Asian American Eyes on Biblical Migration

By Daniel K. Eng

Introduction: Finding True North

Imagine backpacking in the Cascades, using only a compass to navigate. True north would lead you home. But your navigational instrument doesn’t point to true north; it points to magnetic north. Magnetic pulls are impacted by the iron parts of your hiking gear, your steps, the terrain around you, and where you are on the globe. 

This is the way all of us read Scripture. Daniel D. Lee’s analogy of true north and magnetic north in Doing Asian American Theology is apt here. While we look for the true north of the biblical author’s intent, our embodied existence exerts a pull on our interpretation. We may or may not be aware of the tug that our social location puts on the way we interpret the Bible. This embodied existence includes our cultural values, personality, temperament, and social class. Our experiences influence our magnetic north—the way we see the Scriptures. No one reads the Bible from a neutral position. 

Asian Americans are often aware of our particular social location: how we stand at the nexus between different cultures, our experience as minorities, and our understanding of our ancestral heritage. While we are not monolithic, one commonality among Asian Americans is a history of migration. In this article, we’ll explore how Asian American migration, whether experienced or ancestral, voluntary or involuntary, puts us in a position to read biblical accounts of migration with accuracy. In other words, when we approach the biblical motif of migration, our experience or family history brings our magnetic north closer to true north.

Ministry leaders, in particular, regularly make decisions about the biblical text’s meaning and how to communicate it to others. Since these judgments form the imaginations and practices of God’s people, faithful interpretation requires humility about the perspectives we bring to the text and attentiveness to the author’s intent.

With that responsibility in view, we must establish our convictions. A sound approach to interpretation recognizes an unmoving bullseye: the author’s intent. We should not read our Asian American experiences into the text, which would be called eisegesis. For example, we must not equate our ethnic group with God’s chosen people, see America as the promised land, or read the 1965 Immigration Act into the Red Sea crossing. These would compromise the authorial purpose of the Scriptures. Our lived experiences do not create meaning, but help us clarify and gain insights into the text that others might miss. 

Church leaders, this approach matters for your ministry. Having Asian American eyes on Naomi’s flight during famine, Mordecai’s exile, or Hagar in the wilderness can sharpen our preaching and teaching. As we serve the church, our experience and family history of migration can bring clarity and resonance to our Bible exposition. 

Migration Motivation

Studies on immigration typically categorize two motives: push and pull. “Push” refers to difficulties in the home country, while “pull” identifies attractive conditions in the receiving country. In addition, there’s also the experience of forced migration: when migrants do not have a choice. These three categories—push, pull, and forced—give us a framework for examining the instances of migration in the Bible. For Asian Americans who have experiences or family history of migration, these motifs can have unusual clarity. 

Push Migration

Push factors propel people away from their homelands, like political oppression, poor living standards, and low economic opportunities. These conditions have compelled us or our family members to decide to move away from our land and people. 

A clear example of push migration would be in the narrative of Ruth. Elimelech and Naomi had to travel to Moab because of the famine in the land. While it is left unstated, one can reasonably suppose that Elimelech did not want to leave his homeland of Judah, but was compelled to do so for the sake of survival. Asian Americans, whose family histories include push migrations, can resonate with and provide insight to Elimelech’s conflicting desires. 

Another kind of push migration can be oppression. Jacob’s descendants, suffering in slavery, cried out to the Lord, seeking to be free from the oppressive regime and the bitter service in Egypt. Some Asian Americans have histories of migrating from totalitarian societies where they did not have various freedoms. Many escaped their previous lands, looking for freedom of religion, freedom to own property, or the freedom to choose an employer. Asian Americans have opportunities to provide insight into the complexities of the ‘push’ motivation of people in Egypt to leave their conditions.

Church leaders, when you teach and preach on the push migrations of Exodus or Ruth, use your Asian American eyes and invite Asian American voices. We can illuminate the desperate state and give insight into the complex emotions of leaving our people. 

Pull Migration

Pull migrations involve the attraction of a new land that holds the promise of better conditions. People migrate because they have the ability to pursue a favorable lifestyle, and perhaps educational and social opportunities. They can come as workers or students. 

Related to pull migration is a common image that Asian migrants have of America being the promised land. Again, we must be prudent, as we must avoid reading our own experiences into the biblical text. But there is an undeniable framework of an environment that is desirable. To Moses, the “land flowing with milk and honey” (Exodus 3:8, ESV). To Chinese migrants in the 19th century, America is Gold Mountain, the land where they can find wealth.

Other biblical narratives of a pull promise can be places where Asian Americans can give valuable insight into interpretation. In the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the younger son abandons his father and his people, seeing the promise of “a far country” (Luke 15:13, ESV) where he can live luxuriously. Later in Luke, we encounter Zacchaeus, who was seen as a traitor to his people, having pursued the promise of riches as a tax collector. Asian Americans often struggle with whether we must abandon our own people group, being sell-outs for our personal advancement. 

For Bible teachers communicating the allure of the Promised Land or the Prodigal’s longing for a distant country, Asian American eyes provide insight. We do not rewrite scripture, but our Gold Mountain insight can help our hearers feel the magnetic enticement that Moses portrayed. 

Forced Migration

We must also recognize the particular experience of migrants who do not have a choice. This can occur in the form of refugees fleeing their lands for safety, which overlaps with the push migration concept. Involuntary migration can also take the form of migrating as a child, when the individual does not have a choice. Within these experiences, we include international adoption, when children move across borders, being adopted by a family in another land. 

On an individual level, we see involuntary migration in the Old Testament account of Joseph, who was sold by his brothers and brought into Egypt. We remember Priscilla and Aquila, forced to leave Rome when Claudius deported all the Jews (Acts 18:2–3). The Israelite girl serving as a slave to Naaman’s wife was forcefully moved (2 Kings 5:2). On a wider level, we see people groups being forcibly relocated when Israel and Judah are taken into exile by oppressive nations. Figures like Mordecai, Esther, Ezekiel, Daniel, and Jehoiachin are individuals who were part of these forced mass migrations. Asian Americans who have experienced involuntary migration can speak about the trauma of displacement and the stigma of being an unwanted foreigner as we interpret these passages.

As you teach and preach about the abduction of Joseph or the deportation of Daniel, Asian American reflections can help bring nuance and reveal the chaos inherent in these narratives. Our experiences of childhood relocation or refugee mourning do not impose meaning onto the text, but richly fill out the texture of God’s presence with those who are uprooted. 

Conclusion 

Asian American church leaders can approach the repeated motif of migration in Scripture with intentionality. Our common experience or family history of migration is an asset for bringing helpful insight as we look to read the Scriptures the way the biblical authors intended. We are not using our experience to determine the meaning, but to help clarify the meaning of the text that the author has given. It helps us and our ministry audiences to see the text more clearly as we preach and teach. God sees the stranger, foreigner, and sojourner. He feels the pain of loss and the stigma of unbelonging. From Hagar in the wilderness to the final gathering of the dispersed, Asian Americans speak to elements that deeply resonate. We can draw on our unique perspective to bring clarity to the text for the good of the church.

Photo by Alex Moliski on Unsplash

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Daniel K. Eng is Associate Professor of New Testament at Western Seminary. He has a D.Min. in Asian American Ministry (Talbot) and a Ph.D. in Biblical Studies (University of Cambridge). Daniel is the author/editor of several books, including Faithful Ministry Through Chinese Churches in America and James: A Hodder Bible Commentary. He has served in pastoral ministry roles in California, Texas, and the United Kingdom. He lives with his wife Sanjung and three precious daughters in the Mount Tabor district of Portland, Oregon.

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