Jesus Creed
If your impression of the Middle East comes only from the headlines, it might be easy to think it’s a place of social chaos. Uprisings here, violence there, civil strife everywhere.
In just a few weeks, I’ll be going to Lebanon, a country of four million people and one million refugees. This is my second trip to the region since the start of the Syrian conflict. And what I’ve seen is far from social chaos — the Middle Easterners I’ve met have taught me profound lessons about caring for people.
Over the last three years, since the war in Syria and then Iraq began pushing refugees across the borders into Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey, Middle Eastern cultures have shown how incredibly welcoming and hospitable they can be. In fact, they may be far more hospitable to suffering people seeking refuge than we in America have shown ourselves to be. When Christians in Iraq were directly targeted and their homes were marked by painting them with an Arabic “n” for Nazarene (Christian) some Muslim neighbors put their own lives in danger by worshiping with Christians or painting the Arabic “n” on their own homes….
The Middle East, of course, has a long tradition of hospitality. The biblical story of Abraham is one of leaving home and making a new life in a foreign country. Acts of generous hospitality were a legacy passed from generation to generation. It became a core characteristic of God’s people to welcome outsiders. “You are to love those who are foreigners,” Moses says in Deuteronomy 10:19, “for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt.” Centuries later, Jesus Christ was a child refugee, as his family fled to Egypt to escape King Herod who wanted to kill him.
Hospitality is now a cultural value that has remained for millennia, one that even in these difficult times allows for a refugee family to find a safe place to stay. There is much more to the people of the Middle East than what we see on the evening news — and much of it we can learn from.
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