"Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him;
For ye were strangers in the land of Egypt."
-- Exodus 22:21
Deeply imbedded in the intellectual genes of all expressions of religion that derive from Hebraic texts is the idea that all of us are in some ways aliens and strangers, that what we have in common is a planet the making of which we had nothing to do but on which, nonetheless, we live and move and have our being. It is as if each and all of us carry a green card until death takes it back and we are no more.
A fourth century BCE poet-philosopher whose outlook probably had been influenced by Babylonian and Egyptian paeans to a creating deity (Paul Tillich's "uncreated creator"?) saw it this way: "The Earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof; the world, and all they that dwell therein. For he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods."/1
That poet-philosopher seemed to say that territorial borders, a variety of languages and differing appearances do not determine ownership of any part of the planet by self-selected tribes, clans, kith or kin. It all belongs to one whose unspeakable name is YHWH, whose exertion and expression brought it forth, us included.
Was the author of the 24th psalm channeling the 8th century BCE document known as the Book of the Covenant from which the Exodus text above is thought to have come? The central idea is the same. In effect, there is no such thing as an alien or stranger unless each and all of us are aliens and strangers. Charles Darwin would help us understand that condition with his observations:
... from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object of which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved./2
In that sense, a refugee would be one who showed up on Earth from another planet, not from another part of Earth. How can one be a refugee in his or her home? Yes, of course, there must be reasonable divisions of space and resources, but oil from the wells, say, of Syria or Iran is oil that belongs to Earth itself and not just to those from under whose claimed territory it comes.
Water was not made by human beings. It is a natural resource that can be either plentiful or scarce, depending on the place in which it is sought. But just because it is plentiful under your back 40 does not mean it is your water exclusively for your use. It, like the air we breathe, is nothing short of the gift of life to each and every human being. The water in the Great Lakes does not belong to the American states or Canadian provinces contiguous to any of their shores. It is part of Earth itself and must not be hoarded by those closest to it.
We are all aliens and may not alienate or withdraw from other aliens what both they and we they require to live. There can be no exclusive claim to any such resource proper to the planet. The psalmist, certainly no scientist by modern standards, did seem to understand the nature of nature: Earth proceeded from the exertion of powers beyond the knowledge of its temporary residents and therefore in its fullness cannot be said to be anything other than the property of such powers.
The Hebraic thinkers, perhaps out of the tribulations of their own wandering tribes, figured out that they were permanent aliens - and not only in Egypt but everywhere they went. The tent was the first mobile home, pitched here, pitched there as war, violence, hunger or thirst required it to be pitched elsewhere. The tent dwellers had their own green cards, we might say, and knew what they meant.
People of the 21st century who identify with any branch of Judaism or of Christianity must understand this. If they are inclined to believe that they have a moral obligation to live as Torah or as its refinements in New Testament thought prescribe, then they must accept that, in effect, they themselves are aliens living on the grace of the green card of privilege. Anyone of us is no less alien than those we may call aliens and with whose presence we would rather not be bothered.
"The Earth is YHWH's and the fullness thereof. The world and all they that dwell therein." YHWH can be taken as Darwin's "several powers" or the massive process Darwin perceived in the evolution of the biosphere. Yes, the survival of the fittest is inherent in Darwin's findings.
The tribal elders of the ancient Hebraic world must have sensed that reality as they invented communities of law and order. And that's exactly what their latter-day rabbi, Hillel the Great, meant when he said that Torah could be -- and must be -- understood as treating others as one wishes to be treated. No aliens there.
1/Psalm 24:1-2 (KJV) 2/Last paragraph of On the Origin of Species |