It is not the refugees who need us, it is we who need the refugees.

On one day, in Feburary 2016, I was confronted by the dramatic need facing refugees from the Syrian crisis.

It was meant to be my day off but two phone-calls I received yesterday changed things.

The first phonecall was from a friend who is working with me on supporting one family who are currently in Lebanon after fleeing Syria, to come to Canada. We were expecting that the timeline would be 2-3 months, however we found that they would now arrive the following week.

The second phonecall was from the landlord of a young refugee from Congo, Thierry, who we have been supporting as a result of a number of bureaucratic stuff-ups. The landlord informed me that because his rent was not paid he would be evicted at the end of the day. After chatting to me we were given 24 hours to sort things out.

At the same time as these two things are happening, Donald Trump is in the news again. The Donald wants to build a big wall to keep all the Mexicans out of the USA. This comes after his announcement that he would ban Muslims from travelling to the U.S.

As the Pope pointed out, keeping out the people who are poor and who are different is not something a Christian would do.

My experience of trying to help my friend Thierry, and preparing to care for a family as they make the massive shift from the Middle-East to Alberta, has had me listening more closely to people’s attitudes towards refugees and the victims of oppression.

It turns out that a lot of people lean more in the direction of Trump than the Pope.

I can understand it. Most of us live very full lives and we expect to be able to find answers to any problems we face. We can’t easily identify with someone who has no answers available to them.

The great American myth is that anyone who works hard will not be in need, and therefore being in need means there is something wrong.

The impulse towards hard work is not wrong, and many of us have seen how giving unwarranted handouts can create huge problems.

We tend to unconsciously blame the poor for their own situation.

We like the world to be divided between the good guys and the bad guys, and we like to think that that the good guys win (by which we mean having stuff) and the bad guys lose (by which we mean miss out on “the good life”).

The problem is that some people actually need help. They can’t solve their problems by working hard.

The bible repeatedly says that four distinct groups of people require special care:

• The widows (single mothers)
• The orphans (homeless kids)
• The foreigners (refugees and people from different religions)
• The poor (people who don’t have what they need)

These groups are mentioned very often in the bible. Here is just a sample of the verses:

18 He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. 19 And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt.
(Deuteronomy 10:18-19 NIV)

3 This is what the Lord says: Do what is just and right. Rescue from the hand of the oppressor the one who has been robbed. Do no wrong or violence to the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place
(Jeremiah 22:3 NIV)

“This is what the Lord Almighty said:‘Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. 10 Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor.
(Zechariah 7:9-10 NIV)

These groups of people are the weakest groups in any society. They are those who cannot simply try harder to fix their own situation. They need help.

The bible asserts that those who have resources, (i.e. most people in North America, Australia or the U.K.) have a responsibility for those who don’t and will be judged accordingly.

The Pope is right and Trump is wrong.

As I engage with Theirry and prepare for the family’s arrival though, I think there is actually more to it than just impending judgement.

Western Christianity can tend to idealise the self-made-man. We like stories where people ascend to money and power. We don’t celebrate the weak or the poor, but the bible seems to turn our cultural version of Christianity on its head:

But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not —to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.
(1 Corinthians 1:27-29 NIV)

Jesus was born into a poor family who became refugees in the Middle East. Most scholars believe his mother became a widow before Jesus’s public ministry began, and as a result Jesus himself understood what it meant to be fatherless.

Jesus entered the world of all four groups that the bible identifies as those needing help, and from that position of weakness, changed everything.

Increasingly I think it is not the weak who need the strong, but the strong who need the weak.

It is not the refugees who need us, it is we who need the refugees.

We who are comfortable, need people who make us uncomfortable.

We who trust our money, need people who prove that it is possible to live without it.

We who take our safety and security for granted, need people who remind us how fortunate we actually are.

We who are surrounded with the opportunity for relationship but stay isolated, need people who remind us that our relationships are the most precious asset we will have this side of heaven.

I am really looking forward to seeing what caring for a family of Syrian refugees does for our church. I know it will be challenging. I know it will call us out, but I have a sense that we in the Western world need to be called out. We get full of ourselves, and we need to be shaken out of our self-sufficient arrogance.

I understand the impulse to build a wall. Its much more convenient to keep “them” over “there”. Its more convenient to distance ourselves from the pain.

If we take the wall-building approach to life, though, we need the intellectual honesty to face the fact that we are not living as Christians.

My favourite theologian, N.T. Wright, describes what it means to live your life as a Christian:

The Christian Vocation is to be in prayer, in the Spirit, at the place where the world is in pain, and as we embrace that vocation, we discover it to be the way of following Christ, shaped according to his Messianic vocation to the cross, with arms outstretched, holding on simultaneously to the pain of the world and the love of God.

We are called into the places of pain. We are called to break down the walls and let ourselves be challenged by those who need our help.

It’s not easy, and its certainly not comfortable, but we are called to be less like Donald Trump and more like Jesus.