The Sin of Xenophobia

          Two days ago, a Florida jury acquitted George Zimmerman of second-degree murder*. Zimmerman was accused of murdering seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin, an African-American youth whom Zimmerman perceived as a threat to his neighborhood. The Zimmerman trial points to a lingering, festering problem in this country and in most countries worldwide, and that is racism. The US is not the only nation to grapple with this issue. I lived in an East Asian country for over eight years, and some of the most racist people I have ever encountered were citizens of that country…and I grew up in a small town in Central Texas, so I know first-hand about racist attitudes. Human beings have long been fearful of strangers, of outsiders, of anyone that was a member of an out-group. In ancient times, there was some survival benefit from that fear. It caused our early ancestors to be cautious and suspicious of anyone who looked or acted differently because often the stranger meant harm to the clan or village.

            But then along comes a little Semitic tribe of people called Hebrews, a monotheistic culture that received its laws directly from its deity. And that deity commanded them to be hospitable to strangers. That must have really shaken things up in the ancient world. And so they practiced hospitality, more or less, for thousands of years until one of their own, a man we call Jesus in English (Yeshua in Hebrew, more accurately translated as Joshua) came along and expanded the command even more. Not only were they to show hospitality to strangers, but they were to love them. Yikes! Even the dirty Samaritans and the unclean Roman occupiers and those morally despicable Greeks? Yes, even them. Everyone. Some of those Hebrews (called Jews by this time) were so incensed by this Jesus guy’s teachings that they went into cahoots with the Romans and had him unjustly crucified and persecuted his followers.

            But that way of love had already taken root in people’s hearts and was spreading like wildfire, transforming lives everywhere. Suddenly those who were condemned to the fringes of society—lepers, prostitutes, tax collectors, Samaritans, the poor, eunuchs, and more—were being physically and spiritually healed, finding inclusion and acceptance and community despite their ethnicity, their sexuality, their gender, their socio-economic status, their religious tradition, or whatever caused them to be pushed to the fringes in the first place. The only requirements to be in the Jesus group were to turn back to God and love God wholeheartedly, and love others as much as you loved yourself. That’s it. No racial, ethnic, socio-economic, gender, religious, or sexual qualifiers attached. Anybody was welcome.

            Sadly, the early church did not continue this momentum of inclusion and acceptance of those who had been condemned to the fringes of society for being different. Somewhere along the line of church history, the majority of the followers of Christ emulated the old pre-Jesus exclusionary ways and began putting qualifiers on people again. Women were excluded from ministry and full participation in the life of the church, which even condoned domestic violence against women. People of different races and ethnicities were shut out and often persecuted. Church members actually owned other human beings as slaves. The poor were shunned while those who could afford penance were sold forgiveness for even the most atrocious sins. Men who did not fit the church’s definition of maleness were sometimes driven out violently, or even killed. Although these people claimed Christ as their lord and savior, emulating Jesus was completely off their radar screens.

            And sadly, today many who claim to follow Christ and proclaim Jesus as their lord and savior continue the practice of fear-based exclusion and merit-based salvation. They do not deny that God’s grace is free, but to be fully accepted into fellowship with God (or rather, their own brand of church), individuals must comply with their church’s definition of men, women, families, politics, worship, and so on. Their hearts are ruled by the darkness of the sin of xenophobia, the fear of the outsider. The Bible says “…perfect love drives out fear.” (1 John 4:18). If one’s heart truly belongs to Christ, then one’s heart is filled with the love of Christ, thus one is able to overcome fear of the other and love that person.

            That’s not to say it’s not hard. It is hard to love others—sometimes really hard—especially if the other is quite different from us. I myself have a very hard time loving certain other individuals whose political beliefs or lifestyle habits are vastly different from my own, especially when those beliefs and habits cause harm to others (“Love the sinner, hate the sin,” eh?). But as a follower of Christ, I am commanded to at least try my best, for it is in the trying that transformation becomes possible.

            We still struggle with racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, and other xenophobic sins in this country because people are afraid. They are fearful of losing their socio-political status, or their mental framework, or their wealth, or their religious convictions, or whatever, because they see “the others” as coming to take it away from them. But if they open their minds and hearts and do as Jesus’s early followers did, and show hospitality to the strangers (the fringe-dwellers) in their midst, then they might find that what they lose in the process was never worth keeping in the first place, and what they gain has great value in both this life and beyond.

* I do not want to comment on Zimmerman’s perceived guilt or Martin’s perceived innocence. I was neither present during the incident nor at the trial, and I have not seen or heard the evidence presented. I, like most other Americans, only know what the media have presented. However, I do want to comment on the enormous pressure that those six jurors must have felt to examine and weigh the evidence presented, deliberate in light of their state’s laws, and pass a verdict on a charge as serious as murder in a case that is strongly emotionally charged and in the nation’s spotlight. I’ve served as a juror, and when it comes to making decisions in that role, it is not about what the juror thinks or feels, but what the juror knows from the evidence presented. A juror’s decision is to be as humanly objective as possible, and when a human life—any human’s life—depends on that decision, it is far, far better to err on the side of caution. We are innocent until proven guilty in this country, and without credible eyewitness testimonies, any other evidence has to be solid and verifiable. What I know is this: a young man is tragically dead at the age of seventeen, and another man will carry the stigma of this incident for the rest of his life. What I believe is this: the incident might have been avoided if Zimmerman had been restricted from carrying a gun outside his home in the first place. But that is another blog for another time.