Mosquito Coast
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I have never had the pleasure of meeting an expatriate.
I imagine that there are both good and bad reasons for being an expatriate. Expatriation can mean simply living abroad, but sometimes it involves renouncing allegiance to patria — the land of one’s fathers. People have be at the very end of their tolerance to renounce their citizenship. They are usually angry in some sense.
I am an expatriate of sorts. I have renounced my allegiance to the religion of my birth. There are things about my former religion that make me angry, and I can sometimes be less than loving when I talk about it. I am sorry for this.
And yet, in a sense, I have not renounced my old religion; I have found its fulfillment. During my studies at a Christian liberal arts college, I deeply examined my faith. I removed beliefs which are inconsistent with the “core” doctrines. Most Protestants would consider these open to a believer’s personal opinion.
But my pilgrimage has not been one of pursuing my own ideas of what is true. These beliefs have been replaced with teachings that the Christian East considers essential and necessarily implied by those “core” doctrines. In other words, slowly my entire worldview shifted from a patchwork of beliefs to a single tapestry of faith. I accept the entire thing because I accept the authority of its weavers.
Because of this necessity, this “just so-ness” of Eastern Christian doctrine, it is easy to forget how arrogant traditional Christianity looks to Christians raised in the post-Reformation West, especially Christians who have inherited the Reformer’s religion. And, because of my anger over being abused and emotionally manipulated by people who did not know any better, it is easy to come across as judgmental and hateful.
An expatriate is often a poor example both of his former country and of his new country. All I can say is, “I’m sorry.”