“Alien Behavior”

“Beloved, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in a foreign land, abstain from fleshly desires which war against the soul. Let you conduct so excel among the Gentiles that, though they speak against you as evil-doers, they may by your good deeds, which they will carefully observe, glorify God in the day of visitation.”

It was in the months just after 9/11 that I started following a news-story coming out of the Middle East concerning a 35 year-old Air Force fighter pilot stationed in Saudi Arabia—an experience pilot, who by that point had logged over 100 combat hours patrolling the no-fly zones over Iraq in an A-10 Warthog tank-killer (which is a really cool jet). Her name was Lt. Col. Martha McSally, and back in December of 2001 she brought a lawsuit against the United States Defense Department over its policy of requiring all female military personnel based in Saudi Arabia to where the tradition Muslim attire—the long, black dress called an ‘abaya’ with matching head-scarf that covers the face—when traveling in country. You see, Col. McSally is a Christian, and as she said in one interview, “As a follower of Christ, to have to wear the clothing of another religion… was tremendously offensive.”

So she refused. She refused and as the result she was reprimanded and threatened with a court martial by her commanding officer and accused of disloyalty and being a bad example by her peers. Yet she remained firm that she wasn’t going to be forced to conform to Muslim mores and values. She continued to refuse to wear the abaya, even though in her formal performance report her immediate supervisor purposefully left out a recommendation for command, although she was one of the highest rated pilots in the squadron. And she continued to refuse even though she risked the wrath of the Saudi religious police for violating Muslim dress. This is a brave woman.

Now we could argue all day about whether Col. McSally was justified in disobeying her governing authorities in this particular case, but that’s not the reason I bring it up. I bring up the story because here’s an example of woman who, because she is self-consciously Christian, refused to capitulate to non-Christian cultural mores and values, because she believed she’d be compromising her faith, she’d be compromising her witness to Christ, if she did—even though she was held back from promotion as a result; even though she was stigmatized by her peers; even though she put herself under the threat of violence for her alien behavior.

Now I think it’s very easy for us to see how a Christian would have to live and act differently— would have to refuse to capitulate to non-Christian mores and values—in a foreign country, especially an Islamic county like Saudi Arabia. But have we become so inculturated to the American way of life, have we become so steeped in American forms of thought and behavior, in American mores and values, that we’ve ceased to be truly conscious of the fact that as Christians we are aliens and foreigners even here in this country? That America is not our true homeland. That America is not God’s country so that simply by belonging to America that means you’re a member of God’s special people That we are in fact members of God’s special people, a holy nation, because our we are citizens of another country, a heavenly country. St. Paul says that our citizenship is in Heaven. As Christians are members, not of a sub-culture, but of a super-culture—the Kingdom of God, the Church Universal and Triumphant, which transcends all national, cultural, spatial or even temporal boundaries. And it is from there, our true country, our true culture—that we get our mores and values, our forms of thought and behavior. That means that we will, and must, live and act, in some respect, as foreigners even here in this land which we call our home.

With all the new patriotic fervor that has swept over our nation in the past few years, I could probably be accused of being a traitor for speaking like this. But that sort of gets me to my next point.

People don’t like foreigners, especially these days. With the new patriotism that followed on the heels of 9/11 there has grown up a new paranoia about “outsiders,” which I think is proven by the fact that for some time on the New York Times best-seller list there was a book entitled, How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil our Country and Civilization. I also read in a magazine article about an incident that occurred in the north of England. Some fool left a spray-painted message near a mosque. The message read: “Avenge USA – Kill a Muslim now.” But that’s just an illustrations, says the writer, of the swelling mood of “xenophobia” all over the western world following the attacks on the United States.

“Xenophobia.” Isn’t that such a wonderful p.c. word? Webster defines it as the “fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign.”

My point here is, if we have a clear understanding of who we are as Christians, meaning, we are self-consciously citizens of another country, members of a super-culture, and that gets worked out in our behavior as we live according to our own country’s standards and values, then we will be seen as foreigners. And we’ll be disliked as foreigners. We’ll be spoken against as foreigners. We’ll be accused of being disloyal by our bosses when we don’t go along with everybody else in breaking the law to boost company profits, because our standard says “Thou shalt not steal.” We’ll be stigmatized by our peers when we refuse to endorse the sexual permissiveness of our cultural either by engaging in it ourselves or simply by keeping silent about it, because our cultural value is, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” We’ll be called prudish, intolerant, homophobic when we reject the validity of “alternative lifestyles” because our culture holds up marriage as sacred. We’ll be threatened with lawsuits and prison when we stand up in protest against the wholesale slaughter of the unborn because our nation’s law says, “Thou shalt do no murder.” Why will we be spoken against in this way? Because the world is xenophobic toward Christians.

Isn’t it ironic that the world loves to accuse us Christians of being xenophobic, homophobic, and whatever else phobic, when it’s really the world that’s xenophobic toward us. Or if I may coin a new word: the world is Christophobic.

Because we are aliens and foreigners in this world – in the world but not of the world – and because our behavior doesn’t conform to the world’s standards, the world speaks against us, slanders us, maligns our character, threatens us as foreigners, even as evil doers, as St. Peter says in our text.

Did you know that one of the charges brought against the early Christians by the Romans, on account of the fact they didn’t do things like go to the Gladiatorial games, or to the incredibly bawdy theatres, or to the orgies, was that they were disturbers of the peace and good order of the Empire? Can you believe that? That because we did not participate in the immorality and debauchery of the Roman culture, we were the one’s responsible for the disorder of the Empire. The Roman historian Tacitus writes that Christians “were hated because of their vices.” “Notoriously depraved” is what they were popularly called. Isn’t that incredible?

But Peter says this is how the world will speak of you if you do not conform to its patterns of behavior. In chapter four Peter writes, “For we have spent enough of our past lifetime in doing the will of the Gentiles – when we walked in lewdness, lusts, drunkenness, revelries, drinking parties, and abominable idolatries. In regard to these, they think it strange that you do not run with them in the same flood of dissipation, speaking evil of you.”

The world is xenophobic toward Christians. But it’s right here at this point that we have to hear and heed St. Peter’s exhortation to us: “Beloved, I urge you, as aliens and foreigners, abstain from fleshly desires that war against your soul.”

You see, the temptation for us Christians is always to compromise. The temptation is always to capitulate to the world’s values and standards of behavior in order to avoid being stigmatized, in order to avoid being disliked as outsiders, in order to get our big promotion, in order to be popular with the rest of the kids. We live under the same kind of pressure to conform that all foreigners live under when they come to live here in the United States. Be honest: you’re not even comfortable with people who come here from other very different cultures than ours, who don’t get into the mainstream of American culture because they don’t want to give up their old ways. You’re not even comfortable with those people who remain outsiders among us. I’m not arguing for multiculturalism; I’m just trying to make a point. There is an extreme amount of pressure on these people, especially on the second and third generations, to give up the old ways and to conform to the new ways in order to avoid be stigmatized as foreigners. And so it is with us Christians.

But Peter says, as aliens and strangers, avoid these fleshly desires that war against the soul. Don’t miss what he says. He says there is nothing less than a war going on for your soul. And the objective of this war is to get you to renounce your heavenly citizenship, to get you to give up your status as resident alien and to get you fully mainstreamed into the world culture. And the main strategy for achieving this objective is to entice you, to lure you, to tantalize you through fleshly desires – not just sensual desires, but the desire for success, the desire for acceptance, the desire for comfort and respectability – to get you to capitulate to the world’s values, to get you to conform the world’s standards, to get you to buy into the world’s claim that it is the best nation on earth. It’s not the best nation on earth. The Kingdom of God, the Church, is the best nation on earth. But when you’ve bought the lie, the war is over. You’ve been beaten.

Peter says, “Don’t lose your heavenly cultural identity by being enticed by the world. But rather, live your life so well according to your true country’s standards, that even though unbelievers speak now against you as evil-doers, they will have to, by the very deeds they observe you do, glorify God in the day of visitation, in the day He comes knocking on their door to give an account of themselves. This is how we win our battles with the world; not by conforming to its values, but by living such excellent lives under the ever-watchful eyes of unbelievers, that in the end they’ll have nothing to say against us. “For this is the will of God,” Peter writes, “that by doing good you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men.”

Do you know why Col. McSally won her fight with the Defense Department? It’s not because she had a great lawyer. It’s not because she’s got the ACLU to scream bloody murder on her behalf. It’s because she is a superior pilot and an exceptional officer. She put to silence the ignorance of foolish men by doing good. Let’s take a pare out of Col. McSally’s flight manuel and learn to live as resident aliens even her in this country we call home. Let’s uphold our true country’s standards and values even when that puts us at odds with our earthly country’s standard and values, and put the silence the ignorance of those who oppose us by doing good. +