Scriptural Hospitality

by Karen Mains

I always laugh inside I encounter Christians who consider the theology of hospitality to be a “woman’s issue.” Rather, practicing hospitality is the expression of a radical life view that often pierces to the heart of justice issues and demands of its practitioners a stance of either civil disobedience or some kind of cultural radicalism.

This is so important. Let me repeat: Hospitality is the expression of a radical life-view that often pierces to the heart of justice issues and demands of its practitioners a stance either of civil disobedience or of some kind of cultural radicalism.

One pastor once told me he couldn’t think of four sermons that he could preach on hospitality! I was amazed. I could spend a whole year sermonizing about this topic.

Let me illustrate. Scriptural hospitality should be the basis of the church’s position on the knotty immigration issues that now face our nation. Instead, we are caught in debates that have nothing to do with Christian conversations but everything to do with personal opinions. For Christians, the dialogue should begin with, “What does the Scripture have to say about this issue?” This may be due to the fact that our premises are faulty—we assume the Bible has nothing to say about this contemporary issue (according to statistics, some 200 million people are on the move globally!) In fact, the truth is diametrically opposite—Scripture has everything to say about the immigration issue, and the sheer volume of passages alone should inform our thinking about how we treat the immigrants (legal and illegal) among us. Read more at Hungry Souls...