Orson Scott Card’s second book in the Ender’s Game series, Speaker for the Dead, is seen as a sci-fi classic. In Ender’s Game a young boy has been tricked into annihilating an entire alien species. Wracked with guilt he travels into the universe with his sister. His sister writes under the pseudonym – Demosthenes – trying to help humans to understand the philosophical and moral approach to alienness. It an obvious metaphor for how we divide and sanction our behaviour to aliens within our own species.
I was very struck by this quote, and so I did a bit of research about what Card meant by the terms and rewrote it:
“Yet that is what I see, or yearn to see. The difference between raman (neighbour) and varelse (stranger) is not in the creature judged, but in the creature judging. When we declare an alien…to be raman (neighbour), it does not mean that they have passed a threshold of moral maturity. It means that we have.”
-Demosthenes, Letter to the Framlings
From the law of Moses, Rahab, Sodom, Ruth, the Gospels, Paul and the early church welcoming the stranger is a key act of God’s people. Why? Because the message is always that God is the God who welcomes strangers.
In Matthew 25 Jesus says:
37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
But there is another way, opposite and pernicious – othering. A compulsion to elevate stranger-ness by highlighting or inventing difference. National borders, skin colour, behaviour, tropes are highlighted, refined and purified into tropes, stereotypes and taunts.
At the height of cold war rhetoric in the 1980’s Sting released the song Russians. While there are obvious differences between a cold and a hot war and the current situation in Ukraine, it’s worth a listen while reading my reworking of Orson Scott Card’s quote.
Photo Challenge: Take a picture of something inspired by the word stranger. Use the hashtag #woryem
Stranger
Stranger who is welcomed in
Stranger who is left outside
Stranger
There are strangers to us in this season of advent
Stop for a moment
Who do I judge as alien or neighbour?
We are a community of faith.
Strandlopers on a journey.
We open our arms to strangers in this season of advent
By God’s grace we go.
Amen
I’ve been a member of BCFX for about 2 years. I love it. It’s home and hearth, welcome and challenge, ebb and flow.
