The Cost of Leaving Home

I think the chapter entitled “The Justice of Privilege” out of Robert Wuthnow’s book American Mythos is a very thought provoking look at the way us Americas think that we are a land of men and women that are more noble than the rest of the world because we invite immigrants to our country and how what those immigrants have to go through to live in America makes them noble people too.  Before reading this chapter I had never really thought that long and hard about what immigrants have to sacrifice to come to the United States.  Immigrants that came to America especially during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries faced some pretty bad hardships.  Wuthnow says, “For Mr. Rechtzeit and the millions of others who came across the Atlantic or Pacific oceans, the crossing was sufficiently arduous that simply surviving was a singular accomplishment.  As many as 20 percent of those who attempted the journey died.  Many more became ill and were either quarantined on Ellis Island or sent back.”  For many immigrants at this time the simple fact that they survived the journey gave them the right to live here.  Sacrifice deserves reward but this sacrifice also caused them to want to make the trip worth it by working hard and creating a good life for themselves and their children.  Many of today’s immigrants face less of a struggle on getting here and more of a struggle of leaving home.  Wuthnow says, “What they have left behind is home.  What they have attained is not home but something less, something that leaves them unsatisfied.  Home means parents and siblings, aunts and uncles, and grandparents.  But it means much more than this.  Homes are places of warmth and love that evoke nostalgic memories.”  Leaving behind one’s home can be traumatic for many people.  I think that is why some people in America after leaving their home for college or a job or what not return to their home towns shortly after, they what to have their family and their childhood memories close to them.  If it is hard for Americans to move a couple of hours away from their families, I can not image what it is like to move to a different country and leave the home of your ancestors where your values were taught to you and tradition was pasted down.  To many immigrants the cost of leaving home is worth it for success and a better life with new adventures.  Wuthnow seems think that the cost of leaving home is costing us more than what we think.  He writes, “The cost is in broken homes, in weak extended families, and in declining community attachments that might otherwise have been sustained by those networks of relatives and friends.  The cost lies not only in a sense of rootlessness, but in truly being a people without deep or nurturing roots.  A society like this will always fall short of its aspirations, for our highest aspirations involve having a home, too, in which our values and convictions can be nurtured.”  Can America truly be a place of nobler people without the sense of community that God has placed in each of our hearts?  In Genesis chapter twelve God ask Abram (Abraham) to leave his home, his father’s house for a land that He would show him.  In Abram’s case it was for the betterment of the world.  Genesis 12:3 says, “I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”  Do most of us leave home, whether immigrants coming to America or Americans moving away from their families, to help our communities and the world?  Or is there selfishness behind our actions?  I do believe not considering our roots has caused a loss of community not only here in America but around the world and with a loss of community comes a loss of love for neighbors.  Maybe the individualism of leaving home is costing us more than just memories?  This is an all new way of thinking for me.  I’m not saying I’m against people leaving their homes, I have been away from my roots for nine years.  I’m just saying that it may be causing us problems that we have never thought about for.  What do you guys/gals think? 

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Tags: American Mythos, Bible, Robert Wuthnow

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