“But the religious expert, seeking to justify himself, said
to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
This question, uttered 2000 years
ago by a man wishing to know the limits of personal compassion, echoes
throughout history as mankind tries to define who is worth loving and resounds
loudly today in the public debate of the refugee crisis. To this question, Christ has a ready reply in the parable of the Good Samaritan.
As the story goes, a man was
assaulted on a lonely road from Jerusalem to Jericho. Two Jewish religious leaders give a wide
berth of the man as they pass him by. A
Samaritan then sees the man bruised and bloodied and stops his journey. Surely the questions of his own safety occur
to the Samaritan, as there is no guarantee the person or people that assaulted
the man are not still lurking in the shadows.
To help a stranger is to leave himself all the more vulnerable to
attack. And yet he picks the man up, takes
him to an inn, and pays for the man's needs himself. In the parable, Christ illustrates the
neighbor as the man who crosses cultural boundaries, who sees his fellow man in
need and, despite personal risk and financial loss, comes to his aid. To his questioner Christ poses the question,
“who was a neighbor to the man who was assaulted?” to which the religious expert
rightfully answers, “the man who showed mercy to him.”
The answer to this question of who
is our neighbor is important for us today.
Prior to asking it, the religious expert had correctly answered Jesus
that the second most important commanded is to “Love your neighbor as
yourself”. So for those of us who follow Christ, contained in this interchange
is both the command to love, the definition of who to love, and a demonstration
of what it is to love.
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UNHCR 2015. International refugees and internally displaced
people by year.
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To what degree can we apply these
principals to the Syrian refugee crisis? The United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees estimates there are over 60 million refugees in the world today, either seeking refuge internationally or as internally displaced
people. Not since WWII, and arguably in the history
of the world, has the number been higher.
Half of these people are children. Taken together, these people would be the 24th
largest country on the planet. Their
original countries are broken, so they are wanderers on the road, existing in a
space between national borders and legal status. Their needs are the fundamental needs for all
humans: shelter, nourishment, medical care and a place to call home. They are an entire nation of the man found
assaulted on the road.
Yet there is potential peril to
ourselves if we help. If we take in
Syrian refugees, the argument goes, then who knows if we are letting in
ISIS. Are we leaving ourselves vulnerable
to attack? Will we be the next Paris? Is there the potential for something
worse than Paris? There are many questions and few answer to such
objections. Yes the potential for harm
exists, no we cannot guarantee against unintended consequences if we allow
these people in. History and human
psychology would suggest xenophobia far outpaces actual risks of xenophilia,
but nonetheless risk remains. Like the Samaritan, as we stop and gaze at the
assaulted millions, the risk of personal involvement weighs heavily on us.
Furthermore there are financial
considerations. What does an influx of
thousands or millions of displaced people do to an economy? What about jobs? I
find it hard to believe that our economy is at the point of a zero sum game,
where one more person in means one other person out, and yet it seems
incredible that there is room for everyone.
As more people come in, the economic stretch will be gradual, and those
first affected will be the poor on the fringe. If 10,000 refugees mean 1,000
American families are displaced from jobs, what is our moral responsibility to
those families? What about the already burgeoning costs of medical care,
education, and social welfare? I can conceive there is a balance where at some
critical number of new people, the scales will tip toward economic disaster,
where more people will end up hurting than if we had never allowed anyone
entrance in the first place. Like the
Samaritan, we will certainly feel our wallets lighten and our resources
stretched by the moral obligation to provide for those we have taken
responsibility for.
What conclusions can we draw from
the above discussion? Is this a Good Samaritan moment where we help every
person we encounter on the road? Or are the complexities such that we are
justified denying refuge to those seeking it? The answer, as almost all answers
in the real world, lies in a balance somewhere between the extremes. For Christians, the command to love is
overwhelming. “Loving our neighbor as
ourselves” is the second greatest commandment, subordinate to and proceeding
from the greatest command to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul,
mind and strength.” Christ’s answer to who is our neighbor is the man on the
road in need of help. Personal and
financial perils are inherent in this command and acceptable risks to take, as
Christ himself demonstrated on the cross. We are no greater than our master.
Yet we are also not called to be destructive with our love. After this experience, I doubt the Samaritan
did then give up everything and committed his life to roaming the roads,
looking for hurting people to help. There was also a
limit to Christ’s healing ministry, he did not heal every person in every place
he went. He also spent time alone,
praying and resting, valuable time than could have been spent helping the
poor. As Christians, we are called to
selfless love, but we are not called to self-destruction.
How do we strike such a balance
with Syrian refugees? This balance does not give us an exact answer, but it
certainly gives us the criteria by which we should approach an answer. The correct answer is a selfless but not
self-destructive one. The answer that
shows we love our neighbor as ourselves, and that accepts a certain amount of
risk. An answer that shows we are not
first preoccupied with our own wellbeing, but rather the wellbeing of our
fellow man. However, It is also is an answer that
accepts the complexities of the potential for harm in well-intentioned
actions.
With this discussion in mind, I
will attempt a concrete solution to the problem. I think the Christian response is to let
Syrians in. We need to be thoughtful
about the amount we take and perhaps take some steps to verify the identity of the
individuals, but we should open our doors to a decent number of them. We should
encourage both our European partners and American continental neighbors to do
the same, so no one is burdened with too many.
Then we should stay vigilant, having a good way of accounting for these
individuals through appropriate identification mechanisms, perhaps tracking
bank accounts and financial transactions, living situations, etc. We should be strict in the law, with felony
offenses resulting in removal from the country. We should also commit to social
services commiserate with their humanity, such as basic housing, food
assistance, education and job training and medical care all delivered with the
goal of self-sufficiency within a few years time.
We also need to address the supply
of refugees from Syria, which means increase the military response to ISIS in
an intelligent manner as well as a work with our multinational coalition to end
the war in Syria. Of course, this
recommendation makes the situation sound simple when it is actually ludicrously
complex and such an answer may be year away or may end in the dissolution of
the state or worse, who knows. But it
needs to be higher on our priority list as a nation or else the humanitarian
catastrophe will continue to degenerate and the Middle East itself will be at
risk of explosion.
Moreover, we need to pray. Pray for the refugees, for a just solution to
this madness. Pray for the disaster that is Syria, for peace and an end to the
war. But also we need to pray for ISIS, for both the individuals’ salvation and
the organization’s destruction. An enemy
is still an image-bearer of God, made in his likeness even if the eternal light
in him seems long snuffed out.
Lastly, this needs to elevate other
matters of compassion in our minds.
Syria is all the rage right now, but what about the Latin American
refugee children or refugees from other nations? What about the homeless American veterans? What about our actual
neighbors next door with cancer, with broken homes, with selfish pride, with
mental illness? Ultimately, this is a question of a Christian’s response to the
evil and suffering of this world. Christ’s
answer to the problem of evil is a call to selfless, risky, sacrificial,
but-not-self-destructive Love.
“And we, seeking to justify ourselves, say to Jesus, ‘And
who is my neighbor?’”
To which Christ responds, “Everyone.”
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