I remember a couple of years ago when a “surge” of children walked to this country… walked… all the way from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador because their lives in their own countries were too much to bear. They miraculously arrived somewhere along the southern border of the United States. These children trekked for six weeks or more without their parents or their families to escape the burgeoning gang violence that has gripped their homelands. To stay in their countries of origin was to die or to be used up like chattel – and then die anyway. These frightened, lonely, gaunt children showed up here at our door and were immediately dependent on the kindness and generosity of American strangers. As if these kids’ desperate vulnerability wasn’t enough to wrench my guts straight from my ribs, the backlash that ensued from the social media masses made me ill:
They suck our resources!
Border patrol just needs to mow them all down!
Build a wall! Shut them out!
Not our problem!
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Which is fine.
No, really. I’m completely serious.
It’s fine.
If those who are of that persuasion want to make those declarations, that is not only fine with me – it’s also dandy.
This is America, after all, and we all have a right to voice our opinions, right?
My post on social media, however, was:
I can take four.
To the chagrin of many, I offered to take four children. Our guest room is company-ready, and my office can be transformed in about a heartbeat. I don’t need money from the government. I can squeeze four children into my house. I can feed them – albeit we’ll be eating soup and sandwiches a lot of the time. I can clothe them – Savers and thrift stores are not beneath any of us. I can cancel my cable and trim the fat out of my budget, and I can save four lives. I can make sure they’re educated well. I can get rid of their lice. I can teach them to speak English as well as encourage them to read, write and speak in their native language, and I can pour much needed love into four kids and BE the miracle that they need to survive.
Plus, Sean-Martin and I have both passed FBI background checks.
I shook my head at those who responded so negatively to such a notion. Hmm? Methinks thou dost protest too much.
What brings bile up my throat is the fact that many of those who screamed the loudest about slamming our doors in the faces of these children also claim an apparent and devout commitment to Jesus Christ. In all fairness, they weren’t the ones who shouted for Border Patrol to “mow them down”, but… isn’t turning them away and sending them back to the hell from which they came essentially the same thing?
I’m sorry, but doesn’t that seem a bit… detached?
People I know personally didn’t even seem to pause before posting snarky Facebook memes – some real zingers – with disparaging remarks about “illegals” taking advantage of the system and sucking the lifeblood out of the US of A along with images of the American flag, a bald eagle, the Holy Bible, and a good ol’ Smith & Wesson.
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Every year, hundreds of thousands of kids show up on America’s doorstep, the numbers ever increasing right along with the desperation. If we turn these people away, they’re going to die – and we know this – and I simply cannot reconcile this mindset with that ever-popular, 4-letter question, “WWJD?” The question that everyone loves to throw out there but nobody seems to want to answer truthfully.
As we speak, Syrian refugees are fleeing their own war-torn country to anywhere in Europe willing to take them in – and many countries are doing just that. When our German son, Moritz, Skypes with us, he often talks about this very situation and all that his mother, who is a political leader in their town just outside Munich, is doing to organize the collective effort to alleviate the suffering of those migrants who are finding refuge in their area. Many countries in the region are doing the same.
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How very Christ-like.
I’ve heard all of the arguments about how costly it is and unfair it is and how we need to take care of our own and this is Murica! where people who are in a bad way just need to pull themselves up by their BOOTSTRAPS. Maybe it’s just me, but perhaps a refugee would have to have boots in order to have the straps with which to pull themselves to a place of self-reliance.
I understand that when countries offer sanctuary to people around the globe that people will be inconvenienced. Making your resources available does cost money – lots of it. When we take people in, it requires sacrifice. You don’t want this country to make that kind of sacrifice? Great. It’s not like we’re a Christian nation or anything, this country of ours who has offered:
Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…
I apologize. That was snarky.
To those who do ascribe to an affiliation with God
I am begging you
Please keep this in mind:
He calls upon us to take in the stranger, feed the hungry, give water to those who thirst, provide for the widows and the orphans, visit the sick and the imprisoned as well as to preach good news to the poor, heal the heartbroken, announce freedom to the captives, pardon all prisoners, and comfort those who mourn.
It’s sort of the final exam of life.
Please take to heart the words of God before you listen to the rhetoric of your political party.
I believe with my whole heart that if the Apostle Paul could hear the discourse in this country, he would crap his tunic. If he could write us a letter today in 2015, I think it would begin…
To the Church in the United States of America, Please take the lampshade off your head and put some clothes on. And get down from the kitchen table before you hurt yourself.
Jesus never talked about protecting our borders. He didn’t talk a whole heckuva lot about what to do with all the gay people or even about people burning in Hell forever. You know what He talked about?
He talked about the Kingdom of God.
Psh… We don’t want to talk about that. Why? Because ours is a consumer society. We are 4.4% of the world’s population. We consume 24% of the world’s energy. We generate 30% of the world’s garbage. Some call that blessed. I call it sin. To-MAY-toes… To-MAH-toes… Ain’t nobody got time for a Kingdom that calls us to do something as stupid and shortsighted as denying ourselves for the sake of someone else. Doesn’t even make sense.
It’s so much easier to twist our religion together with our politics and convince ourselves that Jesus hung on the cross and bled red, white, and blue. Makes much more sense to get on our high horses that giddy right on up to where we live so we can bash this group or that group and pretend that we’re the ones who are oppressed and persecuted — even as we pull the Jesus card to deny rights to our fellow Americans.
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Those of us who are part of that Kingdom believe that when we sacrifice ourselves that God will provide. It’s not presumption. It’s faith. We are willing to follow Christ’s example. We believe that God will sustain us, that His grace is sufficient for us, that He is sufficient. We believe it for ourselves. We believe it for our families. We believe it for entire countries.
I promise you, Jesus has ruined my politics.
He’s ruined my religion.
And He’s ruined my life.
Praise God.
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Daisy Rain Martin is an author, speaker, advocate, and educator as well as a founding member of The Flying M-Inklings Writing Group. Her comedic memoir, Juxtaposed: Finding Sanctuary on the Outside, was Christopher Matthew’s #1 top selling book in 2012. She has a free e-book on her website for anyone who has or is currently being sexually abused called, If It’s Happened to You. Her next book, Hope Givers: Hope is Here, will be out later this summer. Daisy is also the Editor in Chief of RAIN Magazine, an online magazine that has been a fundraising effort for her three favorite charities and features new, up-and-coming writers. Please follow her weekly blog, SATURDAISIES, which addresses a plethora of current issues including child advocacy, all things hilarious, and matters of the heart. She would love for you to join the Rainy Dais Community by friending her on Facebook and Twitter.