"Go back to the UK if you don't like America."
The typed words on the page shocked me. I love America, I'm a granddaughter of a World War Two vet and a military spouse. Service to country and fighting for its best is ingrained within my thinking. I grew up overseas and stood up for my country multiple times over there. The cruelty of the accusation stunned me. This was the beginning of realizing we were dealing with a mentality that should not have been tolerated by any Christian, but unfortunately, to the detriment of the witness of the Church in America, it was not only tolerated by fellow Christians, it was accepted and tolerated by loved ones who well knew I had grown up overseas. The cruelty of them all should not be tolerated.
Here's the issue: I was just receiving a nasty comment from a random person online. Yes, I've been foreign and experienced abuse for so being, so I have a lot of empathy for refugees and foreigners. I know what red tape is like when you are trying to cross borders. I once almost over-stayed my welcome in Germany and would have faced legal consequences if I had not checked the rules and got my visa in order. But I have never had to flee my country.
The abuse I was hearing would be launched face to face at living, breathing fellow human beings, by people who think they are Christians. "Go home!" would even be screamed online at women who preach or lead in churches, by evil men in positions of power in churches. And when I challenged that cruelty in a personal note to a pastor, I would receive a threat noting my work address. All I had said to him was, "You men are in serious sin. Repent." Then I linked an article about the "Go home" trope and how it triggers memories of Holocaust studies with me (and apparently others, too).
There is something seriously wrong in the American church. I have written about the lack of tenderness before, but this was on an even worse level. This was why I had written that. We have been sliding into fascist territory for some time, and it is the fault of Christians who think that cruel callousness is fine for the Christ worshiper. No it is not. These legalists send out missionaries to foreign lands, live in comfort in their own, and deny the poor entry on their borders, though they themselves have nothing they did not receive.
I don't understand them. I think their Calvinism has made them proud: they are entitled and think everyone else is less than because they were not given as much.
It's hard to communicate my disappointment in American Christianity, having been a missionary kid. It infuriates me, because they are so damned unkind. I've seen many Americans I once respected turn out to be entitled and arrogant abroad, and they miss the good things they should be learning from other cultures. The worst was seeing Christians despise and reject the poor and label children illegal.
We have had a policy of making unaccompanied children go to court, as if they should have to or are able to prove their worth here in the USA. Then under Trump, we had a policy of separating children from their parents or guardians, at a time when they are most vulnerable and need their family. And we had arrogant Christians saying, "it's very sad, but they should have come here legally."
It must be nice to be able to type that from the comfort of your American home, sipping your latte, eating your pie. You don't have to fear someone will extort you or shoot you if you stay. Many of those saying these evil things have no experience of immigration at all. They have no clue about the technicalities of presenting oneself at a port of entry to the United States. They have no respect for people who have walked miles to get here to save their families. Some of those who came here to claim asylum for the reasons mentioned, still had their kids taken away.
I have no patience for American Christians anymore. This world is hurting and suffering and dying and all they want is their comfort. They have no love, no compassion, and they kick those who are already down, from a position of abject entitlement. American Christians who say these things do not realize how spiritually wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked they really are.
You do not have to be a Liberation theologian to know God has a heart for the poor, and God's love for all creation is expressed throughout Scripture. Many have taken Jesus' words about always having the poor with you out of context to explain why they don't have to care about the homeless or the foreigner. Jesus would be outraged, because such cruelty is not what He meant by saying right now it is appropriate to honor me, and you have work to do when I am gone!
The hardest part of all this is watching people struggling to survive and being almost helpless against a cruel and Christian-backed government, to help. There are small things we can do, but we are up against a world of suffering and an apathetic church that has largely abdicated its responsibility by blaming the victims as illegal.
And we live in a country that purports to believe that all are created equal. While that is true, it is not apparent in how we treat each other or live. Some folks have had to struggle to survive, while other folks have everything and still kick those who are already down.
I don't get it. The worst comment I saw was when a mother and her children were tear-gassed on the border trying to make a run to enter the United States. "Gas them all," someone wrote.
Heartbreaking. Callous. Cruelty.
Never again is now: this nationalistic narcissism always ends in genocide of some kind.
We as a nation have caused irreparable harm to already traumatized children. And evangelicals want us to think positive and not talk about politics and sing to jeezus together. No, we cannot unite, while cruelty is the order of the day. Whether on our borders or on our streets towards people crying out in pain, when the force of the state is employed against the vulnerable, we are an evil nation, and there is nothing to be singing about right now. We should be in mourning. We should rebuke evil and reject the evil people around us, for the good of their souls.
I don't understand it.
How come South Americans are an "unreached people group" to send missionaries to, but when we have a global refugee crisis because of violence and poverty, suddenly we don't really care about those people anymore?
Could it be the American evangelical church thinks itself superior to the rest of the world? (I think that's why my parents went as missionaries to the lost continent of...England.)
What if, in fact, they are simply wretched, naked, pitiful and blind, making disciples that are twice the sons of hell they are? (Maybe that explains Brazil right now.)
If people matter, why don't illegal children deserve to have the comfort of their loved ones rather than the trauma of being used as a tool to harm their illegal parents?
Why is poverty treated like a crime by entitled evangelicals?
Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor man. Are not the rich the ones who oppress you, and the ones who drag you into court? James 2:5-6 ESV
What happened to the fact the church was started by poor and displaced folks? Where is the respect for the refugee with whom our God identified?
What if it were us in their shoes? What would we risk for safety and a better life?
I am probably preaching to the choir; I have made no headway with Trump-voting evangelicals, because they have decided this is a difference in opinion rather than what it really is: a difference in basic decency, pro-life ethic, Christian faith. I've had to cut them out of my life, because they have no love: and that lack extends to me.
I was a stranger, too, you see.
“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.42For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,43I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’44Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’45Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’46And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
Matthew 25 ESV
コメント