To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World

by James Davison Hunter

To welcome the stranger—those outside of the community of faith—is to welcome Christ. Believer or nonbeliever, attractive or unattractive, admirable or disreputable, upstanding or vile—the stranger is marked by the image of God. And so St. Paul also exhorted believers in this way. “Keep on loving each other as brothers,” he said. “Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it. Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow prisoners, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering” (Heb. 13: 1–3). And elsewhere, he declared, “We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Each of us should please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. For even Christ did not please himself” (Rom. 15: 1–3). Scripture does not teach that the stranger is not strange to us or that the differences among us are somehow insignificant. But however different, the stranger or the “other” represents neither metaphysical danger nor darkness. When one’s life is “hidden in Christ,” the existence of the other neither threatens nor diminishes.