This first posted February 25th.
“Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”- 1 John 4:11-12
I had planned when I started thinking about writing this blog for The Kitchen Table that it would pretty much be a monolog of my travels– kind of an if-I-can-do-it-so-can-you type of thing. But this past couple of weeks, God has really been talking to my heart about judgments, criticism, loving one another, and – of all things – terrorists. So when I opened BibleGateway.com and found the verse above staring me in the face, I knew my blog for this month had to be modified from its original format somehow!
I don’t know about you, but I’ve never really been one to get into the daytime soaps. General Hospital, Days of Our Lives, All My Children… Those never appealed to me. For one thing, the acting is so appallingly bad; I don’t understand how anyone can stand to sit through them. For another, the story lines are always so transparent, it’s almost like a 5-year-old could do a better job with them…
Now the evening drama shows / serials are a different matter… Dallas, Dynasty, Falcon’s Crest back in the day (how’s that for aging myself in one fell swoop??!!)… … Then Friends, Two and a Half Men, House, Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice - to name but a few.
So how does all this TV talk tie in with traveling and terrorists? It will, I promise…
When I was a teenager, my mom used to rent out one of our bedrooms to students from the local college – not because we had so much spare room, but because she needed the extra income (this was in the days before we became a foster family). To begin with, we had 2 Chinese girls who shared the room; then a Greek mother and son – he was in college, she couldn’t bear for him to be away from her, so she came along too (they were lovely people, they really were). Our last lodger was a young man from Jordan, Basim. By the time he moved in, I was in my early teens. He was the first contact I’d had with anyone from the Middle East; through him, we met his family – brothers, sisters, parents, cousins – and his friends – and other young men his age. Basim was a guy with a lot of pent-up energy and no real idea of what to do with it, so he mainly took it out driving liking a maniac around the local towns and country roads. (Sadly, it was driving that eventually took his life before he even made it to 30.) One thing he did like to do was to sit around and openly, obviously talk about my girlfriends, my sister & me with his friends – in Arabic, in front of us, knowing that we couldn’t understand, and that that would drive me at least nuts…
That’s how I came to major in Arabic (and German – but that’s a story for another day) at University, and how I came to live in Egypt for several months as a young 20-something. Prior to moving to Egypt, I’d had some contact with Arab / Middle Eastern / Egyptian men (don’t ever make the mistake of calling Egyptians Arabs – they get really offended, as they are still a Pharaonic people, not an Arab one!) – Basim and his friends, guys at my college – who’d all given me the impression that they viewed Western girls as basically nothing more than unpaid hookers there for their pleasure – a perception that I could not figure out and that often greatly offended me – until I moved to Egypt.
You see, the foreign TV shows that they got in Egypt – and which we watched through greatly different eyes on moving over there – were just the ones I mentioned above – General Hospital, Dallas, the older precursors to things like Grey’s Anatomy, Friends and so forth… And you know what literally screamed out at me about those shows – what had never, ever occurred to me before, but which has since been reinforced over and over and over again? Western women pretty much ARE portrayed as unpaid hookers. In every one of those shows, the guys look at the girls – or the girls look at the girls – or the guys look at the guys – and SOMEONE’S panties are falling to the ground. Married? Not a problem! Your best friend’s partner? So what! A complete stranger in a bar? Even better!
How can you say to your brother, 'Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,' when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.” Luke 6:41-43
Remember that these images – these often poorly scripted, badly acted sitcoms, soaps and dramas – are the only exposure to the Western world that most Egyptians – indeed, most Arabs – will ever have, as they are largely too poor to leave their own countries. What is portrayed in these shows – and the movies just like them – is the picture they have of us, and is so, so vastly different to their own culture – their own beliefs – their own way of living and behaving – as to be almost beyond belief for them. So of course they’re going to look at Western women as the closest thing to unpaid hookers – after all, just look at us the right way, and they know what’s supposed to happen next!
This is how we end up being the Great White Satan to them. They don’t know anything else about us oftentimes except these shows. The education system they have doesn’t explore culture in the West anymore than our own explores cultures in the Middle East or the Orient. The things we perceive as freedoms here are seen as shameful, often criminal acts there – and can lead to disgrace at the least and death at the most if a native is caught behaving in such a way.
It’s easy; once you get an understanding of what little they see and know about us, to see how fanaticism – the deep-seated desire to protect and defend – can be born. From there, it’s a short step to terrorism – taking actual steps to protect the “good”, the “righteous”, the “clean” way to live…
Traveling – alone or in groups – to places unknown helps cancel out those negative images; it helps to make the world a smaller, more understandable, less threatening place to live – and helps us gain insights and understandings into each others’ ways of life and cultures, by each of us taking the time, making the effort, and reaching out to learn something about another culture. To see the world through another’s eyes –and to understand how they got their perceptions about us, and we ours about them…
Father, I pray that you will give each of us a way to reach out to someone from another place, another culture, to learn more about where they come from. Open our eyes to the similarities between us and not just the differences, and help us to bring about YOUR peace by making the world a smaller, more understandable place for everyone. Amen.
Blessings & Hugs
Esther-Marie
I will be back to share with you on Thursday, August 25th...hope to see you then!
Friday's Blog: Lydia, "Eighteen"
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