Is It ‘Christian’ for Europe to Welcome Refugees from Ukraine but Not Syria

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Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. We are going to talk about an article today from Christianity Today with a title.

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Is it Christian for Europe to welcome refugees from Ukraine, but not Syria? Is it

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Christian? That's the question. Christian, is there a Christian position on this refugee thing?

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And underlying this is the assumption, hey, wait a minute. Is there like some racism? Is there some discrimination going on?

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If you're gonna allow people from Ukraine to come in, but you didn't have the same process with people from Syria, or you vetted them more strongly or something like that.

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So I wanna get into this piece. I think it actually raises a lot of questions, not the piece directly. I think it probably inadvertently raises these issues, but we need to think through some questions and some issues.

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I think it's important for us to start thinking through these things and maybe challenging some of the things we've taken for granted for quite some time.

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For most of human history, a nation has been defined by things like traditions, habits, religion, race, obviously the geographic area one lives in and things common to that area, which would include professions.

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I mean, that gets tied into the habits and all. And I think that really, and I don't wanna put a time,

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I don't know when, I don't know in history, it's kind of hard to put a date sometimes on things, but I would say perhaps this is another enlightenment kind of thing that we've been living with.

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This idea that reason or something at least more abstract ideals can bind a nation together.

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And the United States has been the chief example of this, that you'll often hear people say, and I've disagreed with this strongly, but you'll still hear people say, the

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United States is an idea. America is an idea, it's not a country, right? And other countries in the

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West have taken note of this and have, liberal democracies have decided that's the thing that will enable them to have prosperity, success, a place of belonging, stability.

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They just need to share certain ideals. And really they all boil down to, when you really come down to it, it's equality of some kind.

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It's some kind of an egalitarian equality that is shared in some ways, and that is going to enable prosperity and peace and all this.

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So I have my own thoughts on this, and they could probably be more formed than they are right now, but they're formed enough,

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I think, to do a podcast on this. And they get tested.

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They get challenged, I think, and questioned because of scenarios like the one that I'm about to read for you.

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And so I think it's good for us to think through this because the question in this article is what's the

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Christian position? And that is a very difficult question to ask and answer.

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And I'm not even sure, this is kind of what I'm leaning towards. I don't even know if this is a question that necessarily should be asked.

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Now, questions of what should Christians do in a particular context, yes, but each country is gonna be different.

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Each context is different. Their economies are different. Their traditions are different. These are the things, of course, that I said before end up being the things that actually usually define a people group and lead to stability and so forth.

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And because of that, think about it this way. This would probably be an easier way.

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So break it down to a family, right? And you're thinking of adopting or there's someone who needs help, right?

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There's a number of children that need help, an orphanage that's going, hypothetically here, you know, there's a bunch of people at an orphanage and you need to, you wanna help out and take some of them.

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And some of them don't speak your language, let's say. Language is a part of this too, right?

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That's one of the things that builds trust, binds people together. And so some of them don't speak your language, some of them do.

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Now, which is going to be an easier transition for your family? When only you would know all the constraints your family has, all the things your family does and the abilities that it has to provide, that you have to provide the time, you have to devote to things like learning another language or helping someone learn your language.

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These are all considerations you're gonna go through with a question like that. Do we have someone come in to our house, make them part of our family, but they don't speak our language?

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Well, there's, you could do that, right? And many people have, but there's a challenge involved in that.

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And your family might not be up for that challenge and that's for you to decide, okay? So if it's a, let's say instead you opt to take a child who does speak your language and it's much easier of a transition.

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It's not as much work and you're able to provide and you share something in common. That's pretty fundamental.

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All right, well, think about that on a mass scale. I'm not saying that's the only factor. I'm just using that as an obvious factor.

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Think about that on a mass scale with all the complexities in a country. And you're in charge of the government or you have some role in deciding these things.

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What do you do when you have a situation like the war in Ukraine? If you're a neighboring country and you have

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Ukrainians coming in, there may be some shared features or some shared values, habits, traditions, religion.

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I don't know. I don't know all the countries that, but I'm assuming, look, if you're Canada and the United States, right, are gonna be a little more similar than say the

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United States and China, okay? And it doesn't always quite work out that way, but generally a country that's closer in proximity, you're gonna share more things in common with that country versus Syria.

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Syria, it's another, we're talking about broadly speaking, another religion and bringing

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Syrians in in large numbers. You have to start asking the question, is that going to jeopardize the stability of this country if it's a secular or Christian slash secular country, different languages, different habits.

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Normally when immigrants come in, they're going to form their own communities that are separate. They don't, unless there's a lot of intention behind it, you're not gonna have the integration.

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And so this is, and people come in and often don't wanna leave too. So, I mean, there's all kinds of,

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I'm just scratching the surface barely on the considerations that someone would be thinking through on a question like this.

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And so is it Christian? If that's, is it Christian for Europe to welcome refugees from Ukraine, but not

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Syria? I mean, it's like, well, is it Christian? I mean, where, in what context?

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The thing is, I think you can be a Christian in any of these neighboring countries, including the

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United States, right? I think what, you know, we're bringing in probably some refugees from Ukraine. You can be a Christian and you can approach this problem or this scenario of what's happening in Ukraine.

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And you're going to be applying some broad biblical principles. And these principles aren't necessarily going to render a kind of a plug and chug answer that's so smooth and right there, clearly depicted for you.

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It's gonna take some work and it's not going to necessarily even be a uniquely

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Christian, I think, position. It's going to be something that you're thinking through based on all the circumstances around you, hopefully with Christian principles undergirding it.

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But the shared values are gonna be very broad shared values. They're gonna be things like, you know, we want to help people.

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Okay, okay, we do wanna help people. Now, what are the limitations we have in helping people? Okay, what effect is this going to have on our country if we bring in people in large numbers from this particular culture with these particular skills and the industries that they might be involved in?

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I mean, how is this gonna affect our economy? There's all kinds of questions. And a country's primary job, the government of a country, is to defend its own people, to obviously bearing the sword is the responsibility of the government, but you have to make sure that people coming in are vetted.

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I mean, think about it in terms of a family. Again, you wanna make sure you're adopting someone or someone staying with you for an extended period of time, getting out of an abusive situation or something.

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What kind of questions are you gonna ask about that person? You're gonna wanna build some level of trust. You're gonna wanna have some knowledge of what this person's been through, what they're capable of.

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I know of families who didn't do this right and they ended up with people who were violent, that adopted people who were violent into their home and threatened the lives of their family.

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And I mean, these are things that are real considerations in the real world on a small level. So it's the same thing on a broad international scale.

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And so the Christian position is going to be, if there is a Christian position on this, I don't even like the way that's phrased, but a

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Christian thinking through this is going to be trying to think through all these different interests and coming up with the best possible outcome where the most people can be helped and it doesn't put into jeopardy the safety or threaten the culture that they're being imported into in any way.

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Those are gonna be the considerations. So I think when we ask this question, I haven't gotten to the article yet,

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I know, but when this question is being asked, just notice the premise from the beginning, that the premise is that there is some kind of a

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Christian position somewhere. And this is something that I'm skeptical of to some extent, just phrasing it that way, thinking through it that way, that there is this kind of one size fits all.

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This is the Christian thing. We just bring in people, right? That's how it's often, just the nice thing to do.

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We don't think through all these other questions. We just see knee -jerk reaction. Here's what's happening.

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We gotta help. That's the Christian thing to do. Is it, is it though?

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All right, so let's go over the article. As Ukraine continues to be battered by Russia, Syrian refugees know what to pray for better than most.

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This is what happened to us, said refugee students at the Together for the Family Center in Lebanon.

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We don't want it to happen to others. Born in home Syria to a Baptist minister,

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Esdirha Qasis married a Lebanese man and then founded the center in 2006. She shifted her ministry to care for her people when the

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Syrian civil war started in 2011. About 50 traumatized teenagers find counseling every year and 300 have graduated from the center's vocational programs.

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As the refugees discussed the horrible situation in Europe during the weekly chapel service, Qasis suggested intercession.

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The 40 children and 30 Syrian staff and volunteers bowed their heads, but one child wanted to be sure the Ukrainians would know of their solidarity.

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We went outside into the cold and snow of the Beqaa Valley where most of Lebanon's 1 .5

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million Syrian refugees take shelter, his sign proclaimed praying for peace. Since the invasion, about 4 million of Ukraine's population of 43 million have become refugees.

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Another 6 .5 million are internally displaced. Yet 11 years since its civil war, most of Syria's 6 .8

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million refugees out of a population of 20 million still live in limbo. And by the way,

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I remember in 2017, I went to Turkey with the purpose, my wife and I, of staying with some missionaries who worked with refugees.

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They were from Iran, I believe, and Syria. And I saw some of the places in which they were staying, even places where they were just camping out.

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And it's a problem. It contributed to the homelessness and everything in Turkey.

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I haven't really been updated on it much since that time, but it was sobering.

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And this is the thing, when man sins and we live in a sin -cursed world, we're gonna have situations like this, unfortunately.

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It'll never go away. And it's one of the most sad things ever. So for me, starting off,

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I have in my mind a desire to help with these kinds of things.

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I want to see the best possible outcome for people from Syria and from Ukraine and from any country that's experiencing this kind of thing.

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But I also know that, like a sinking ship, if you put too many people that aren't working in one area and feed them, that money's not coming from out of nowhere.

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And that's one of the problems with the refugee situation is they're living in limbo and someone's footing the bill for this.

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11 years since its civil war, most of Syria's 6 .8 million refugees out of a population of 20 million still live in limbo.

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Europe largely shut its doors, certainly in comparison to its warm welcome of those fleeing Russian aggression. Now, the fact is that actually

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Europe opened its doors pretty wide. Germany especially was experiencing huge problems from taking in way too many refugees too quickly.

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And they had a bad crime issue. And they still do, to my understanding, in certain areas that are just not, they don't even seem like Germany anymore.

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And so to stop that kind of thing would make a lot of sense. That there is a number.

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I don't know what the number is. That's the part of the problem. But there is a number at which if you import a group of people, it can become straining and you can have problems.

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And it actually creates a worse problem than it would have, perhaps, if you hadn't done much.

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I don't know what that number always is. That's the thing. Of course, there's sort of a spectrum here of how bad it could be.

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And there's a trade -off going on. But that's how you have to think about this. Cost -benefit analysis.

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There's always gonna be a trade -off. And the thing I wanna ask too, this article doesn't get into it, but this is one of the things that I wanna ask is, what about the surrounding?

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I don't believe this article. I don't remember reading it in the article. We'll see. But what about the surrounding Muslim countries?

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I talked about Turkey to some extent, but what about Saudi Arabia? What about the just other countries that are in the

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Middle East that actually would be closer in some ways, culturally? Why can't they just integrate

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Syrian refugees into their populations? That's actually a better question to ask about this.

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That would make more sense. So why is it always on the

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West? Why is the West the ones, because they have more money or affluence? I mean, look,

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Saudi Arabia's got a lot of money and affluence. So what is it then that makes it a

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European responsibility? That's one of the questions that I think we should be asking too.

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If the people, like if your neighbors, let's say, weren't going to help a needy family, or I shouldn't say your neighbors, but the neighbors of a needy family, those neighbors weren't going to help that needy family.

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It's the nice thing to do. It's the charitable thing to do if you have the ability to help that needy family.

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But let's say you have also needy families in your neck of the woods and you have to make decisions and you have needy people in your house.

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You only have a certain limited amount of resources. And why should your responsibility primarily be for someone that's farther away in proximity to you when there's an ability of that person's neighbors to help them, right?

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That's the kind of thing I'm talking about here. And we do see this principle, I believe, in scripture with proximity.

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Even that's in the Good Samaritan, it's proximity. It's the people that actually were passing by, the people that came into contact.

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If you don't provide for your family, you're worse than an unbeliever. It's the whole providing for those first in the household of faith.

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We have a responsibility to fellow believers. There is kind of, you could think about it as like circles that kind of get broader and broader and go out.

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There's different proximities. And those that are closest, your family especially, would be the ones you have the most responsibility for.

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And so that's a principle that we see in scripture. So you're gonna be able to minister to people that you have more in common with, especially geographically, but also even culturally, linguistically.

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You're usually going to have a better effect on the people that are in your neck of the woods than you are with those across the world.

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That doesn't mean we shouldn't help. I just had someone on talking about the situation in Ukraine. I wanna help them. I have donated money to help people in Ukraine, but it's a matter of primary, secondary, tertiary responsibility.

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And then do you have a direct command or responsibility to help someone halfway across the world, right?

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You would have responsibility, someone that's right in front of your house, on the street, you can see them.

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That mean that you have a responsibility. That's someone within your ability to help right there in front of you.

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So this is a principle I think we all kind of know, but one of the things that's, it's a feature of the social justice movement.

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And just broadly speaking, I think, I don't even know, it's beyond that to some extent. There's this idea that we should just love humanity as almost this abstract thing.

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So you could have someone who loves humanity, but doesn't love the humans in their own neighborhood or their own home, or they're strange from their family, but they love humanity so much.

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And that's just not true love. So I wanna get back to loving the tangible people that you interact with on a daily, weekly basis.

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Loving the place that you're from, taking good stewardship of that place. And then yes, extending yourself as you have the ability to those that are outside of that.

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So that's kind of, I'm just hinting at, more than hinting at kind of where I'm coming down, or at least the way that I'm thinking about this.

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Trying to think through this as a Christian, that's the attempt here. There is a perennial double standard and selective outrage of global news media,

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Western governments, and sadly, even Western churches when it comes to reporting on wars, conflicts, and the plight of refugees.

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Stated Vinoth Ramachandra from Sri Lanka, a senior leader with the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students.

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If Ukrainians were not blonde and blue eyed, would their plight have occasioned this outpouring of compassion?

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It is a fair question. Is European hypocrisy, even racism on full display?

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Well, that's, you see, right in the beginning of the article, you have, and most people read the beginnings, if they're gonna read any part of the article, they read the beginning.

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Right there, you have the insinuation. It's racism. That's what, that could really account for the pouring out of support for Ukraine.

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Thing is, though, at the same time, Russians are being pretty vilified right now by those same countries.

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Even saying crazy things among popular commentators like we should nuke them and just, they are the villains of the world.

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And guess what? They look an awful lot like the Ukrainians. In fact, many of the

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Ukrainians are, their ethnicities are pretty close, especially in the eastern parts of Ukraine.

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So this is just, on its face, this should be laughed out of the room. That really?

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That's the reason that, you know? So are we gonna be that loving and caring to Russians?

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When Russian culture and, I mean, things in like even concerts, plays, uniquely just Russian cultural things are being canceled in the

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United States right now. And so we're supposed to think, and I'm sure this kind of thing's happening in Europe as well, this anti -Russian sentiment.

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So we're supposed to think that it's racism. Well, that kind of pokes a hole in that one. It is a fair question, says the author of the article.

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It's a fair question. Yeah, if you're not thinking through, if you're not thinking, it is a fair question.

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If you're thinking through it though, it's not that fair of a question. We've literally just cut off financially a whole group of people who would be blonde haired, many of them, blue eyed.

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We've just cut them off. So they can't, I was actually, I got an email from,

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I think it was Russian Christian Radio talking about how it's difficult now. There's people in need in Russia that rely on their support and they can't get money into Russia.

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All those blonde haired, blue eyed people that happen to live there are gonna be in deep straits because of sanctions that have been and restrictions placed on Russia.

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But apparently the same people putting those sanctions on Russia are people who are racist for not taking as many

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Syrians as Ukrainians. It is a fair question. Is European hypocrisy, even racism on full display?

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Arab Christians are not quick to judge. Born in Syria, Joseph Kassab today heads the Beirut based

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Supreme Council of Evangelical Churches in Syria and Lebanon. He notes that more than 1 million countrymen taken in by Europe, Western Europe primarily,

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Eastern nations, he said, are still recovering from the communist era and not yet developed the same sense of human rights.

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There should be no discrimination, yet even this he understands. The early church struggled to open its mission to non -Jews.

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I'm gonna not go down that rabbit trail right now, but more a theological issue there, not a racial issue, but let's keep going.

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Racism is in every society, Kassab said, but Europeans have been more welcoming to the Syrians than many

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Lebanese. And this is one of the points that I was trying to make too. And he does, so this article does kind of hint at it that look, why aren't the

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Lebanese who are closer helping out with the Syrian thing as much as Europeans who are farther away?

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And they're also farther away in proximity, culturally and all the rest.

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Being a Muslim is a factor, said Eli Haddad, president of Arab Baptist Theological Seminary in Beirut, but also important is that most are rural, educated farmers.

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Legitimate or not, people are uncomfortable with difference. Europe is a bit hypocritical, but so is he.

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If a faculty member needs shelter, I will open my home, Haddad said, for a stranger, not so much.

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Now, see, this is one of the things that I was just saying, look, this is proximity right here. And this is one of the fascinating things

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I found about this article too, is that the way that people think in other parts of the world, and this is someone coming from not a

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Western context as much, they think actually in the ways that Western people probably would have thought 100, 200 years ago.

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They're still thinking in terms of proximity more. And yeah,

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I mean, like someone that, so this is someone, a faculty member, someone that's vetted, someone I share much in common with, someone I feel a responsibility toward, right?

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I will open my home for a stranger, not so much. Not as likely, not saying he won't, but you know, he's, there's, trust hasn't been built.

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It's pretty much that simple, I think. One who did open his home is a Frenchman of Lebanese descent in Nice.

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A nurse at a local hospital in 2018, Fran, Fran, Franchois, I guess,

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Nader, was the only available Arabic speaker to assist a refugee family whose working age son needed emergency kidney dialysis.

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He walked them through the necessary paperwork in three months. All right, let's keep going here. I'm gonna skip ahead. France today is permitting

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Ukrainians up to three years of residence and employment, European Union directive, and Nader, now in Bordeaux and married to a

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Russian with Ukrainian relatives, applauds. Okay, so a simple phone call from authorities validated the legality of four refugees he now has in his home.

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A non -denominational Christian, he believes the gospel calls people to treat everyone the same, but not nations.

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This is another interesting development in this, or highlight in this article. Okay, he says, look, for me as an individual

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Christian, yeah, I need to treat everyone the same, but that's not the same way nations should act.

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He says, Muslims' values are totally opposite to ours, Nader said. It needs generations to have their mind adapt to the

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European way. Now, this is an interesting thought. The fear of terrorism is an issue, but so is adaptation.

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Muslims concentrate in the Bonne Luce, if I'm pronouncing it right, ghettos that reinforce a separatism damaging to French society, he said.

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Meanwhile, Ukrainian tourists visit the Louvre where their children behave, he said. On the tramway, they sit quietly reading books.

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It is a stereotype, and is it a little bit cruel, Nader said. I'm sorry to say this, but it is also human. Now this, so he's dealing with practical realities here, right, rather than being like the

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Bible always says we should love, therefore import everyone, whether we can afford it, whether it's gonna jive well, whether, he's saying there's some practical concerns here we have to consider, and that's gonna affect the decision you come down to.

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If you love your people, too, you're bringing them, you're factoring them into this.

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Now here's the question the author asks, but is it biblical? God has created both similarity and difference, said

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Leonardo de Chirico, a chair of the Theological Commission of the Italian Evangelical Alliance.

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According to Galatians 6 .10, he said it is property of preference. And that's, Galatians 6 .10

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is giving preference to those in the household of faith first. The principle of proximity calls us to give special attention to those who are near us, he said, in the faith, in the family, in the nation, and in our surrounding context.

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That's what I've been talking about. And I find it interesting, so this is Italian, okay, that some of these values that have been kind of disregarded in America to some extent are still alive in some places in Europe, in the

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Middle East, there's still, even though Europe is going down the same track as the

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United States, there's, I think, more of a recognition. And there's less, it seems like in these interviews, there's less political correctness.

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People aren't afraid as much to be like, well, you know what, hey, people from Syria are different. This is how they behave.

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People from Ukraine are behaving better and they're actually integrating better into our society.

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And they're not afraid of being called racist for saying that, they can just speak what they see and they're not afraid.

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And that's something that in some ways is almost refreshing, I'll be honest. It is refreshing, it is refreshing to hear someone without fear just say, this is what

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I think, this is the truth of the situation, this is something we have to consider. Whereas in the United States, you wouldn't be allowed to say that.

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Like if you were going to, Trump sort of, Trump like almost went there, he kind of did on some things and it was like everyone got angry that there are some countries that you're not gonna want to import large groups from that country into your country.

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You take it down to a smaller level again. There's certain families, you're like, man, I wouldn't want to adopt all the kids in that family if the parents died.

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I wouldn't want to have them in my home, it would be a threat to my children. And there's other families are like, we would get along great.

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Why is that? Because every family is different, every country is different. That's part of, it's obvious, we all know it.

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That's the thing, we all know it. But we're not allowed to say it. Why aren't we allowed to say it?

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Because everyone's equal, everyone's gotta be equal. There is no superior, inferior, as far as moral concerns are, you know, we would never do this on the level of a family.

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We never say like that family and that family, even though one's involved in nefarious activity and they're rabble rousers, and the other one is the most,

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I don't know, controversial or the most damaging thing they ever did was play the wrong note on the piano or something.

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We wouldn't compare those two families and just be like, well, they're just equal. You know, they'll have the, it'll be the same.

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Every child is worthwhile and the Bible's Imago Dei or something. We wouldn't do that.

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But on a national level, we do do that. And the fact is there's different cultures in different countries. There are different values, there are different religions.

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There's a whole complex matrix of things that contributes to how a people group is broadly speaking going to behave and what they're gonna be like and the things they're gonna expect and all of that.

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So let's see, let's keep going. When the Bible even does so, he said, as the original Hebrew differentiate between aliens, the gerim are to be treated justly before fellow

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Jews, but the zarim are barred from celebrating Passover. So, and this is interesting to me.

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And so he said the modern distinction is between refugee and migrants. Now, slight correction here in my mind.

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If you go to like Leviticus 19, I think it's like Leviticus 25. It's just a few chapters later.

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The gerim are to be treated justly like the fellow Jews. Yeah, but you'll even find in Leviticus 25 in just a few chapters, there are different rules and some different rules that apply to them.

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For instance, they can be enslaved perpetually, whereas Jews could not. So there's things like that that show, yeah, there was even a difference there.

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They weren't fully integrated into Jewish society in every single way.

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But they were, the law was to apply to them. And the zarim, which would be the,

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I believe the zarim would be more the immigrant, the one who stays there.

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So the gerim being the sojourner, the one who's traveling, the zarim being the one who has immigrated, is living there, the foreigner.

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Okay? The zarim are barred from celebrating Passover. So they are, there's a recognition that they're not actually,

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I mean, like think of today, if something like this happened, it'd be like they're second -class citizens.

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That's what the thought would be. But the foreigners could not participate in certain things.

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Now, there was probably a process by which you could become a proselyte that developed, but that's, at least in Exodus 12, it's pretty clear cut.

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Now, slaves could even participate. That's the thing. If you had a foreign slave, you could, they would participate in the Passover.

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So there's actually this blessing when you could be part of that covenant in a way by becoming part of the family through that process, by the labor relationship there.

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But anyway, the broader point, I totally, I agree. Okay, there's a distinction between the refugee and the migrant.

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Now, oftentimes, though, the sojourners, the refugees that are coming in, in Western countries, though, we do need to remember, oftentimes, they're not gonna wanna leave.

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And oftentimes, here's the thing, we live in a different culture, a different context than the

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Middle East at that time, ancient Israel. And there are all kinds of benefits.

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There are, I mean, you could, yeah, if you're a foreigner or a sojourner coming in, you're traveling, yeah, you could glean from the edges of the fields that haven't been harvested.

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There's no welfare program for you. There's no camp set up for you. You know, you're not a drain necessarily on the economy.

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So it is a different context. It is a much different context. Privileges now are just kind of assumed.

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Like if you're part of the country, you know, you're gonna, or you're within the borders of the country, they're just kind of assumed that you're gonna be taken care of.

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There's gonna be certain benefits you receive. "'Freedom of movement is not absolute,' said Mark Jost, General Secretary of the

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Swiss Evangelical Alliance. "'I like diversity, but it entails risks "'that must be regulated. "'Cultural proximity led

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Switzerland "'to waive for Ukrainians the case -by -case examination "'required for Syrians.'

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Jost rejects the privilege many wanted to give for faith and ethnicity, but Swiss authorities thought distinction necessary to weed out potential terrorists.

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That's another issue. What about terrorism? Ukrainians aren't known for it. "'Still the difficulties of integration are real "'and the government wanted to reduce the pull factor, "'especially for economic migrants seeking a better life.

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"'Those threatened by life and limb "'should be permitted with no distinction.'" I'm going to fast forward here.

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Let's, let me, it goes through what Greece did. They allow, they host about 42 ,000 refugees from various countries.

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That's a lot. First, Greece is kind of small. Many others are turned away by boat.

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The Greek government stated that it processed applicants, seven out of 10 applicants are not refugees.

34:34

Okay, let's just skip ahead here. It does get into some of the complexities of this even more, but most of the things that I wanted to bring up,

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I've already kind of brought up. Is it right to pit the migrant against the refugee?

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Many nations today are spending much more money and energy on finding ways to prevent refugees and asylum seekers from even crossing their border than they are in protecting people who have been robbed of place and are among the most vulnerable people on the planet, said

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Albuson. This needs to be exposed and confronted for what it is. Mixed migration confuses the issue and human traffickers prey on them all.

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Now, here's the thing. Here's the thing. Countries are spending resources to try to prevent a massive inflow of refugees.

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You can only, there can only be so much because of the benefits being given to refugees and numbers that big.

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I mean, you can, I mean, it's like an army sometimes. And so this has to be regulated in some way for the safety of the people in that country and the economic stability, all of that.

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So when you install a process, a mechanism by which you vet and you allow people in at a reasonable rate of some kind, you discourage that kind of mass migration.

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If you just say, y 'all come in, you're gonna get more than just those refugees. That's going to be a signal sent out across the whole world there, you can go in.

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And pretty soon that country is not going to be the country it once was. This is one of the problems we're having on our Southern border is so many people are coming across right now and there's not much opposition.

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There are some barriers, yeah, I mean, and especially travel, but people are traveling from South America. They're trying to get in.

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They're paying coyotes to take them in to the United States because they want prosperity. They want something that is very understandable.

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It's a compliment to the United States. It shows that we're not this horrible racist place that just hates everyone because everyone wants to get in.

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But once you have a blunt, you just allow people to get in, you open the gate. It's an invitation for the rest of the world.

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And when the whole world can just come in, it has consequences, cultural consequences, economic consequences, crime, all of that stuff, they become problems.

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And the same thing's happening in Europe. The churches should fill the gaps the government is leaving.

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Let's see. Mother's Day in the Arab world falls in March.

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Besides offering prayer together for the family is collective advice from Syrian wives and widows on how to deal with life torn from their husbands and sons.

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Says what they're gonna do. The Lord has helped us here and lifted us up. They want to encourage Ukrainian women in the same way.

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I thought in general, it was actually a pretty good article showing the different opinions across the

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Europe and even in the Arab world to some extent on this. But the whole way it's framed from the beginning, it shows the way that people are thinking about it.

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And I just want to suggest to you to think that there's some kind of a discrimination going on because they look different and that it's purely based on that.

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That's ridiculous. It's insulting to our intelligence because Russians are being vilified right now.

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That's one reason. But the other reason is you see from the article how complicated this issue is.

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How many factors actually, religion being a major one that come into play here, crime rates, terrorism, all this kind of stuff, economic contributions.

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These all are things that must be considered. So what's the Christian position on this?

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Well, the Christian position is we love our neighbors. We have responsibility to those who are the closest to us.

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Governments serve the people that they're supposed to be serving. And we have to then balance all these different factors and calculate them and do the benefit analysis to figure out what's the best solution.

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That's the bottom line. And each context, I think, is going to be a little bit different on this.

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Each country is going to have a different ability, a different way to be able to handle this kind of thing. And so I wouldn't accept any comparison that would attempt to say that there's racism going on.

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In the sense that there's some just hatred, some just prejudicial hatred against the

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Syrians because they're not white or something like that. I mean, that would be ridiculous. All right, that's all

39:34

I had for you. I think the, I wanna end with this, just this question for you all out there. Think through this, if you would.

39:42

Just start thinking through it yourself. During the course of the day, what kinds of things make someone an

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American? Or if you're somewhere else, pick your country, Australian, Saudi Arabian, whatever.

40:02

What kinds of things? And in addition to that, what kinds of things give you the right to claim benefits that are provided by the country in which you live?

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Is it the fact that you live there or the fact that you're in that geographic location?

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I mean, a lot of people fly here from all over the world. Doesn't make them American just because they set foot on American soil. Is it because you're a

40:36

Christian? Well, there's a lot of people in the United States that aren't Christians, right? And don't claim any kind of Christianity. What is it?

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What's the thing? We have, in theory, a process, at least for legal migration in which immigration, when people come, they become citizens of the

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United States, for citizenship, at least, to get some of these benefits. You have to know something about our heritage, our history.

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You have to have some kind of a shared value with that history. You have to understand what it is to be an

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American. There's an assimilation that goes on. And I think that's a good thing to think about.

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What is it that makes, and I'm not gonna answer it for you. I think it's a good thing to think about. Because you realize, you start figuring out, on whatever basis you wanna make this, it's a lot more complicated than it seems initially.

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And you start realizing, too, how other countries have much more identifiable ways of having an identity, of seeing themselves as a member of the group.

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I think one of the things that makes America in trouble today, in some ways, is the fact that what do we have in common with each other?

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I found this out when I flew from Auburn, Alabama to Portland, Oregon in one day. And I was in Auburn, Alabama.

42:12

We drove to Georgia, Atlanta, flew to Portland. And I just thought, there's no way this is the same country.

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Now we speak the same language, kind of. But other than that,

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I'm like, I mean, everything was different. Cuisine was different. Architecture's different.

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Habits, totally different. Style is different. Beliefs are way different.

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Religion is different. It's easier to figure out what the differences are than what the commonalities are.

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And that's one of the things I've been wondering about. Is America, are we too big? Is there just too much difference between different geographical locations in the

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United States to say that, well, you know, we have enough in common to be part of the same country. You can, again, put this in a smaller level.

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Just think about it in a home. People that have extreme differences, they have to find common ground somewhere. They're gonna live together and make decisions together that affect each other.

43:14

Common sense, right? So that's a good question to ask. And so this has hopefully been food for thought for you today.

43:20

I thought I would give you something to hurt your head over as you think about some of these things that aren't brought up a whole lot, but I think they need to be more and more and more.