A very good friend and sister in Christ recently gave a devotional presentation to a faith-based non-profit Board of which I am a member. She reflected on her experience of being a minority as a Christian growing up in India, where less than two percent (2%) of the population is “Christian” (including Catholics, Jehovah Witnesses, and Mormons).
Her poignant story of personal struggle with minority status and finding blessing in it, hits home with me. I have never felt like a minority in the visceral way that she experienced it. The blessing she found through Scripture in embracing her minority status is a lesson for all believers.
Being a Christian in a Non-Christian World
My friend struggled with her minority status as a Christian in India. She was ridiculed, teased, and looked down upon. By God’s grace, she felt her divine calling as a child of God, but her identity as a Christian came with consequences.
When she applied to medical school, the admissions officer said she must recant her faith to be approved for assignment to any med school. She refused, and she gave up her dream of becoming a physician. Minority status in a majority world as consequences.
Being a Foreigner in the United States
When she emigrated to the United States she felt the joy of being a part of the Christian majority. Over time, however, the struggle with minority status began to resurface again. She stood out because of her ethnicity, accent, and cultural differences. She realized, “I am a minority within my Christian majority realm.”
This was a very personal struggle for her because of her childhood experience in India. She thought that moving to American where Christians are in the majority would be different. Instead, she felt the sting of minority status. Though she was a Christian in an ostensibly Christian country, she was still an outsider and a foreigner because of her nationality, ethnicity, and cultural differences.
Being a Foreigner in the World
She shared that God met her in the struggle and confronted her with His Word. What she learned through this process was sobering for her, and it is a lesson for those of us who have always lived in majority status in a majority Christian nation.
She began to realize what a privilege it is to be a minority because we are called as believers out of the world where wide is the path that leads to destruction. We are set apart by God from the world, which means we are called to minority status in the world.
Narrow is the path that leads to life. Minority status is the Christian experience.
The Privilege of Minority Status
As she focused on these things God was showing her in His Word, she became grateful for her experience as a Christian in a majority non-Christian country. This experience gave her perspective that American Christians lack.
My friend identified as a foreigner in her home country growing up because she was a Christian living in a non-Christian culture. She felt it would be different living in a predominantly Christian country, but her nationality, ethnicity, and cultural differences left her feeling like a foreigner in the United States – which she is.
After listening to God’s gentle voice through her reading of the Bible she realized what a privilege it is for her to have identified so personally with feeling like an outsider and a stranger even in her country of origin.
Even in the United States, she did not lose that feeling of being on the outside and living as a foreigner in a foreign land – even though is now a Christian living in a Christian nation. This time that feeling arose because of her nationality, ethnicity and cultural differences, but God showed her that feeling like a minority in this world is right where He wants her to live.
As Christians, we are called out of the world that is fallen and subjected to futility. We are called as children of God and citizens of His kingdom, which is not of this world.
We are called to be different. We are called to be holy and set apart. We are called to be aliens and strangers in this world because we await the coming of God’s kingdom. This world is no longer our own.
What a privilege it is to be a child of God! What a privilege it is to have citizenship in God’s kingdom! What a privilege it is to know the reality of that calling by feeling like an outsider, a foreigner, and a stranger in this world.
In that identity as a foreigner that was personalized in my sister’s heart from her childhood, she gained hope and perspective from the assurance of God’s Word. In feeling the weight of her foreignness, her spirit testifies with the Holy Spirit that she is – in fact – a child of God whose citizenship is in heaven and not of this world.
The Danger of Belonging
As I reflect on her story, I feel the danger of belonging too much to my nation, my homeland, my culture – my life. I feel the danger of clinging to the things of this world because they are familiar. They feel like home. They are comfortable.
In Matthew 11:16-19 and Luke 7:31-35, Jesus compared his generation to fickle children in a marketplace playing games, complaining, “We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.” Every generation bids us to dance to the tune of the present world, and we desire to belong to it.
Perhaps, this is why Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow.” (Luke 9:23) We cannot “befriend” the world and be a friend of Jesus. (James 4:4; 1 John 2:15)
The sin of Sodom, among other things, included being overfed (over satiated with the things of this world). (Ez. 16:49-50) This is the danger of being too comfortable in this world. We don’t want to let go. Lot’s wife looked back because of the good things she had in Sodom, and she was turned to salt.
God Calls Us Out
Jesus saves us from the destruction of the world by calling us to follow him. God rescues us from the futility of the world by calling out of the world to become citizens of His kingdom.
Jesus said we must be born again to see the kingdom of God. (John 3:3) He said this to Nicodemus, a man who had everything the First Century had to offer a Jewish man in Judea. He was a man of wealth, status, and influence in his time – he belonged. Being born again meant starting over and losing his place in his world.
Being born again means that we belong to a different world, a different life, and a different kingdom. God calls us out of this world into the kingdom of heaven where God dwells with us. That kingdom is here now – it is in our midst; and it is to come – when the New Jerusalem “comes down from heaven” and become God’s dwelling place in which He will live face to face with us. (Rev. 21)
Living in the Reality of the Kingdom of God
If we have truly been born again and have taken up our crosses to follow Jesus, we are now aliens and strangers in this world. We no longer belong to the world, and the world that is passing away no longer belongs to us. (John 17:16)
If we seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, all these things will be given to us. (Matt. 6:33) We belong to the kingdom of God, and everything the kingdom of God has to offer is ours.
The Reality of Living as a Citizen of Heaven in the World
The reality of living as a citizen of heaven in this world means that we are different and must live differently. We dance to the tune of heaven. We do not dance to the tune of the kingdoms of the world.
Jesus said, “The rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them.… Not so with you.” (Matthew 20:25–26) He said, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36) We do not operate in harmony with the kingdom of God by the means with which the world operates.
Paul did not go to the Corinthians with “lofty words,” “superiority of speech,” or “persuasive words of human wisdom” – the way the world operated. (1 Corinthians 2:1-5) He came preaching “Jesus Christ and him crucified” – which seemed like foolishness in the world of the Corinthians.
Application to the Modern World
In our modern, American world, tribal identity and belonging can be found in many things. It can be found in our sexual identity. It can be found in nationalism, It can be found in politics. It can be found in culture, ethnicity, career, sports, heritage, and even religion.
No identity or belonging has any place in the kingdom of God, ultimately, other than our belonging in Christ as followers, children of God the Father, and citizens of God’s kingdom. Though we have many connections in this world, only one connection really matters.
All other connections must be placed at the feet of God our Father and Jesus our Lord as we serve Him and Him alone. It is a blessing and a privilege to belong to God and to be a minority in this world that is passing away because we look forward with hope to that Great City, the architect and builder of which is God!
We look forward to the rooms Jesus has prepared for us. We can not even imagine it. For no eye has seen, nor ear has heard, nor human mind has conceived all the things God has prepared for those who love Him! (1 Corinthians 2:9)
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“Since ancient times no one has heard,
no ear has perceived,
no eye has seen any God besides you,
who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.”
Isaiah 64:4
“See, I will create
new heavens and a new earth.
The former things will not be remembered,
nor will they come to mind.”
Isaiah 65:17
* The graphic created by Chat GPT does not do the image in my mind justice, but I am not an artist with the ability to draw what is in my mind. While the reality of the world is futility and (ultimately) destruction, it looks lush and desirable to us. The world looks to us like Sodom looked to Lot – “well watered, like the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt.” (Genesis 13:10)
We are strongly tempted, like Lot and his wife, to make our home in this world, to settle down, and dig in. We are attracted to a life of comfort and ease. We want to fill ourselves with every good thing, and we are strongly tempted to cling to the desirable things of this world to our detriment – even as they become idols to us.
No one wants to be on the outside. We all want to belong. We become foolish, though, if we choose to belong to this world and forfeit what God has prepared for us in the next.
Navigating by Faith 