The
Christian Church in the United States may be about to face the largest divisive
issue we have faced in decades. The issue of homosexuality may pale to the
Syrian refuge issue.
Christians
that want us to welcome the Syrian refugees with open arms will tell us: The story of Exodus is the story of God’s
people without a land and without a home. God delivered the Israelites because
“He heard their cry. - The story of
the Good Samaritan is Jesus’ way of saying, remember that Jews and Samaritans
did not get along it is a story of how you have to care for people, even those
who you despise. - If we claim to be
a Christian, or even claim we are a Christian nation we have to care for those
in need regardless of who they are. -
“I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did
for me.” Jesus serves as the final authority of how we are to greet and care
for the least of these. - James
writes to scattered people, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and
faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to
keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” - As tens of thousands of refugees flee Syria, they are a people
without a land. They are aliens without a home. Syrian refugees are strangers
to us who have a culture, language and religion different from us. They are the
least of these. They are men, women and children who are in need of a new place
to call home. This “Christian nation” is called by scripture to care for Syrian
refugees.
A decade
ago, maybe even five years ago, I would have agreed whole heartily without
hesitation with all those words. I might be up in arms against those that did
not want to welcome the Syrian refugees, but times have changed. I hope
that I would not have called those that disagreed with me a bigot and hypocrite
as many of the Christians supporting bringing the Syrian refugees to the U.S.
are doing, including our President.
When it
comes to Muslim immigration, we must not be led by our emotions. The spread of
political Islam and creeping sharia law is often accomplished by means of
immigration. BBC reports that fake passports are already being used to get
jihadists into Europe. German customs officers have seized packages containing
Syrian passports and police suspect they are being sold illegally to asylum
seekers. Honduras stopped six Syrian men with false passports on their way to
the United States. A finance ministry official said both genuine and forged
passports were in the packets intercepted in the post office. ISIS has
threatened to send 500,000 migrants to Europe as part of jihad. Do we close
our minds to these facts?
ISIS claims
they have fighters that are already in place in Europe and with the reason
events in Paris I have no reason to doubt them. Our own Homeland Security and
F.B.I. say they are investigating reported terrorist suspects in every State.
There can be and most likely will be consequences to badly directed compassion.
We must also
ask why most rich Muslim nations are refusing to take in these refugees.
Perhaps they know something we don’t. Five of the wealthiest Muslim countries
have taken no Syrian refugees, arguing that doing so would open them up to the
risk of terrorism. Muslim nations are admitting that Muslim refugees pose a
genuine terrorist threat. Yet, Obama, Liberals and a lot of Christians are
asking us to throw our doors wide open with no questions asked. Western
countries tend to want to be more politically correct than right and God knows
they do not want to be accused of Islamophobia. Please, do not lecture me about vetting and that it would take 18 to 24 months before we saw the first Syrian refugees. We did not do such a good job vetting the terrorist that came on student visas. We did not do such a good job of keeping up with the terrorist that over stayed their tourist visas. We have estimates as high as sixteen million illegal aliens in our country today and no one in our government can tell us where they live.
I had a friend send me two pictures of dead children that washed ashore asking me how I could look at those pictures and question if we should open our doors to Syrian refugees. I admit the pictures broke my heart. The children in my opinion were not dead because advanced countries have immigration laws. The children were dead because criminal traffickers risked the lives of their victims in pursuit of money.
The
President of Turkey said that one of those children and his parents had been
living in Turkey for three years and were provided shelter. The President of
Turkey claims they were safe so I ask were they fleeing from danger, or fleeing
towards a higher standard of living. I thought the definition of refugee was
one that was fleeing danger. Am I supposed to automatically assume that the
President of Turkey is lying?
Michel
Houellebecq, has a new book out where he prophesies a Muslim dominated
government in France about seven years from now, ushered into power by the
French Tory and Labor parties. He says his research reveals they want France to
disappear. How many people today remember the community in Wasco County, Oregon? It was incorporated as a city in the 1980s, and was populated with followers of the spiritual teacher Bhagwat Shree Rajneesh, later known as Osho. They eventually imported 7000 people to this small community. Initially, they had stated that they were planning to create a small agricultural community; their land was zoned for agricultural use. But it soon became apparent that they wanted to establish the kind of infrastructure and services normally associated with a town. The land-use conflict escalated to bitter hostility between the commune and local residents, even leading to murder.
In 1986 the
courts ruled that the religious group had the right to incorporate the city and
elect their own government officials. The city eventually went bankrupt.
Unfortunately most of the local farmers and ranchers had already been forced to
move away. This could be an example of a refugee problem in a small established
community.
Will there
be any type of control where these refugees will settle. What if they
eventually take over a small town in the Western United States and force the
locals out. You believe that is farfetched, well I believe bringing refugees in
without any terrorist being among them is farfetched. I believe bringing Syrian
refugees to our country without a plan that covers vetting, housing, medical,
education, clothing, food, where they will work and what cities they will live
in is not worth the risk.
We cannot
rely on emotions and sadly we cannot rely only on scripture to solve this serious
problem for us. We had to override scripture when it came to slavery, women’s
rights, killing children that talk back, killing adulterous people, etc. The
Good Samaritan story just may not be applicable to this situation we are in
now.
One Baptist
minister from Alabama said, “If we cannot trust the process by which the United
States Government vets refugees fleeing violence and persecution, then we
cannot trust any form of our border security or immigration or visa processes.”
At the moment I don’t trust any form of our border security or
immigration or visa processes. If these policies were working then how did the
terrorist carry out 9/11 and how did maybe sixteen million illegal aliens get
into our country?
The Baptist
minister quotes John Sandweg, former acting director of the U.S. Immigration
and Customs Enforcement: “The United States employs a robust and layered
approach to the screening of refugees. Prior to setting foot on U.S. soil,
refugees must first clear a comprehensive background investigation that
includes multiple layers of in-person interviews, biographic and biometric
background checks, and interviews of third-persons who may have information
related to the individual. No refugee may be admitted into the U.S. unless and
until this lengthy process is complete and reveals no information that would
suggest the person poses a security risk.”
Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton denied she had a private server and had classified
information on it. The head of the I.R.S. Lois Lerner said the I.R.S. was not
discriminating against conservatives for tax exemptions, but then she took the
fifth. President Obama said there was not one smidgen of corruption in the
I.R.S. and we found out differently. Obama said if you like your health care
plan you can keep it – did that turn out to be true? Obama said my father left
my family when I was 2 years old and we now know he never spent one night with
his father. Obama said The Fast and Furious program was a field-initiated
program begun under the previous administration we now know for a fact it began
in 2009 under his administration. Obama claimed they revealed to the American people
exactly what they knew about the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi
and that turned out not to be true. Obama said transparency and the rule of law
would be the touchstone of his Presidency - what a joke!
Does the
Baptist minister expect me to believe John Sandweg? Isn’t this the same John
Sandweg that left his position in less than a year? He walked out without providing a clear
explanation. Is he not the same John Sandweg that had no experience in
Immigration and was opposed by many when he was being vetted? Isn’t this the
same John Sandweg that tried to stop a Freedom of Information investigation
into spending in the DHS? I am sorry, but I have a hard time taking John
Sandweg’s word on anything.
I wish some
Christian had facts that were proven to be trustworthy so I could reconcile the
conflict I have in my heart with the Syrian Refugee problem, but no one has. The only viable solution I see at the moment is extending more financial aid to Muslim countries, particularly Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon to take care of the Syrian refugees where they are. These refugees will have a better chance of getting back into their country and possibly gaining control of their country if they are living near where they came from rather than moving them to Europe, Australia and the United States. I do not deny that our country and all Western countries, regardless if they are Christian or not, has an obligation to protect their security and provide adequate living conditions for them. Supporting them there would help stop them from needing to go elsewhere.
Syria in my
opinion will remain a serious problem for many years, that's all the more
reason for a longer-term humanitarian response, including setting up schools
and medical facilities. We would probably get more loyalty from the Syrians and
they would be more encouraged to stand up to ISIS by helping them with aid than
spending millions on training a few Syrian rebel fighters.
I have read
the Syrian refugees do not want to live in camps where all the tents look
alike. They want to live in homes. I wish that was possible. I am sure the
people in the Philippines that have been without homes for over two years due
to typhoons would like to have a home. We cannot always have what we ‘want’ we
sometimes have to settle for what we can get at the moment.
I do believe
building permanent homes may be more feasible than tents, since this is going
to be a long term problem. I guess the Syrian refugees would complain that the
home all look alike. The people of the Philippines that have been given
government homes that all look alike are thrilled. It makes me question the
Syrian refugee’s real motives.
One last
point the Syrian refugees I see on television appear to be healthy young men. If these are real refugees, where are the women?
Where are the elderly? Where are the weak and the sick? It appears to me that
they have no intention of fighting for their own freedom in Syria. They have
made up their minds they want to live in the West. This is a quote from a group of young men that left the refugee camp in Hungary, “No good here in Hungary. No good. They try and lock us up. But we want Germany, there it is good. We have no worry about nothing there. They give us food and house and job. In Hungary they want to watch us all the time.” They are in the majority amongst the thousands who arrive each day in Hungary on their way north. While they wait they want to charge their iPhones, eat more pizza and board their trains. Everyone either has an iPhone or knows someone else who does. They use them to talk to family members on the other side of the world or network with each other sharing information. This is what they told an aid worker.
Several of
the young men had already spent $5000 on travel when they got to Hungary.
Refugees have $5000 plus in cash? One said, “I want new life. I want to
go to university. Make money. I want to work in a bank, be a banker. Bring all
my family later.” When ask why he did not stay and fight for his homeland he
said, “There is nothing worth fighting for.”
There is no
future there because Obama took away all their future by allowing the “J.V.
Team” as Obama called ISIS to take over their country. Obama says as long as he
is President he will befriend the refugees. If he was truly a friend of the
refugees he would not have withdrawn the troops against the advice of his
military advisors and he would have stood up to the President of Syria when he
crossed Obamas red line.
I am not
convinced that God expects us to risk allowing terrorist to come into our
country as they did in France and kill our citizens. I am convinced God does
expect us to help the Syrian refugees. There is more than one way to
accomplish that and other ways have far less risk for the citizens of the
United States. Help them where they are!
A Jewish man
was taking a trip alone and was attacked by robbers. A Samaritan man came by.
Even though they both lived in the land of Palestine and shared a similar
religion, the Jews and the Samaritans definitely did not think of each other as
"neighbors." In fact, they hated each other. They had considered each
other enemies for hundreds of years and refused to even talk to each other! This
Samaritan man took pity on the injured Jewish man. He bandaged his wounds. He
put him on his own donkey and took him to an inn where he could be safe and
recover. Jesus was pleased with the Samaritan man in the story even though he
did not take the Jewish man back into his home, but took care of him where he
was.
God led the
Jews into battle and they took the Promise Land from its inhabitants and the
Jews settled on it. Why aren’t the Christians and Obama that advocate bringing
the refugees to the United States willing to take the land back from ISIS and
let the Syrian return to their land? God and the Jews defeated the pagans
cannot God and the United States defeat the ISIS pagans? I think we can.
Have
we stopped believing that God hears the cries of the Syrians? God said, “Whatever you do for the least
you do for me.” James wrote we are to look after the orphans and widows are
Christians not capable of doing that there instead of the United States? There
is not just one Christian solution to the Syrian refugee problem.
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