As an immigrant from Nicaragua, I feel like I don't fully belong to this place I call home. Through the 13 years I've been in this country, however, I have adopted some of its values and cultures, while at the same time not abandoning fully my own Nicaraguan values and culture.
Because of this, I feel like I don't fully belong in Nicaragua anymore. My Spanish accent has changed and it is no longer fully Nicaraguan, for example. My newly adopted western values are sometimes in conflict with my Nicaraguan ones.
I am stuck in the middle of two cultures.
A Progressive, But Not A Liberal
But the feeling of not belonging doesn't stop there.
Politically, I feel I don't belong to any of the polarized political positions in this country. I don't feel fully comfortable belonging to either the Republican or Democratic party. I have strong disagreements with both.
In many ways I am a progressive. I feel my calling as a Christian is to see the perspective of the poor first, not because they are somehow more "deserving" (how can we talk of someone being deserving or not in a religion that stands on Grace?), but because the world puts them last.
Jesus hanged out with sinners and tax collectors. He hanged out with the poor. In my imitation of Christ, I want to do likewise. This is what makes me a progressive, even if I don't fully buy into the liberal agenda.
It is for this reason that I support raising the minimum wage to a livable minimum wage. This aligns with my conviction that people are more than what they do, and that in an economy that needs the janitor as much as they need the CEO, they should both be afforded a wage that can sustain them and their families with dignity.
It is for this reason that I want to call this nation to show more hospitality to immigrants. When Paul proclaims that in Christ there is no Jew or Greek (one of the racial and spiritual divisions of the time) he is leaving issues of nationalistic values as secondary to our call of seeing the other as our brother and sister.
The way the world mistreats the "other," the foreigner around the world, is heartbreaking. It seems to me that we value more our nationalistic identity than our call to love our neighbor. When Jesus responded to the Pharisees' question of, "who is my neighbor?" He responded with a parable that highlighted a Samaritan, the hated 'other' in that context.
Our neighbors are not only people of our own kind but the "other" our culture fears and despises. Even if we are disposed to not include the foreigner as our neighbor but more as our enemy, the command from Jesus to love our enemies still applies and calls us to love.
Love, for the Christian, is inescapable.
It is for this reason that I feel uncomfortable supporting most Republican candidates, because they (at the current choices) don't strike me as being welcoming to the immigrant. In fact, many of them want to deport the 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country whom they see as not belonging here.
Not Pro-Choice and yet Not Pro-Life
Let my clarify this. Ethically speaking, I am Pro-Life in the fullest sense of the word, but I can't join the Pro-Life movement as it currently is, with all the political entanglement of a particular party. This is what I mean by not being Pro-Life. I don't wish to be identified with the Pro-Life movement in the US.
I see being Pro-Life as a holistic call against a culture of death. For this reason, I can in no good conscience get behind pro-gun rights (I don't see an issue in using guns for hunting, but open carry? I have an issue with that).
I can't get behind a Pro-Life movement so entangled with a particular party that encourages cuts in the budget towards health and education but never speaks of cutting the budget towards the military and security.
If we are truly Pro-Life, then the fact that as a nation we engage in wars every 30 years or so should be disturbing. If we are truly Pro-Life, we should by definition abolish the death penalty. A political platform that condemns abortion but upholds other forms of 'righteous' killing may be more accurately described as Pro-Birth, but never Pro-Life.
This doesn't mean I am Pro-Choice. Better said, I am not Pro-Abortion. I can't deny that abortion deals with the ending of a life. This alone disturbs me. We can argue all we want whether a fetus is a human being or not, but it would be disingenuous to deny that the fetus is alive.
I know that as a man, my opinions on this subject necessarily take the backseat. I recognize that I will never have to go through the excruciating experience of deciding whether to have an abortion or not. I want to acknowledge that my perspective is severely limited because of this, and I truly don't know fully what I'm talking about, nor will I ever.
At the same time, one forms opinions on matters whether one wants to or not, and my value of life prevents me from fully supporting abortion. I understand it is not always a black-and-white issue. I understand that in many situations there are subtleties that deserve our attention. But at the end of the day, after an abortion is performed, a life is lost.
Any loss of life should always grieve us.
As you can see, for these and many other reasons, I cannot fit into any particular conservative or liberal box. I don't belong to any of them.
The Gift of Not Belonging
I can take these realities and declare "woe is me!" but I won't. I want to embrace this reality as a gift from God.
This gift of perspective allows me to see blind spots that are ubiquitous in any given culture. It allows me to see from two different cultural lenses, and acknowledge the pros and cons of each position while not fully fitting into those boxes myself.
Not only that, but maybe this sensation of not belonging is the call of the Christian. Jesus declares that we are in the world and yet not of the world. He also proclaims that His Kingdom is not of this world, and yet the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, present in this world.
I am disturbed, therefore, at seeing the Church in the US being so shaped by culture wars and ideologies of our society. I see a church that conforms more and more with the polarizing views of our national politics, whether they be conservative or liberal.
I see a Church that mirrors the political polarization of this nation, instead of the unity we are called to in Christ. If the Church is so divided not only theologically, but also culturally and politically, can we truly say that it is living fully in Christ?
When we choose a side and defend it against the other side, we enter into a cultural bubble. Ideas formed in these bubbles will slowly develop apart from the perspective of the other. As time passes in this polarized nature and ideas on both sides continue to develop independently from each other, we are driven further and further apart.
Divisions are so aggravated that when the two opposing groups get to share their ideas with each other they are both met with disgust and disbelief. Polarization is a vicious cycle that feeds on itself. The two bubbles will grow in substantial size, and when they make contact with each other, they will burst into chaos.
Here is the thing: the Church is not called to be conservative or liberal. The Church is called to be Christ to the world. Christ did not belong to any particular party of His time. He was not a Pharisee. He was not a Sadducee. He was not a Zealot. He was not a Hellenistic Jew. Christ simply was and is.
I'm not saying that a Christian shouldn't belong to any particular party. What I am saying is that this belonging is only secondary to the call to belong to Christ. Belonging to a particular political party should never be seen as a prerequisite to belonging to Christ. To consider it otherwise would be pure idolatry. When we have denominations that identify first as either "traditional" or "affirming," and only secondly as Christ-centered, we have indeed allowed our faith to be shaped by our politics instead of the cross.
I believe that our root sin as a Church is nothing other than the idolatry of culture. Our call then, is not to be a conservative or a liberal Christ to the world. Our call is simply to be Christ to the world.
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