Are refugees an invading army of terrorists?

"This is my country now," said Abu Abdullah. "No one can say I am Iraqi. I am an American. If I need to defend my country, even to attack Iraq, I am ready to do that."



A Muslim father buries his son with honor at Arlington

On a recent visit to Nashville, Tennessee, I visited newly arrived refugees from the Middle East.  I was reminded how important it is that Americans understand this situation clearly so that our nation can respond in a way that reflects our national values. There's so much false information being hyped by merchants of fear and politicians desperate for votes.

Rest in Peace, Humayun Khan, American Hero

Najib is a recent immigrant from the northern Iraqi region of Kurdistan. "I'm tired, I've been working ten hours every day, six days every week," he said. "But freedom takes work. If you want the freedom you have to go out there and work for it." He is excited that his children are in school and learning English. He's hoping to bring over many of his brothers and sisters who still live in the war-torn region.



These immigrants are hoping for their children to fit into the new culture. "We want the children to learn English," said Mohammad, who arrived from Baghdad less than a month ago. "It's the language of the world. Arabic is limited." He described the situation in his area of Baghdad as being so bad that one could not safely leave the house.



This facebook meme sums up the anti-Muslim arguments.

"I am looking for work. I am ready to work, I just need help to get my social security card." Ahmad has been in the US less than two months. He is hoping to get work and establish himself so that he can bring over his family. It is normal for the young men to come first, and brings wives, sisters, and parents later.



There are many political pundits decrying the dangers of accepting these Muslim refugees. There are supposed plots to infiltrate America and Europe with terrorist cells who will impose Sharia Law on unsuspecting westerners.


This is the question before us. Are they coming to kill us and then take over? Is this a cloaked Islamic invasion?

Myth#1 They are coming here to Islamize the West.

I spend a lot of time in the homes of Syrian refugees, talking to them about their despair and hopelessness, and also their hopes and dreams.  They hate radical Islam.  They are fleeing from it. One family that I know well fled specifically to keep their children from being radicalized in school. One father described to me his desire to live in any area that is not under the rule of Islam. Instead of flooding to the Islamic State, Muslims are fleeing it by the millions, and their rejection of the Islamic State is a major embarrassment and challenge to the legitimacy of the Islamic State.

The reasons that they are fleeing to the West are not surprising.  UNHCR lists many of the major reasons, including poverty and loss of hope. My Syrian friends often express that they no longer see a future in Syria even if the war ends soon. Whole cities are laid waste.  Families are broken apart by death and division.  Many people are injured both physically and psychologically from the war.


Myth #2 The Islamic State is sending a "secret army" to infiltrate the West

Traveling to join the Islamic State is the example of Abraham

People are spreading this because they are ignorant of the beliefs and practices of the Islamic State. The Islamic State preaches "Hijrah" which is the call of all Muslims to come and live in the Islamic State. It is preached as a religious duty for men and women to move to and live in the Islamic State, just as the early Muslims all flocked to Medina to join the first Islamic State in the days of Mohammad. They devoted an entire edition of their online magazine to describing how important it is to come and live in the Islamic State.  They want the refugees more than the West wants them, but the refugees don't want to live under their oppressive rule. The Islamic State wants you to fear and reject refugees so that they will be forced to return to the domain of the Islamic State. Don't let them manipulate your fear and use you for their evil purpose.

Myth #3 The US will be overrun by chaos like Europe

Europe is not being overrun by chaos, but even if that were the case, it will not happen in the US.  When people use what is happening in Europe to predict what will happen here, they forget something very important: The Atlantic Ocean.  Europe is working to control an immigration situation that is building at their borders.  Refugees who come to the US will do so on an airplane, as part of a tightly controlled process. The Muslim population in the US is less than 1%, and taking on an additional 200,000 refugees will raise it to -still less than 1%.  Muslims are dispersed throughout the US population and have shown very little tendency to form enclaves.

These men are not imposing Judaism on anyone

Myth #4 They will establish Sharia Law

The Constitution does not allow any religious law to be imposed on people.  If Muslim immigrants want to live under Sharia court ruling, they can do what numbers of Jewish and Catholic citizens already do -voluntary arbitration.  It's not legally binding unless both parties agree for it to be so.  Are there any areas in the US where citizens are forced to live under Jewish of Catholic law? Again, most of them have no desire to live under Sharia Law anyway, and the ones who do cannot ever force it on anyone else.

Myth #5 They will stay on welfare

Muslim Americans are middle class and main stream. They are well educated, well integrated into society, and at least as affluent as the national average.  This is especially true of immigrant Muslims.  Poor Muslims are often converts from the spread of Islam among poor, black Americans in prison populations.

Myth #6 We should send them back

This is an evil idea. Sending refugees back into a war zone is wicked.  We look back now in horror at the stories of Jewish refugees who were turned away.  We recoil at the idea that ships had to return Jews to their deaths because no one wanted them, or trusted them.  The voices of fear and bigotry caused our nation, and others, to commit an evil act.  We must not listen to those voices again.  We must rebuke them.  For the people fleeing the Islamic State, ad the butchery of the Assad regime, this is life and death.

What to Do When You're Married to an Abuser

For most of us, our marriage is our most important relationship. It builds friendships, social networks, and may even give us children. What do we do when it turns rotten at the core? What does one do with an abusive spouse?

The first and most important question is whether he's hitting you. If he is, stop reading this now, grab what little you can, and get out. Finish reading this later. Go to your Mom. Go to your Pastor. Go to a trusted friend. You are living with an ungodly man. Don't let him hit you or your children. When Jesus said “turn the other cheek,” he was teaching against violence. Jesus lived in an age where people responded to insults with violence. He was teaching that insult and injustice do not merit a violent response. They do merit a response. Find a better way to respond. Jesus never, ever meant that your husband can hit you. Now go, get out of the house if you haven't already.

If he's “just” being a manipulative, mean-spirited jerk who treats you like trash, then don't take that either. I want to talk specifically in this blog about a situation where a man claims to be a Christian, but mistreats his wife. If you have married an unbeliever, against the teachings of the scriptures, then I do pity you just as much but I have far fewer answers for your situation.

First, much evil has been taught from Ephesians 5:22-33. It does not mean “shut up and take it because he's the man.” Much of this false teaching can be undone simply by backing up one verse (to verse 21) and reading that into the context of the passage. “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” Christians must live lives of submission to one another -in every facet and relationship of our lives. We submit to the authority of the Church, we submit to our parents, and we submit to one another. What follows in Ephesians teaches the path of submission for husbands and wives, but do not forget that both submit.

Starting in Ephesians 5 verse 22 we read:

Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

This is usually all we get to hear, and even that is poorly taught. The scripture tells wives to submit to their husbands as you do to the lord, and as the Church submits to Christ. How do we make that submission? Do we submit ourselves to God because he is harsh with us, and unjust? Do we submit ourselves to God because he hurts us and dominates us? God forbid! This would make us morally superior to God! The Bible tells us exactly why we submit to God. In 1 John 4:19 we read that “We love because he first loved us.” We cannot love God, we cannot submit to God, except that he loved us first. Wives, submit to your husbands in that same way -because he loved you first. If he does not treat you with love -not just words, but deeds also- he has no claim on your submission.

In Ephesians 5 verse 25 we read:

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word...

How has Christ loved the Church? How much did Christ sacrifice himself for his beloved? Don't we sing hymns of praise to Him for these things? Isn't he our Lord because of how he loved us and sacrificed himself for us? Has anyone shown greater love than laying down his life? Don't you dare to show your wife Ephesians 5:22 until you are living this example of love.

In Ephesians chapter 5 verse 28 Paul continues:

In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church—for we are members of his body.

If you are abusing your wife emotionally, physically, verbally, or in any other way, you are doing it because you hate yourself. If you loved yourself you could love her. You should hate yourself. You are a mean-spirited, selfish, violent, self-serving, manipulative sinner. You need to experience what real love means before you can love yourself or love her. Quit pretending you're a religious man and run to Jesus. Run now. Learn from Him how to love so that you can be the man she should respect.

What do I do if he won't listen?

Jesus taught a simple formula in Matthew 18:15-17. Remember, if he is hitting you, this is moot. You do not have a marriage. You should be out of the house.

1) Talk to him yourself in private. Let him read this. Pray that he will be convicted. This is the hardest step, but don't skip it. If he won't listen go to step 2.

2) Take someone with you to talk to him. It might be a family member, friend, counselor, you need a third party involved. If he still won't listen, go to step 3.

3) Take it to the Church. This might mean your Elders, your Pastor, trustees, a bishop, or some other leader or leadership group. It doesn't mean that you get on the phone and start calling people and spreading gossip. Use whatever accountability structures that you can find. If your Church does not have any accountability, then it is not a Church, it is a cult.

I don't know if this will help you in your situation, I pray that it does. Hopefully it will at least encourage you that you should not live in misery. The truth will set you free.

With the Cross of Jesus, Marching on Before

In situations of conflict Christians often find themselves accomplices in war, rather than agents of peace. We find it difficult to distance ourselves from our selves and our own culture and so we echo its reigning opinions and mimic its practices. As we keep the vision of God's future alive, we need to reach out across the firing lines and join hands with our brothers and sisters on the other side. We need to let them pull us out of the enclosure of our own culture and its own peculiar set of prejudices so that we can read afresh the “one Word of God.” In this way we might become once again the salt to the world ridden by strife.  -Volf, Miroslav (2010-03-01). Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (p. 54). Abingdon Press. 

Volf's book is a sometimes meandering read, but it's given me occasion to think about what the scriptures teach Christians about priority.  In particular, it is helping me to consider how we as Western Churches respond to events in the East.  I will not engage in political commentary, but there is an issue of Christian faith which requires consideration.

After failing to found a cohesive community at Athens with his eloquent preaching, the Apostle Paul moved on to Corinth determined to preach only one thing:  "Jesus Christ, and him crucified."  In the simple statement we see that the cross is the foundation of the Christian community (Volf, p. 47).  It defines who belongs to the community, and the basis for interpersonal relationships within the community.

The community requires primary allegiance from members.  "If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple," Jesus said (Luke 14:26).  All other relationships are formed at the behest of the Cross.  We honor our father and mother because it is the way of the cross.  We love our wife and our earthly family because the cross leads us to love.  All of our relationships are restored and prioritized by the cross.  "Love one another," the cross calls to us, and so we love.

And stretching out His hand toward His disciples, He said, 

"Behold My mother and My brothers!"

The cross establishes our relationships with the secular world as well.  We are told to live quiet lives, to submit to the governing authorities, and to honor the King.  In the modern context, this means that we should be good citizens, but we are reminded that our Kingdom is not of this world.  Our citizenship bows to and serves the cross.  There is only one Church, which spans all cultures, through the suffering of Christ on the cross (Volf, p. 51).

Nowhere is this more relevant than the relationship between Churches in cultures that are in conflict.  When there is a clash of cultures or nations, Christians must first look across the conflict and find those members of our Church that are on the other side.  The first allegiance is always to the cross, and to our community founded upon it.  Opposing the "enemy" must be secondary to embracing our brethren.

In the context of the Arab world, western Churches must realize that they have communities of Christian brothers and sisters in many nations of the region.  While we might be quick to support Christians in the pro-western countries, Christians living in "pariah states" and the "axis of evil" are no less deserving of our love and faithfulness, and of our embrace.

I Me Wed?

My wonderful wife of 20 years is sick this morning, and as a dutiful husband I sat on the couch and watched a chick flick with her.  Normally my eyes glaze over and I think about video games for a couple of hours, but this movie caught my interest a bit because it stepped outside the normal wedding story/love triangle memes that define chick flicks.  The protagonist decides to marry herself in order to address the constant urging of her friends and family to get married.

Narcissisitc, Moi?

We have a problem in our society with foisting off marriages on the unprepared.  How can we act surprised at our astronomical divorce rates when our society is feeding that machine constantly?  Nowhere is this mistake more common than in the Church itself.

Some time ago I read an article about an elderly minister who passed away after many years spent performing weddings at a Chapel in the Smoky Mountains.  In the article it was mentioned that he had performed thousands of weddings over the years as a Chaplain.  While many people commented on how wonderful this was, I found it tragic.  Now, I have nothing against eloping for Chapel weddings.  My parents travelled to Georgia for a Chapel wedding and enjoyed almost fifty years of good marriage before my father passed away.

But there are crosses on

the top so it's still official.

I am opposed to ushering people into marriages for which they are not prepared.  You see, while this gentleman may have performed thousands of ceremonies, he didn't provide Biblical counseling for the couples.  There's no evidence that he tried to determine if they are believers.  He did a cultural ceremony with the trappings of Christianity thrown over it.  What makes this a shame is that this supposed minister of the Gospel should have known better, the Bible is very clear on these issues.

Ministers:
You are window dressing.  Jesus said "What God has joined together, let no man break apart."  God joins a believing man and woman in a holy covenant.  This means that no matter how much you read from the Bible, no matter how many times you pray, and no matter how many crosses are in the building, you cannot join anyone in marriage.  You cannot make anything Holy, Pastor.  You cannot join adulterers or non-believers in marriage.  You are window dressing, so act like it.

Several years ago a faithful Christian friend told me that his wife was divorcing him to marry another man.  She wasn't "happy."  What irked me most is that she had already planned her wedding with the Pastor of a Church in Albertville.  I understand grace and forgiveness, and fully believe that divorced people can repent and move forward with their lives, even remarrying when repentance and forgiveness are done.  But, you don't get to play that card if you are planning your wedding and divorce at the same time.  Jesus called that "adultery."  Shame on that Pastor who thought he could make that union Holy.  It was unholy, right there in the Church building.

This is not the important part.

What you can do is provide Biblical counseling to help couples know if this is God's will for them.  Confront them with the Gospel and make sure they understand the marriage covenant.  Try to talk them out of marriage if you can.  One couple came to me about marriage because she was pregnant.  This was not about a couple wanting to get married before God.  This was a divorce waiting to happen, complete with child custody battles and bitter, broken lives.  Thank God they listened to Biblical counsel and did not marry.

Friends and Family:

Every time you have the uncontrollable urge to pressure someone to get married, cut off one of your fingers with a knife.  When you have experienced that level of pain, then you can understand what you are inflicting on your beloved friend.

But I really, really want grandchildren

If you actually want to help your child, friend, or family member, discourage them from marriage, because that's what the Gospel does.

Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am.  But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

What?  Remain unmarried?  Who will love my child/friend?  What good purpose can s/he have without getting married?  Here's a crazy thought... How about God?  Can we trust him to give purpose and love?

I would like you to be free from concern. An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord’s affairs—how he can please the Lord. But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world—how he can please his wife— and his interests are divided. An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord’s affairs: Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit. But a married woman is concerned about the affairs of this world—how she can please her husband. I am saying this for your own good, not to restrict you, but that you may live in a right way in undivided devotion to the Lord.

Instead of pointing our children to the wedding chapel for purpose, let's point them to the Creator of the altar.  If you truly believe that God made your friend/family member for a purpose, then that must be the most important thing in his or her life.

The crazy girl in "I Me Wed" seemed to understand that concept better than most Christians.  Ironically, she married her boyfriend at the end of a movie.  It is, after all, just a chick flick.  The whole message of the movie was sold out to the inevitable plot ending required by the genre.

Let's not sell out the message of the Gospel that way.

Whom would Jesus hug?

A friend recently shared with me a blog about a group of Christians who did something very radical.  That always gets my interest going, especially if it's the sort of radical thing that Jesus might do.

"Occupy Golgatha: Saving the 100%"

In this case, they attended a gay pride parade to apologize for all the hatred poured out against homosexuals by some within the Church.  It struck me as a very Christ-like response.  Because of their Christ-like love, something incredible happened.  People responded.

If you don't think Jesus would hug this guy, then get your Bible ready.

Here's what I'm not trying to do:  I'm not trying to redefine what the scriptures say about homosexuality.  It's pretty clear, just as it is about other sins like gluttony, arrogance, pride, greed, and hatred.

Here's what I am trying to do:  I'm trying to start a conversation about priorities that are based on solid Biblical teaching.  These priorities are spelled out clearly and repeated over and over to try to get them through our thick skulls.

When most Christians encounter a homosexual, they assume that this person's biggest problem is homosexuality.  If only that could be "cured" then the person would be OK.  In fact, the same mistake is made about  Muslims, alcoholics, or any other group that doesn't crowd into Church on Sunday morning. But, even if these people got past their "problem" would they be right with God?  Isn't it about more than that?  I submit to you, gentle reader, that we have confused the Great Physician with Dr. Phil.

Nice guy, good Doctor, can't save souls

You see, what we all need is Jesus.  Please don't ever lose sight of that simple truth.  He gave himself to die on a cross so that we would understand love, mercy, grace, and forgiveness.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.

Love must be our first response.  If we try to preach to people that we aren't willing to love, it's only noise.  If you can't love, the Bible says, your good advice is just meaningless noise.

Love is patient, love is kind. 

 I looked for "Love is tough" and it wasn't on the list.  Maybe there's a time for that, but before we decide what love ought to be, should we not practice what God says it should be?  Why do we think we get to rush past "patient" and "kind?"  How can we expect people to take our Bible seriously if we are not willing to do so?

Very entertaining, poor theology

Great sermons will not bring people to know Jesus.  Lectures on morality will not lift the heavy burden of a troubled heart.  Judgement is not ours to give to the world.  Let's be real, is any of us without sin?  If the Church is anything, it is a place for sinners to find grace.

After all, is it my business to judge outsiders? You are to judge those who are in the community, aren't you? God will judge out­siders. 

We're supposed to give love first.  I lay a challenge before you, reader, one that I will take up myself.  If there is a person in your life, or a group of people, to whom you have shown judgement but not love, make that right.  It may mean an apology, perhaps even a hug.  Don't waste another day moralizing instead of loving.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.