Immigration, The Bible, and Monstrous Races

25 Aug 2010 Leave a Comment

by Marvin Lance Wiser in Global Issues, Human Rights, Mexico, Politics, Social Justice, U.S.-Latin American Relations Tags: Arizona, Bible, binary discriminations, Enkidu, Epic of Gilgamesh, Immigration, Interfaith, Lahmu, ma'at, Mexican Repatriation, Mexicans, Monsters, Operation Wetback, Order and Chaos, religion, SB 1070, sdq, sedeq, the other, the stranger

We’ve all heard of the phenomena of human migration, and most have been directly affected by immigration of people into their home country or by family members migrating to another country. Speaking of the constituents of the United States, one would have to be 100% Native American to claim that he or she is where s/he is today not dependent upon the immigration of ancestors to this country. We are all here because of the phenomena of immigration. Often times, one is too quick to acknowledge this when approaching the topic. We must recognize that the phenomena is just as valid today as it was centuries ago or even decades ago when our ancestors made the journey to the New World. The reasons for the migration of people groups today are the same that prompted the Mayflower to set out and the same that invoked early man to cross the Bering Strait: Persecution, based on religion, race or tribal/political affiliation; and Scarcity of resources- economic, agricultural, etc. More often than not it is a combination of the two categories. Our own past should serve to humble us, no matter from which side of the argument we engage the subject.

In order to properly address the current social issues that arise out of the phenomena of immigration, attention needs to be addressed to how one group (the “in group”- in this case, citizens of the US) views another distinct group (in this case, non-citizen immigrants). This is often referred to as the “us-them” syndrome. It is a binary discrimination that characterizes much of the dominant forms of cognition within the Western world. In writing about the issue of immigration, I’d like to examine biblical texts as well as a text that predates the biblical tradition, paying special attention to their treatment of the “other,” and of the construction of Monster and how the “foreigner” is often denoted as Monster.

Many literary texts deal with the “other,” the “strangers,” and demonstrate the natural tendency toward such binary discrimination. Going back as far as we can trace the archiving of human consciousness, to the earliest writing of epic proportions, the Epic of Gilgamesh, we can see how people some millennia ago that were just beginning to acquire literacy treat this sensitive topic. The two main characters in the Epic of Gilgamesh are Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Gilgamesh is Conan meets Hugh Hefner. He is the quintessential testosterone-filled male hero. He makes the boys squall with his never-ending brawls and the women swoon with his sexual exploits. Nothing is out of his reach of domination. The text begins by stating that he has seen and done it all: there was no match too great for Gilgamesh. On hearing the cries of the daughters and sons of men the gods decide to make a match for Gilgamesh. Thus Enkidu is made by the gods to be an equal (yet simultaneously very different) match for Gilgamesh. Enkidu’s home unlike Gilgamesh’s in the city, was in nature, in the wild. Not only did Enkidu differ from Gilgamesh in his choice of habitat, but also in his physical appearance. Enkidu was covered in hair and fought for not the taming and subduing of creation, but in defense of nature. Enkidu was trusted with uprooting the trapper’s traps and putting a log in the advances of deforestation. Enkidu, as viewed from within his ancient context, shares many affinities with a Laḫmu, a character in Eastern Semitic myth that possesses superhuman strength and is depicted with locks of braided hair (cf. Samson in the Bible), but never can fully assimilate to culture, the civilized way of life. This figure though, is often represented within the confines of civilization, as if it were somehow domesticated, guarding points of entry and exit for the bourgeois. Though they may be domesticated and used as a sustainer of culture, Laḫmu will always be destined to be referred to as “other.”

This description makes me think of how classes will use those from outside (Buber’s I-It relationship) their borders to give form to and maintain their empire, yet never grant them status as citizens. These characters are forever relegated to status of foreigner. This occurs throughout the story of mankind over and over and over again, as if the vinyl of human history had been given a scratch and we repeatedly hear the same story, over and over and over again as it skips into infinity. And then just when we think we’ve heard it all, there’s a cry- a cry that reinitiates history, like the one that we read of in Exodus. . .

The Epic of Gilgamesh beautifully captures the age-old conflict between the wild and the civil, and on a more cosmic level, order and chaos. This theme is extremely important to ancient civilizations of the Near East. This concept as known to the Hebrew peoples is ședeq and is similar to the neighboring Egyptians concept of ma’at. Chaos and Order are constantly waging battle within Creation. My inquiry is to what extent is this narrative still a part of our being and becoming as individuals and collectively on a societal level? After millennia of the record of human history playing, we now come out of the womb hard-wired with this narrative. It was all too easy for a former President to tap into our predisposed constructs of reality where binary discriminations reign in order to garner support for rigidly dichotomizing the geo-political community as we then knew it and allow that to inform an entire nations foreign policy concerning the “axis of evil.” I think I’ve read this story somewhere, and the record keeps on spinning. . . A lot of deconstruction is in order.

Do we at times think that we are aiding in the eviction of Chaos, holding together the lacerated flesh of the heavens to keep the floods of disorder from once again inundating the physical plane of existence, are we helping support the pillars of Boaz and Yachin from buckling up under the vices of evil, the powers and principalities? Are we a part of a cosmic game? If this plays out in the public arena, no wonder fences are constructed to keep out those that threaten our consistency of life, with good reason centers are constructed to detain persons that threaten the very order of our existence. The axis of evil/disorder/chaos has now broadened to incorporate not only North Korea, Iraq, and Iran, but Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, oh yeah the Jews, Blacks, Mexicans, Gays and Lesbians too while we’re at it. The litany at any point in history could be without end. The point is simply this: Monsters do exist and they are the henchmen that grind away at order.

A monster represents an extremity of the category of “the other.” They are wonderfully depicted in art and literature throughout the ages. Many hybrid monsters make their first appearances in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Monsters are ways people distort strangers and are used to explain the proliferation of chaos. Foreigners, those that a particular people group know (intimately) little about, make a great target for monstrous labels and grotesque narratives. Monsters, just as foreigners, in culture lurk at boundaries. Hollywood movies are born out of scenarios of monsters transgressing their lairs and entering the world of civilization. Villages often build forts to keep monsters out, likewise countries raise fences and build walls to inhibit the entrance of foreigners/monsters. Today’s monsters are peoples and races that we do not identify ourselves with and peoples of other faith traditions. This fuels much of the fear that runs rampant in today’s world. In the last century (not to discredit the stories of eastern Europeans that also immigrated) in the U.S. alone we have witnessed the atrocities of concentration camps against the Japanese during WWII, illegal raids and deportations of legal documented U.S. citizen Mexican-Americans (note especially The Mexican Repatriation 1929-1939, and Operation Wetback 1954), the Civil Rights Movement of the 50s and 60s and the suffering that the black community had to endure, the so-called “White-flight” of the 1970s from many urban cities to establish more white-concentrated suburbs (which many are gated), and more recently detention centers for Arabs, and the admonishment for teaching monoculturalism in public schools in numerous states (What then happens when our children’s socialization entails a deeper ingraining of “us-them.” Is this beneficial for humanity or are we still riding that same scratched piece of vinyl into we know not what?), and legalizing racial profiling (AZ SB 1070). The same propaganda is always employed: “They’re going to eat our culture! They don’t assimilate! They are Evil! Monsters!“- Mary Shelley had it right. Mary Pipher does too:

Language is weaponized when it used to objectify, depersonalized, and dehumanize, to create an “other.” Once a person is labeled as “not like us,” the rules for civilized behavior no longer apply.

Today, we are no different than our counterparts of antiquity. There were those in classical Rome that used to identify peoples of new religions with monsters, going to extremes of telling stories of how they would partake in incestial orgiastic love feasts were they would also consume human flesh and blood. Christians created quite a name for themselves in the Pre-Constantinian Roman Empire. Oh sure, today we may not be as blunt about it- though at times we’re pretty damn blunt, try watching Fox News- we try to seem accepting and welcoming, “Sure come in, just speak the way I do, dress the way I do, eat what I eat when I eat, and adopt many of the other mannerisms that I have so I won’t feel threatened. Today, our society likes to conjure up many images for the immigrant, muslim, homosexual, etc., you fill in the blank. What have you been socialized to associate with any of the aforementioned peoples? If you are honest, truly honest I think you would be able to recall a time in which you equated a people group with a Monster. grrrrrrrrrr.

“Ok so what? I am a Christian. I am counter-cultural.  Those old books or even international relations don’t influence me, I let the Bible guide my life. It’s a light to my path and a lamp to my feet. Besides, my religion teaches me to love my neighbor.” If you find yourself aligning with this statement, then perhaps the question should be asked: “Does the Bible- the most authoritative text in the Western world- legitimize a worldview that repeatedly demonizes the foreigner and labels them as Monster?”

My answer is partially yes. Conceivably, this could help enforce why this over-exaggerated binary distinction keeps cropping up in our western (I personally cannot speak of Eastern cultures, although I suspect they experience similar phenomena, due to my limited knowledge I chose not to overstep realms of experience) cultures. One must remember that the Bible is multiphonic and multivalent.  There exists many voices within the Biblical canon and it is imperative that not one voice triumph over the others at any given time- history can be a grim reminder to us when that has happened- but rather they all must be allowed to be held in tension, not as one coagulated harmony, but rather as many traditions keeping the other in constant check.

Within the Bible we find monstrous races (aside from flat-out monsters, which are many to behold). In Canaan exist the giants from Hebron, the Anakim; in Jordan, Og of Bashan; in Philistia, perhaps the most famous monster of all, Goliath. All these accounts represent demeaning racial generalizations taken to their extremities, superfluidity of digits and enormity is caricatured in many passages. And as so elegantly put forth by the Deuteronomic Historian and the Priestly Visionary, they should all be exterminated (see the genocidal campaigns against the Amalekites in Exodus, the book of Judges, and Josiah’s reforms in Kings for primers), for the sustaining and proliferation of dominion/order of course. In Ezra-Nehemiah, intermarriage was more than frowned upon, force was used upon the people of Israel to “purify/cleanse” them from all things foreign, and even the texts makes out an ally to interracial relations to be a monster, stating that “Tobiah tried to frighten us,” which is what monsters do best. It is of no consolation to think that this anti-miscegenation concept is at best archaic and far removed from our modern situation when it wasn’t until 1967 that it became legal in my state of birth for a person to marry outside of their race. So it seems as though these “biblical” concepts have followed us throughout the millennia. But are they biblical? Or are they part of a larger natural narrative that just so happened to be a part of the biblical inventors landscape, just a part of the backdrop. If this is the case we must listen more acutely to distinguish more radical and subversive voices- voices that have either gone unnoticed because they are nearly muted by the mundaneness of everyday life that speaks to us from the pages, or because they were intentionally quietened for the service of some status quo.

As Westerners, these narratives have been imprinted on our consciouses whether we choose to admit it or not. Thankfully the Bible is multivalent and offers texts to counteract this treatment of the other, narratives that function to disassemble the normative. Within the many voices of the biblical corpus exists a Ruth, and no tradition should have the right to extinguish her voice. Her voice is one of compassion and inclusivity. And across that skipping vinyl record of human history her story is on par with the Exodus event (note Ex. 12:38 attests to the formation of Israel as a mosaic consisting of many peoples), though you must strain to hear it. Her complete and total acceptance as a stranger/foreigner coupled with statements from the Holiness Code (i.e., Leviticus 19:33-37), and Jesus’ ethic of open commensality table fellowship should be held in tension over against the above narratives concerning the treatment of strangers. One such text, Exodus 18, deserves special attention. In it a foreigner, a Midianite, Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, imparts the knowledge of self governance and judiciary law to the camp of Israel. He’s an outsider! Israel began to govern using a “foreign” pattern Not only that, he was the first individual to witness and give testimony concerning the great acts of YHWH post-exodus. It states that “Moses listened to his father-in-law and he did all that he had said.” (Augustine’s was on to something when he stated: “All knowledge is God’s Knowledge.”) By the way, Moses had married this guy’s daughter, a Midianite, uhm. . .

We need to come to terms with the monsters, confront them and find out for what reason they were constructed, what purpose do they serve the dominant narrative, the status quo? Why am I supposed to be afraid of homosexuals, of Muslims, of Arabs, of Mexicans? What purpose is it serving that I buy into over-exaggerated stereotypes and drive the wedge of binary discriminations deeper into collective human consciousness? Do I project grotesque labels onto people groups that are unlike me? Do I describe “the other,” with monstrous physiognomy,  projecting horrid things from narratives of uncertain origins onto peoples that I have yet to have had the opportunity with whom to experience an authentic subjective relationship. Do I realize that my biases might be naturally working to exaggerate differences to protect my own “in-group.” This is a plea to be brutally honest. A theology of monsters can go a long way in adding to ministries of reconciliation, how faith communities approach immigrants, and can help inform interfaith dialogue. Monsters and humans are not in the end enemies, but are really brothers. This can be seen not only in biblical texts, but if we go back to the ancient story of the Epic of Gilgamesh, we see Enkidu and Gilgamesh befriending one another, having life long adventures with one another, loving each other, making love to each other, and in the end Gilgamesh laments over Enkidu’s deceased body and feels as though a part of himself has died. This is the moral: To see the Monster within and see ourselves in others. As with all things, a little epistemological humility can go a long way. And this brings us back to GRAFFTRUTH’s piece of art: “Who’s the Illegal Now?” for you were once slaves in Egypt, you walked many miles sharing the same moccasins. . . This too is a narrative that we have the power to choose.

-mlw

RESOURCES

To Read:

Books:

1. Timothy K. Beal - Religion and Its Monsters
2. Martin Buber - I and Thou
3. Richard Kearney - Strangers, Gods, and Monsters: Interpreting Otherness
4. Lawrence M. Wills – Not God’s People: Insider’s and Outsiders in the Biblical World
5. Miraslov Volf - Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation

Articles:

• Immigration and the American Decline in Empathy
• The Stranger As Neighbor
• A Brief History of Intolerance in America
• History of an Anti-Immigrant Nation and an Immigrant Denomination (Disciples of Christ)
• Undocumented student’s arrest called part of ‘civil rights disaster’
• Eric Balderas
• Arizona Ethnic Studies Classes Banned, Teachers With Accents Can No Longer Teach English
• Arizona bans ethnic studies in public schools
• New Attacks on Birthright Citizenship
• Congress Debates Biblical Stance On Immigration
• Let Them In

To Do:

• Borderlinks
• Centro Presente
• Centro Romero
• Dream Act
• Interfaith Coalition For Immigrants Rights
• Refugee & Immigration Ministries