Getting to the Heart of the matter

1 Tim 5:8 “Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”

‭Over my years I've had numerous trouble with tires. Once I left for a hunting trip with a badly out-of-balance tire. Noting that it would require rebalancing I pressed on out of town. Later that night on a dark road, the tire blew due to extreme uneven wear. I really struggled to change it on a very dark narrow road in the mud (ever tried to jack up a truck in mud?). On another trip, I had an alignment problem and it revealed itself in two blown tires within 60 miles.  My family and I enjoyed an unplanned tow and an overnight in Little Rock, Ark to have the tires replaced and the truck aligned.  On yet another occasion we missed a day at Disney due to failed tires. The problem proved to be simply due to lack of use of that particular vehicle which convinced my mother to finally part with a vehicle she really didn't need and couldn't properly maintain.  The point is that tires weren't the issue.  In each case these failures were symptoms of an underlying problem. In order to truly fix these problems, I had to get to the root cause and fix it.  

There is a great debate going on in America over how to respond to the Syrian refugee problem. Clearly the vast majority of these people are truly oppressed and persecuted to the point where they feel compelled to leave their homeland of thousands of years.  Obviously caring Christians need to respond in real and tangible ways to aid and assist these people through the motivation of the love of Christ.  I don't think any of my Christian friends are advocating turning a cold shoulder to people truly in need.  

Yet a debate rages in all forms of media, especially social media.  At issue is our ability to find and separate those that would attempt to come to America with intent to harm from true refugees.  People quote statistics and Bible verses in a running and heated debate, but the debate fails to address the underlying root cause of the refugees in the first place.  

When I was young teen, our church and our family sponsored a Vietnamese refugee family. We paid for their legal fees to immigrate, transportation to Gulfport, MS, bought them a house and arranged jobs in our community all through a little church with only a few hundred members. My role was to clean up the yard from years of neglect and then periodically mow and trim.  The family adjusted to America, joined our church, and were Baptized. I believe we made a difference not only in their earthly lives, but more importantly, in their external lives.  

The ongoing Syrian refugee issue is of similar magnitude with a sinister twist.  There are those among the refugees who mean to commit random and horrible violence.  I had the privilege of sitting next to Rep Jeff Miller on my trip this week and after bragging on our sons recent hunting successes (His son recently took a white tail deer in the morning and a monster mule deer in the same afternoon on a trip to Texas - what are you doing Ryan?), I asked him about our claim of "robust vetting."  He clearly stated that the claim was a lie. The refugees often have no identification to include licenses of any kind or even birth certificates.  So the evil intent of the few has instilled fear in the masses, me included. I'm not afraid so much for myself, but the images of victims have shaken me as I picture my kids, wife, friends and relatives subjected to random acts of degrading and horrible violence.  The resulting nightmares have interrupted sleep on several occasions that I can't simply eradicate from my mind.  While I'm confident that God is ultimately in control, I pray his protection from this type of earthly pain and anguish.  When not fearful, I sometimes wonder why God chose to put me here in America rather that anywhere else in His creation. While feeling an overwhelming sense of gratitude, I am compelled to demonstrate my appreciation in measurable ways.  

Which brings me to my point:  I'm concerned that we in America are not truly addressing the root cause of these refugees.  The ongoing debate regarding refugees totally ignores both the physical and spiritual root cause behind the great violence and resulting diaspora throughout the world.  Physically, the problem is both random and targeted acts of in inhumane violence throughout the Middle East, regions of Africa, and other spots around the world.  Targeted acts of violence are especially disheartening as Christians are being singled out for execution by the thousands. Radical extremists simply don't share our western (never mind Judeo/Christian) value of life and our live-and-let-live secular mentality. This fact points to the underlying spiritual issue that these extremists and those that support them and advocate for their cause need Christ.  The fact that many, but admittedly perhaps not all, espouse a false god called Allah complicates sharing the gospel message resulting in the martyrdom, persecution, and in-prisonmeant of many courageous Christians. 

So how are we as Christians to respond?  Clearly we are minister to the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual needs of all those truly in need (1 Tim 5 does caution us to be somewhat selective, but I don't want to digress into discernment). So we need to reach out to refugees as they are clearly in need.  Yet to limit our assistance to Facebook debates  is clearly useless.  Moreover, merely welcoming refugees doesn't create a system of long term support to ensure successful transition to a new life.  Finally even a systematic approach to immigration and integration into society won't address the root cause of their refugee status.  Clearly our strategy of "containment" has not succeeded and needs an altogether different approach.  Unfortunately a part of that plan requires a comprehensive and overwhelming military response as clearly simply abandoning the aforementioned regions won't result in immediate peace and prosperity.  The recent attacks in Paris afford an unprecedented (at least in recent history) to establish a worldwide coalition to not only provide a military response, but also galvanize Non-Government-Organizations to provide "soft power" to those in need of assistance.  

Just like a bad alignment will chew up both the old and new tires, failure to deal with the root cuss of the ongoing refugees will damn them, their families, and the world to an unstemmed tide of endless refugees.  We need to reach out with the hand of Christ to the truly needy 1 Tim 5), but we also must deal with the root causes of these refugees.