5 misunderstandings evangelicals have about the Syrian refugee crises

Much of the Republican party is united on the issue of whether the U.S. should bring Syrian refugees into the nation and resettle them. However, within the evangelical Christian block of the party there is great division and many evangelical writers (or liberals looking to manipulate evangelicals) are pushing the Church to show the attitude of "the Good Samaritan" towards these refugees in the midst of the debate.

As an evangelical myself, I'm concerned that the trend within the demographic is to be vulnerable to getting yanked around by the heartstrings and thus be vulnerable to manipulation. I do not believe that the U.S. government should be bringing in Syrian refugees and have identified five misunderstandings that I think are leading Christians to be drawn in by the compassionate-sounding rhetoric of the President and evangelical leaders calling for a welcoming response.

Misunderstanding 1: This is going to end happily

The parallels being made to the parable of the good Samaritan and many other arguments for how Christians should welcome in refugees, show them love and healing, and allow them to become productive members of American society all tend to assume that easy, happy ending.

You'll notice that in one breath, people will talk about how the refugees will become grateful people who love this country and its values. In the next breath, they'll dismiss concerns about refugees by noting that most of the Paris attackers were French Nationals.

In other words, the attackers were people who had already been settled in the West and rather than embracing the culture ended up becoming radicalized and determined to try and destroy it.

Given all of America's struggles with race relations even amongst the diverse groups of people already living in the country, to assume that these people are all going to integrate happily, come to love the West and it's various values, and not be any more likely to shoot up locals then Joe Schmoe is frankly ridiculous. Wasn't that already made clear in the Boston Marathon bombings?

Importing Muslims from areas where radical Islam is popular is dangerous. Period. We shouldn't be having this debate without considering how these migrants are likely to integrate within the U.S. There's a reason people across France and Europe weren't shocked that some of the Muslims in their midst would prove to have murderous intentions.

Misunderstanding 2: The state of the union

Evangelicals are often accused of trying to impose religion on the state and force the state to make decisions based on their religion, which is probably a fair charge overall. Of course, everyone tends to vote and seek to influence the state and culture based on their most deeply held beliefs.

The real problem with many evangelical proposals is obfuscation between the role of the state and the role of the Church. Just as many Christians will readily agree that the job of a minister is not to prosecute criminals, the role of the state is not to serve as the good Samaritan for the foreigner.

In fact, this is the very opposite role of the state, which is to make sure that its own people are not beat up and left for dead in the streets.

What's more, this role of the state cannot be transformed by the wishful thinking of Christians or anyone else. A state that does not protect its citizens will cease to exist.

The state already has a major crises of legitimacy for its failure to protect the border, serve the interests of the non-rich, maintain economic growth that provides jobs, or maintain financial responsibility. It's not a wise decision to stack more burdens on that house of cards.

I wrote about this recently.

Misunderstanding 3: The state of the Church

It's not like the U.S. government is the only entity with a lot on its plate right now. The struggle for controlling influence over Western culture and politics is a major one for evangelicals right now and it's far from an established victory.

It'd be a dream if evangelicals could shape the West into a series of states that could be united, multicultural, and work well together with alliances, trade, and shared underlying values. Right now that's a goal of white Western liberals and it's going rather poorly because bringing in foreigners who don't share those same values tends to muck up the works.

What has happened is that we have a largely post-Christian society across the West that is increasingly decadent, mistrustful, and unequal. While it is appealing to think of the Western Church as being this entity that can be a beacon that absorbs all these problems and welcomes new challenges, it's simply not realistic at this time and attempting to proceed as though it were is not loving towards our current, actual neighbors.

If the parable of the good Samaritan was retold to accurately depict what's going on with the Syrian refugee crises it would be that the Samaritan has been slowly trying to summon up the courage and raise the funds to finally help the man who's been beaten and robbed when he hears that other people have been beaten and robbed elsewhere. So he runs, finds them, and then tosses them in the ditch with the robber's victim.

There's a lot of good intentions here without the capacity or will to actually understand or take on the issue.

Misunderstanding 4: How we got here

Assad's regime is a terrible one. Maintaining law and order in today's Middle East generally requires some very unpleasant policies quite different from what we see in the West. From the article linked just above:

"In Arab countries, except sometimes during the Arab Spring, disorganized street crime is surprisingly rare. That’s because Arabs know how to police Arabs. It’s not a pleasant subject to look into, but they don’t achieve law and order purely through police brutality. Besides using torture, police forces in Arab countries target criminals’ elders. When the senior members of the clan stand to lose from their grandsons’ viciousness, they find ways to keep them in line."
Oh...

So yes, Assad is a brutal dictator, but those are types that are generally capable of maintaining the kind of law and order needed in the region for people to have a hope of building productive lives. You'll notice that the apparent alternative to his regime is ISIS, hardly a peaceful and Western group of folks.

So why has the West been seeking to take down Assad? Even (probably) arming ISIS before it was realized that they aren't "al-qaeda's JV team"?

Because Assad was blocking the building of oil pipelines into Europe that would have made Europe less dependent on buying oil from Russia, the West's geo-political rival.

Without really involving the American people, the U.S. government has been acting to destabilize the Middle East in order to win an economic war against the Russians. When the result is disaster, civil war, and refugees, the American people are asked to pick up a bill they weren't aware they were accumulating. If they aren't interested in doing so they are guilt-tripped with evangelical Christians as a primary target.

Misunderstanding 5: How to beat ISIS and radical Islam

The overlap between today's issues and the Crusades of the past are numerous and stark.

The first classical error of both Christians and Western states in trying to figure out how to deal with violent, expansionist Islam is to go invade the region and try to establish a state there. This has never been done successfully unless you count Israel, which required importing millions of colonists and has been fraught with difficulty, tension, and expense.

In either instance, the West has been seduced by the valuable resources in the Middle East (either the Holy Land or the oil) and attempted to do something which it hasn't had the stomach, will, or knowhow to do. Just re-read the above section on how law and order is typically maintained in Arab states, it isn't accomplished through educating women, establishing Western-style democracies, and trying to re-make the culture in our own image.

The second classical error has been to compete and try to overthrow our Eastern Orthodox brothers (then Byzantium, now Russia) who should be considered a valuable ally and shield.

There were two sides to the Crusades, which represents the first time the West encountered violent, expansionist Islam. The first was to produce the mistakes mentioned above, the other side of the Crusades was what happened on the home front.

The West slowly pushed Islamist regimes out of traditionally Western nations and defended the eastern border carefully, diligently, and to the best of their ability. Knighthoods and hospitals were established to protect people and offer care across Europe.

Defensive warfare and cultural change has typically been what Christians have been able to effectively argue are "righteous causes" and not coincidentally that's also where Christians have tended to see the most success.

The answer to beating ISIS is not to invade the Middle East but to stop destabilizing the region as part of geo-political games, to stop welcoming the invaders into the West, to start protecting borders, to stop undermining our allies, and to re-shape our society around Crusader-values (chivalry) where men make it a priority to protect and care for the poor and helpless in our midst.

Four reasons that Christians should oppose the resettling of Syrian refugees within the West

As a people who are expected to be the "salt of the earth," Christians have a deeply felt responsibility to be on the moral high ground on every major public issue.

However, the influence of social media is such that the popular opinion that resonates most easily and rhetorically online is generally the one that will carry the day. Christians feel a compulsion to be seen on the side that is easy to stake out on the moral high ground.

The power of rhetoric is enormous in these discussions, much more so than careful, reasoned dialectic that is hard to articulate in 140 characters or in a Facebook status that people are simply glossing over.

Today the major debate is over what to do with Syrian refugees fleeing from a war-torn country. The easy moral high ground has generally been found in saying, "we must welcome these people and show them Christ's love in the midst of their brokenness!"

Then a few refugees were involved in the Paris attacks and things changed.

Today multiple US governors are flatly denying refugees access to their states in the name of protecting their citizens. This has been a divisive issue amongst the Church and it's for the simple reason that while fear and caution are very powerful motivators, it's hard to give a pithy reason for denying help and safety to people leaving a place of savagery and devastation that can be reconciled with the Church's call to be compassionate.

It's my belief that this is actually a very simple issue that is made murky by the difficulty in elucidating an argument for denying the refugees access to the US that is rhetorically effective at sounding Christ-like. If Christians can't be convinced that a position is in line with something that a follower of Christ should do then they are in a state of cognitive dissonance and division follows.

So here's a little bit of help to those that think wisdom or prudence would caution against welcoming Syrians into the west but are struggling to explain how this could possibly be the caring or loving response to what is a tragic and broken situation.

1. Accepting refugees is not the primary role of the state

Romans 13 lays out the importance of submission to governing authorities while laying out exactly what those authorities are primarily responsible for, which is maintaining law and order for their people. That is their God-given authority.

Much like a father has responsibility for his own family first, and a pastor has responsibility for his own flock first, the state is responsible for its own citizens above all else. In the same way that a father may be totally justified in not welcoming a young male vagrant who might be dangerous into his home where his wife and children sleep, a state is completely justified in not welcoming in an invasion of hundreds of thousands of young men from a violent and war-torn nation.

One of the more frustrating aspects of the refugee debate is that many of the voices calling for resettling are those of people who will be largely unaffected by their admission. The refugees aren't going to be settling into expensive neighborhoods where guilt-ridden white people live but into rougher areas in the inner city.

In that sense, many people calling for the welcoming of refugees today are much like a person shouting at a poorer man that he has a duty to welcome in the potentially dangerous young vagrant and put him up in his daughter's bedroom.

2. Accepting these refugees presents a danger to the state

If the people don't have security they aren't going to trust their government because that is the primary reason that it exists. A state's legitimacy is entirely based in fulfilling it's God-given duty to maintain order.

What liberals today don't understand is that the expansion of government services has not undermined the primary role of the government to provide security for its citizens, instead it's been an expansion of the types of security a government needs to offer in order to have legitimacy.

Americans and Westerners now have a greater expectation that their government provide retirement insurance, healthcare, and a robust economy. That means that the Western state is more vulnerable now than ever as it must maintain multiple types of security to maintain legitimacy with the people.

Welcoming in new dependents, many of whom have already proven to be dangerous law-breakers, makes it harder for the state to provide the forms of security that it must provide to be legitimate. The collapse of the Western state would be an international disaster and result in the spread of violence and disorder. If welcoming in millions of Syrians could contribute to that end it'd be best to avoid it.

3. The lessons of history say this is unwise

Of course the big issue is whether or not welcoming in potentially millions of Syrian refugees is actually a risky venture or whether this is just base fear. It's popular right now for people to discuss the history of refugees around the globe, and many of these takes seem to consider the movements of large groups of people avoiding conflict to be a modern phenomenon. Of course it isn't.

Let's talk about a group of people known commonly as the Goths.

The Roman empire was largely done in by external pressure from various Germanic groups, and was ultimately even sacked by the Vandals, but what is less commonly known is that many of these groups were welcomed into the empire as refugees, fleeing the brutality of the Huns.

The lessons of history are clear that when a large group of people migrate into a new land with vastly different people and values that things don't tend to end well. This was clear enough before radical Islamists from Syria and other Muslim nations decided to shoot up Paris.

It's common for people to readily believe in "magic soil," the idea that if you move large groups of people from any other region into the West that they will become Westerners and cease to hold the same values and views they held before. This is false and completely unsubstantiated by history. Welcoming in large, unassimilable groups of Syrians is going to have the effect of importing chunks of Syria into Western cities.

4. This is a military invasion

What's more, it's by an army that the West may not be able to defeat.

The nature of modern conflict is to tend towards 4th generation warfare, which is war between the state and non-state actors. While ISIS is attempting to build a state in Syria and surrounding country, their most effective form of fighting is with 4th generation fighters working against the state.

As we've seen in Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and elsewhere, Western militaries do not know how to win wars against 4th generation fighters. Sure they can take down a regime and collapse another state, but they struggle mightily to maintain order and rebuilt the state in the face of resistance from 4th generation forces.

That means that the most dangerous thing that can happen to the West is to invite 4th generation fighters from enemy soil into our own backyard. It's commonly being bandied about right now that all that is necessary for the west to beat ISIS is to try, which is complete hubris and flies in the face of everything we've witnessed to be true in the last several military conflicts in the Middle East.

Muslims attempted to conquer Europe once before, in the wake of Rome's collapse, and it took the Spanish several hundred years to "reconquista" their soil back and they didn't even have to deal with these modern tactics. Byzantium eventually went down and exposed Eastern Europe to invasion and brutal subjugation from the Turks, carefully driven back and kept at bay in part by ruthless and savage men such as Vlad Dracula. Yes, that Dracula. These are not experiences that the West should be eager to experience again.

Is every Syrian refugee a terrorist? Of course not! But importing the Syrian people into the West necessarily imports their problems as well and there can be no doubt that ISIS fighters or future ISIS fighters are in their midst and there is simply no way to filter them. Some of the Paris attackers were citizens, the Tsarnaev brothers were the sons of a non-hostile Chechen immigrant, it's inevitable that many of the Syrians who were not terrorists will find themselves unhappy in the West and become a pool of potential recruits for ISIS. This has already happened.

It's simply not realistic to believe that the West can absorb all these people into the population without exposing themselves to serious risk. It's not in the state's interests to do this.

Is there a solution?

No doubt a big issue for many Christians is the need for a positive and hopeful answer, a solution that can at least attempt to address the trauma and brokenness inherent in the situation.

The most obvious solution is not to topple and de-stabilize any more states in the Middle East. The U.S. undoubtedly contributed to this mess by trying to help Syrian rebels destroy the Assad regime in a power play against Russia (Syria controls oil pipelines into Europe that Russia wants closed so they can sell their own oil to Western consumers).

The West has played games in the Middle East for too long and are now expecting their citizens to pay the price for their mistakes. Let's not double down on foreign policy failures of the past.

The West would do well to yield to the Russians and help Assad re-establish control and order within Syria while encouraging and equipping the young men fleeing the state to stay and do their part to build a future for their own women and children.

There's also the fact that many of the surrounding states in the Middle East have been refusing to accept refugees. What's a better solution for the Syrian refugee crises, that they be moved across to the West where there are major cultural differences, inevitable divisions and violence, and consequently a huge strain on the state? Or temporarily to a neighboring Arab or Muslim state while the West helps to re-establish order in Syria?

Welcoming an invasion that will be used by ISIS to weaken the West, while easy to promote in compassionate-sounding rhetoric, is not the best solution for anyone involved. So if you agree that this is a bad solution and that the west should not welcome the refugees, you can argue that you oppose the resettling of refugees because Godly and just governance needs to be cautious and wise.

ISIS has hidden wolves amongst the sheep and there are those unwittingly doing the same with compassionate-sounding arguments that cloak and justify disastrous policy ideas. Let's be gentle as doves but wise as serpents in how we approach this immensely complicated issue.

The irony of the anti-patriarchy movement

One of the main aims of modern "progressives," particularly the social justice warriors who work hard to advance the cause of cultural marxism and destroying traditional authority structures, is to "take down the patriarchy."

The idea is to take down a male-dominated society, which would seek to keep women down and away from power. Complaints about traditionalist patriarchy would include men treating women as sensitive and shielding them from certain responsibilities or hearing harsh things.

The expression, "there's a lady present," used to indicate that someone should avoid using profanity or harsh language would be a classic example of the kind of patriarchy that modern feminism is seeking to destroy.

An example of the progressive move to replace the patriarchy has to include things like President Obama's "life of Julia" ad from the 2012 campaign in which voters are taken on a hypothetical journey with a woman in her life in which the state provides all of the protection and benefits she needs to thrive that would normally be provided by her father and then husband.

Naturally, the University system plays a major role in this as well, yet progressives never seem to catch the tremendous irony from a scene such as this one:



That's a young feminist at Yale unloading on a professor who suggested that responses to Halloween costumes were overly sensitive and that adults shouldn't try to dictate what other adults wear. The student screams at this professor, explaining that "creating a safe home" for students should be the goal of Yale University, not creating an intellectual climate in which different voices are allowed to be heard.

"Trigger-warnings" and "safe speech" are now common buzzwords at Universities where young women outnumber young men and are expecting the University to provide for them in the way that young men or their fathers aren't. These measures are really no different from saying, "hush, there's a lady present," all that has changed is the politics behind the sentiment.

You see, apparently the aims of "The Patriarchy," which were to protect and shield women, aren't the problem for these people. The problem seems to be that absentee fathers and emotionally/mentally-weak young men are failing to fill the role society needs them to fill and the result is a generation of bitter children who have a deep mistrust in traditional authority figures.

It's a huge problem, and the failure of both the state or the University system to fill the gap is going to become increasingly apparent.

Jeb and the desperation of the Republican establishment

Jeb's campaign is desperate right now to take down Marco Rubio, which if you examine the polls would seem like a pointless thing to attempt to do given that Rubio is not exactly at the top of the field.

It all begins to make more sense if you read this. The upshot is that, out of fear of the anti-establishment movement and Ted Cruz's potential for uniting it, the establishment did all they could to rig the primary to allow Jeb Bush to win.

Their goal was to use a wide field and "winner takes all" voting rules to set up Jeb to survive the early rounds and then surge to the top at the end, particularly after he (surely!) won the Florida primary.

It's worth pausing to note how extraordinary and ridiculous it is that both parties would insist on forcing a Clinton and a Bush as the choices for the voters. Sheer hubris.

On the GOP side they have two external problems and one internal problem.

The external problems are Marco Rubio and Donald Trump. The Donald is a problem because he's the perfect foil to the insecure and weak Jeb who happens to be strong on an issue that the party's base cares deeply about whereas Jeb couldn't be weaker thanks to his deep connections with Mexico (both business and personal).

Rubio is a problem because the same process of rigging the nomination for Jeb could work equally well for Rubio if the establishment decided to roll with him instead. Trump is a problem, but if you assume that he won't win enough votes to get the nomination, or that he'll run out of steam, he's less of a problem than Rubio taking Jeb's place as the anointed candidate.

The internal problem is that Jeb is a weak candidate. He may have been an effective governor in Florida and a policy wonk, but he's poor for the role of being the figurehead leader of either the nation or the power broker who's interests he represents. Every time he tries to confront Trump or Rubio it becomes more apparent how weak he is, imagine him trying to stand up to Clinton or Putin...

He also very transparently represents a style of governing and power brokers that no dominant faction in America is remotely interested in seeing put in charge. The Republican base deeply distrusts the establishment and particularly the establishment figures behind the disastrous Bush presidency. The Democrat base might hate them even more.

While the Democrats may be successful in ramming Clinton down the throats of their constituents, I don't think the GOP is going to be able to convince their base to accept Jeb.

When you watch the Bush attempt to say that he was totally oblivious of his campaign's recent attempt to take down Rubio you can tell that this has all gone horribly wrong for the GOP establishment. And then you have to shake your head and chuckle.