1512 The Problem of Compassion and Middle Eastern Refugees
It is shameful that it has taken the horrendous terrorist attacks in Paris to remind Americans what they so painfully learned just fourteen short years ago on 9-11. Radical Islam uses others’ kindness, openness and/or complacency to wage war in the very midst of inclusion and compassion. Stomping on love to advance hate has been its forte since the 1970’s.
For that reason, it is a deadly fool’s errand for any American, whether operating within a biblical worldview or outside of it, to define the challenge of migrations from the Middle East through the eyes of western civilization, Old Testament Israel or the New Testament universal church. Sociopathic Islamic terrorist jihad has never before existed as it does now. Comparing Syrian refugees, for example, to European, Asian or third world immigrants is naïve. Not only that, but intelligence insiders like Peter Hoekstra (a Christian) would beg to differ with the reality of this administration’s mythical thirteen layers of vetting for 10,000 to 25,000 new Syrian refugees.
If that sounds harsh, think again. In her book “Because They Hate”, Brigitte Gabriel testifies literally from the trenches of modern history. Born in a free and prosperous Lebanon, she witnesses to the process of civilization jihad that plunged her native land into civil war and continuing bloodshed. Chapters one and eight through fourteen could be a prophecy of what the political left and well-intentioned Christian ministries might help fulfill.
Winston Churchill described the precipice well to the House of Commons in 1935. The quote is lengthy by invaluable.
“When the situation was manageable it was neglected, and now that it is thoroughly out of hand we apply too late the remedies which then might have effected a cure. There is nothing new in the story. It is as old as the sibylline books. It falls into that long, dismal catalogue of the fruitlessness of experience and the confirmed unteachability of mankind. Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong–these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.”
The problem is now as it was for Churchill in 1935, a fundamental ignorance and naiveté toward the threat, even at the highest levels of government, academia and Christianity. In today’s context, the popular idea is that there is no inherent evil in the world. Enemies are such, not because they hate from a fallen sinful nature, but because they are reacting to a multitude of natural, cultural, religious, economic or political abuses.
Since 2001, that delusional philosophy of inherent human goodness has blunted our opportunity to stop the cycles of historical ignorance. Bowing to that error, we are constantly assured that violent people whose mantra is “Allah Akbar”, who pray to Allah five times a day, who live and breathe the Koran and who’s prophet is Mohamed can’t be true Muslims. When threatened by them, we are to understand their pain and surrender our private weapons. When attacked by them, we are to welcome all comers from the enemy’s territory and let their word be their contract. In the middle of a war, the compassionate thing to do is open your borders, legalize the illegal and offer sanctuary cities.
“Homegrown” terror is homegrown because it thrives under misadministration of the home. America cannot hope to be a light shining on a hill for the “tired, [the] poor, [the] huddled masses yearning to breathe free” if she cannot protect herself or ceases to exist.
The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States make government’s highest responsibilities the safety and security of the nation’s citizens, not ministry. The Bible assigns ministry to God’s people and nowhere allows them to preempt or ignore national safety and security for the sake of ministry. But in the midst of ministry, God expressly forbids the acceptance by Israel or the Church of a co-existence within themselves with those who would reject God’s people and His ways.
And that is the assumed conundrum of compassion. Our highest civil and religious values demand that when faced with suffering people, we rescue them, make them safe, minister to them and love them – and well we should. But those ideals are to be exercised within the whole contexts of 1776 to 1789 and Genesis to Revelation.