistic views of religion expressed by Jews and Christians.  By the time of the Book of Acts there was already a sizable minority within the Roman Empire known as God-fearers.  They had embraced in their theology the God of the Jews without becoming Jewish.  Within Judaism the need to become Jewish to have faith in God had never been fully determined.  Humankind had believed in God before Abraham, and Moses married into a family where God was worshipped that were not Hebrews, and Naaman the Syrian returned to Syria having washed in the Jordan but with no record of circumcision and yet vowed to worship God the remainder of his life.  So there were those in the Roman Empire that had similarly embraced the monotheistic faith in God of the Hebraic tradition without becoming Jewish.

The truth about human life is that the boundaries determining national, cultural, and intellectual identities have always been in flux within the history of humankind.  If we appreciate this reality we will view a boundary like the one separating the United States from other nations to our south as less than natural or permanent and more as the means of temporarily managing the diversity of cultures and nations within the greater reality of the humanity which Christ came into the world to redeem.

Take a few seconds to watch how national boundaries have changed in the course of human history.  Here is a video of the changing map of Europe.  There are a few errors in the details but it is a valuable picture of how boundaries are always changing, and why we should suspect that our national boundaries are as temporary as were those of the Holy Roman Empire, or that large nation of Lithuania of which now only a portion exists along the Baltic Sea.

Boundaries exist for the purpose of separating people with different cultures, different laws, and different national identities.  They also exist for the purpose of helping manage differences while recognizing a unified humanity that transcends all our dividing self-identities.  The Apostles struggled with protecting the self-identities of the new Christians within the early church.  St. Paul wrote the Book of Romans partly to encourage Christians from Jewish backgrounds and Christians from Gentile backgrounds, and Christians who felt freedom to do certain things and Christians who did not feel freedom to do such things to be able to maintain a life of fellowship with one another around the Eucharistic table.  They were clear that life in Christ transcended these boundaries that were being removed but also they were training their congregations to be sensitive because we were all coming out of somewhere with our own particular life struggles as we moved from an old identity in the world to our new identity in Christ.

I believe that the boundary between the United States and the nations south of our border is not likely a sustainable boundary.  There are reasons this boundary is likely temporary and not permanent.  The primary reason is related to economics.  On one side of the border are states and locales discussing whether the minimum wage should be increased to ten, twelve, or fifteen dollars an hour.  On the other side of the boundary are families living on less than ten dollars a day.  How do we view law and justice?  If we view law as national order then we might as Americans argue that this is the law and it should be enforced.  But if we are on the other side of the border, we will likely think of law more in the terms of how will our family provide for our children before God?  The one living in a land where the outcome of living in that land is to provide their children with poverty will be deemed by many to be an unacceptable choice for a responsible parent.  That is why our southern border is not likely sustainable.

The Apostles did not abdicate their responsibility in the early church.  They sought to teach those coming to Christ about their new life in Christ while seeking to create communities respectful of the varied backgrounds of the people coming to faith in Christ.  They understood the need to manage the differences created by a divided humanity within the possibilities of a humanity brought to union in Christ.  This is why I believe the Christian, whether to the right or to the left should work for manageable solutions regarding the border problem.  I cannot support a perspective that refuses to consider the plight of people whose only goal is to improve their way of life.