Longing to Belong
In September, the Home Ministry held a high-profile ceremony to award citizenships to 92 people who were among 33,000 'stateless' persons in the country. Most of these people were born in Malaysia, but do not have legal papers as their births were never registered or their papers were lost.
Meanwhile, the National Registration Department is targeting to finish processing the 93,360 applications for late-birth registrations by year end.
Whatever the reasons are for the long delay in processing the citizenship applications of the stateless people - apathy, inefficiency - the fact is that tens of thousands of people are in a limbo where they feel they are 'neither here nor there'.
How can a person in that situation feel belonged to the country when he is unsure about his future? And how can one who doesn't feel belonged to the country participate in the process of building the nation?
It's hopeless
These stateless people aside, increasingly many Malaysians are feeling more and more alienated from the country. For many, the air of despondency hovers depressingly above their heads.
The tumultuous political upheavals all around, the shaky economy, the unjust policies that are depriving the truly needy from help, the increasing lawlessness on our streets, the flip-flopping educational policies - these are just a few of the grouses that are driving many Malaysians away to greener pastures.
But deep down, the underlying cause may be the sense that there is not much an individual can do to effect positive changes to the country. How do you fight the giant of injustice? Eliminate the scourge of corruption? Melt the ice of cynicism towards change for the better?
Perhaps no one feels the disenchantment and hopelessness more than our youths whose anthem today must be "This country's not my home, I'm just a passing through". It doesn't help that the older generation continue to speak ill of the country and parents encourage their young ones to migrate. The message being communicated is: "It's hopeless. Get out if you can and don't come back."
It's hopeless?
Contrast this with what God told His people (through Jeremiah) when they were taken into captivity from Jerusalem to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar.
"Build houses and live in them; and plant gardens and eat their fruit. Take wives and father sons and daughters. And take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands, so that they may bear sons and daughters, that you may be multiplied there and not become few. And seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be exiled, and pray to the LORD for it. For in its peace you shall have peace." Jer 29:4-8
"Seek the peace of the city" - this is an interesting instruction from God. Adam Clarke says in his commentary:
"Endeavour to promote, as far as you can, the prosperity of the places in which ye sojourn...Wherever a man lives and has his nourishment and support, that is his country as long as he resides in it. If things go well with that country, his interest is promoted by the general prosperity, he lives at comparative ease, and has the necessaries of life cheaper; and unless he is in a state of cruel servitude, which does not appear to have been the case with those Israelites to whom the prophet writes, (those of the first captivity,) they must be nearly, if not altogether, in as good a state as if they had been in the country that gave them birth. And in this case they were much better off than their brethren now in Judea, who had to contend with famine and war, and scarcely any thing before them but God's curse and extermination."
Adam Clarke suggests that we endeavour to promote the prosperity of the place where we live in but he adds a limitation, "as far as you can" - a fair proposal because there's only so much one can do. The trouble is that most of us lack that community mindset. Instead of promoting the peace (or prosperity) of our places, we want the places to promote our peace and prosperity.
God also told the exiles to "build houses and live in them; and plant gardens and eat their fruit." Since there were no ready-built homes in Jeremiah's time, unlike today, it must mean that houses take time to go up and trees take time to grow and bear fruit.
Building homes and planting gardens are an allegory of settling down for the long haul, something which God meant for His people to do until the next phase of His plan.
In the midst of building their houses and planting their gardens, God's people were to seek the peace of the city at the same time.
If we have felt like we don't belong here, perhaps we have not "built our houses nor planted our gardens." True, our physical homes are well established and maybe even our investments have matured, but if our hearts are not planted here, we will always cast eyes on other pastures somewhere else.
May the Lord give His people in Malaysia hearts that stay as we seek the peace of our land. |
