Not Fully at Home in Either of Your Two Countries

The question is asked casually and there is no short answer.

Where are you from. Somebody at work asks it, or a person at a wedding, and there is a pause that is a fraction too long, and then whichever answer gets given is followed by a qualification, and the qualification is followed by an explanation, and by then the person who asked has stopped listening because it was small talk.

He is not from here, in the sense that a certain kind of American is from here, and he knows it because his own children will be in a way he never was.

And he is not from there either, in the sense that the people there are, and he knows that because he went once at twenty-two and was identified as a foreigner within about four minutes, in a language he speaks well enough to have his accent placed and misplaced at the same time.

So there are two countries and he is a half in each, and the word for that is not homesickness, because homesickness implies a home.

Paul writes to people in exactly that condition and uses two very precise civic words about them.

He starts by naming the condition and does not minimize it

The passage opens with an unflinching description of where these people had been.

That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world. (Ephesians 2:12, King James Version)

Aliens. Strangers. Two legal words about standing.

He does not soften any of it, and he does not tell them it had not been that bad. Whatever else is coming, the account of the condition is honest, and there is something steadying in being described accurately by somebody who is about to change the description.

You are described accurately before anything else is offered. Ephesians 2:12 uses the legal words without softening them, and it is the Spirit of truth, John 16:13, who guides into what is actually the case rather than into a consolation.

And then the word but, and a distance closing

The next verse turns on one word, and the movement in it is spatial.

But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. (Ephesians 2:13)

Far off. Made nigh. The whole sentence is about distance, and the distance is described as having already been closed.

And made, passive, by something that happened rather than by anybody arriving. Nobody in that verse traveled.

That matters for a person who has spent twenty years trying to be more of one thing or the other, and finding that effort in either direction produces about four per cent of a result. The closing described here was not done by adjustment. It was done at one point, from the other side.

You have been made nigh rather than having had to arrive. Ephesians 2:13 puts the verb in the passive and attaches it to the blood of Christ, and it is by the same Spirit, named in verse 18, that both have access unto the Father.

The civic word he chooses is exact

Then verse 19, and both halves of it are chosen deliberately.

Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God. (Ephesians 2:19)

Foreigners there is the word for a resident alien: somebody living in a place lawfully, permanently, contributing, paying, present at everything, and not a citizen. That is a precise description of a whole generation of parents, and their children inherit the posture even when they have the papers.

And what replaces it is fellowcitizens, which is not the word for a guest or a permitted resident. It is full civic standing, held on the same terms as everybody else who holds it.

Then he adds a second image: of the household of God, which is domestic rather than civic. Both are given, and the second is the warmer one, and it is the one this community would understand immediately, because in a family like mine the household is the unit that actually matters.

You are a fellowcitizen rather than a permitted resident, and the word was chosen precisely. Ephesians 2:19 replaces the resident-alien word with full civic standing, and it is by the Spirit named in verse 18 that the access underneath that standing is had at all.

The citizenship is described as being somewhere else

Philippians adds something that reframes the whole question rather than answering it.

For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. (Philippians 3:20)

The word behind conversation is a civic word again: our citizenship, our commonwealth, is in heaven.

That is written to people living in a Roman colony, a town full of citizens of a city most of them had never seen, who organized their whole civic life around a distant capital. They would have understood the image instantly and so does anybody from a diaspora family.

And it does something useful with the in-betweenness rather than curing it. It does not say the two countries stop mattering. It says the citizenship that decides things is held in a third place, which means the halfness in the first two is no longer the whole account of where a person stands.

You have a citizenship somewhere neither of your two countries can revoke. Philippians 3:20 puts it in heaven and describes a people organized around a capital they have not seen, and it is the Holy Spirit of promise, Ephesians 1:14, who is called the earnest of that inheritance.

Hebrews says the great ones died in the same condition

And then, because it would be dishonest to promise resolution, Hebrews says what happened to the people who held this best.

These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. (Hebrews 11:13)

Confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims. They said it out loud. It is listed as part of their faith rather than as a failure of it.

Died in faith, not having received. The in-betweenness was not resolved for them, and Hebrews 11 is the chapter that holds them up as the examples.

I find that more useful than a promise that it resolves, because it does not resolve. Anybody promising a second generation reader that they will eventually feel fully at home somewhere is selling something. What Scripture offers instead is that the condition is shared by the people it most admires, and that it is temporary in a much longer sense than anybody wanted.

And if the not-belonging has got heavier than a sadness, if it has reached the point where you are not sure you want to be here, that is a thing to say out loud to a doctor, a counselor, a social worker, or a pastor you trust, and in the United States the 988 crisis line is answered by a real person at any hour.

You are in the condition Hebrews 11 lists as evidence of faith rather than of failure. Hebrews 11:13 has them confessing it out loud and counts it to them, and it is by the Spirit, Ephesians 1:14, who is the earnest of what has not arrived yet.