My wife and I were wedded 40 years ago in a
small evangelical church in the Philippines.
As we took our wedding vows before onlookers, a Bible passage hanged
behind us in the background. The passage
was taken from Ruth 1:16-17, "For where you go, I will go; and where you
lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall
be my people, and your God, my God. Where
you die, I will die, and there I will be buried."
In this Biblical account, Ruth, a Moabite
woman, left her homeland to accompany and live with her mother-in-law, Naomi,
in Israel. But note carefully the words
of Ruth. In entering her new homeland,
she vowed to fully assimilate herself to the people of her new land. She would make Israel her people and Israel's
God her God. She fully accepted the
culture, tradition, and customs of her newfound country.
It is undeniable that we are a nation of
immigrants. But, like Ruth, it is
essential that immigrants who come to live in our shores, accept our values,
acclimate themselves to our way of life, and adopt to our Judeo-Christian moral
code. My wife and I arrived in the United States as immigrants in 1986 and steeped ourselves in
the American way of life, and we have never regretted that decision.
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