“FOREIGN”

I saw this sign on an airport wall recently: THE WORD "FOREIGN" IS LOSING ITS MEANING. The sign advertized the latest long list of cities outside the USA to which this particular airline flies.

What does "foreign" mean in our global environment? An on-line dictionary gives twelve definitions. Did that airport sign mean to convey that the word "foreign" is losing all its twelve meanings? Let's consider just two of the definitions: "strange or unfamiliar," and "of another country or nation."

My granddaughter studied in Europe as an undergraduate student. After graduation, she lived in Korea, and now she plans to spend this summer in Europe again. She lived in places which, at first, she found "strange or unfamiliar," but to which she soon acclimated. That is, those places lost their strangeness and became familiar to her. It's as Nicole Frehsee reminds us in "Twain Tracks," published in Hemispheres Magazine, March 2012, page 23: Mark Twain wrote that, "travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness."

Our world often gives us mixed messages. Unlike the airline's encouraging sign on the wall, traditional religious teachings may discourage "getting to know them." In the Old Testament (called by some the "Hebrew Bible" or "Jewish Bible") we find many references to "foreigners." For example, in the Torah, where many commandments are found, we read in Genesis 17, "Every male throughout your generations, whether born in your house or bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring, ... shall surely be circumcised." Could it be that foreign males might be changed from foreigners to people "like us" by the ritual of circumcision?

In still another example, the last two chapters of Ezra report how that prophet dealt with the great sin of "not [keeping] themselves separate from the neighboring peoples...We have been unfaithful to our God by marrying foreign women from the peoples around us." It seems that God had commanded the Israelites not to "give your daughters in marriage to their sons or take their daughters for your sons."

In Luke 10: 33-37, Jesus, a Jew, tells the well-known parable of the Good Samaritan, a member of the minority, someone who might have been considered a "foreigner" to the majority of Israelites. In fact, Jesus referred to Samaritans as foreigners (Luke 17:18). In Matthew 10: 5-6, Jesus sends out the 12 disciples saying, "Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." He seems to be saying, "Avoid those foreigners."

But in Genesis 23, Abraham negotiates with foreigners to buy a burial plot for Sarah. As a result, that place became less foreign for him and his family. The book of Ruth tells us how she, as a foreigner, earns acceptance and becomes part of King David's lineage.

As my granddaughter has done, both Abraham and Ruth got past the "strange and unfamiliar." It is true for me and for others I've known, and maybe for you too: As we come in contact with foreign people, practices, customs, beliefs and worship traditions previously unfamiliar to us, they feel no longer so strange or different, but increasingly comfortable. We come to "know" them. In that sense, the word "foreign" really can lose that part of its meaning. So maybe the airline with its sign, and Mark Twain, are right: Going there and meeting those who are strange, unfamiliar, or from another nation or country, can reduce our prejudice and narrow-mindedness.