Conversion is needed now more than ever
by Gavin Ashenden, Christian Today:
As historian Tom Holland has shown more clearly than anyone else, so many of the essentially good things in our culture derive from Christian vision. Asylum is one of those things.
In the First Covenant or Old Testament, unlike the practices of the surrounding cultures, the essential humanity of people was recognised and protected. The Babylonians, Assyrians and Egyptians favoured the concept and practice of slavery – ‘might was right’.
Cultures that worshipped different gods saw people as expendable commodities; very much like both communism and fascism have done in our context. The God of Israel created a different anthropology. All human beings were made in his image. It provided the foundation for Christendom.
So refugees were indeed welcomed in Israel. Jewish culture under the First Covenant provided some extraordinary touches of compassion that reflected the dignity and worth of humans at their most vulnerable. Not only were refugees not to be enslaved or abused, but there were cities of refuge for people fleeing the consequences of accidental manslaughter. And there was the year of the jubilee to save families from perpetual debt stretching without end down the generations.
But all this was conditional. It was conditional on the keeping of the law and covenant. Only the whole covenant kept this vision from being abused or diluted.
Fast track to today.
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