I have great trepidation in writing a post on this topic - my whole country is a country of immigrants. The Maori arrived here from Polynesia around 1000 years ago, the English from the 19th century. For most of the 20th century the only major immigration was European (and mainly British at that - if I am not mistaken even now our largest number of immigrants are from England). My family has only been here 7 generations. Many white New Zealanders would call themselves European even though we are not born in Europe - we also use the Maori term Pakeha, though some people seem to object to that word.
In the 1970s there was a lot of Polynesian immigration, which caused a lot of concern and downright racism. Nowadays Islanders form a vital part of life in NZ (and for the record are much more religious and Church-going than the majority of pakeha). From the 1990s there has been a huge amount of Asian immigration. Once again racism raised its ugly head. These days there is a lot of immigration from all over the world and to see an African walking down the street or a muslim woman covered from head to toe is not so unusual these days, at least not in Auckland. Some suburbs of Auckland it seems like you are in a foreign country and not even in NZ anymore! It is great to be able to buy all kinds of 'exotic' foods and products - until the 1980s there was very little choice in this country as to what was available in shops.
My point is that we are all created by God, and we have to try to love all people. We are all from Adam. How can one not love one's brother? and we are all, after all, related to every other person on Earth. Is it easy? No. It is very difficult when there are lots of different cultures trying to live in one area, but this too can help us to learn to love each other too, and to appreciate our differences. There is no place in Christianity for condemning someone for race or creed. We need to pray for them, and we need to try and live a Christian life - St Seraphim said something along the lines of save yourself and 1000s around you will be saved. Certainly I think we should have more children. Unfortunately we have 'evolved' into a society where the individual reigns supreme and having children means I can't work/buy that DVD/go on holiday to Fiji/ etc etc etc (take your pick), but in the end, children are more important than any of those things. In this country, the situation is such that wages are not very good, and even with just two young children, most families find that they can not survive unless both parents are working full-time. (On the other hand there are a lot of 'luxuries' that we can do without).
The Priest at our local Serbian Church also told us about how the number of children born to Muslims changed the demographics, and it is a very sobering thought.
My apologies for such a rambling post - there isn't really a 'point' to it, except that striving for our salvation, and trying our hardest to love our neighbours as ourselves is what we need to be doing - not condemning and judging other people. And by neighbour, I don't mean people we like or are close to, but the people we don't don't know so well, the people who offend us, the people who we are afraid of or are suspicious of. It can't be easy, and I am sure I am a good example of "do as I say not as I do", but how can we expect salvation when we can not even try to love our fellow humans?
