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.
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