My entire life, I have sought to put a face on evil. To give evil a name. I wanted to eliminate evil in the world CIA style: find the mastermind, kill him, and restore peace.
What I found however, was a very different matter.
Walking into the refugee camps, I had a mission, well, two actually.
First, do what Jesus said: feed the hungry, heal the sick, etc.
Second, I needed to find out who was behind all this. It was Isis right? The only target on which to place the blame was Isis.
I made many friends and formed quite a vocabulary of Arabic, Farsi, and other dialects from the Middle East, and thoroughly enjoyed our friendship. Eventually i got to the point where I could ask them questions about the situation, and here’s what I discovered.
Isis is fighting for radical Islam and kills those who don’t join them. Assad is fighting because he is the president. There are over 100 different factions of fighters in Syria alone. Iraqis are running from persecution by their neighbors who don’t approve of their Sunni/Shiite marriage, the Iranians hate the Afghans because of their stereotype, and afghans are the recipient of much racism. Kurds can’t be deported to turkey because of religious differences, and the Saudis who offered to take refugees won’t take certain ones.
As I stood back mentally and examined the spiderweb of who hates who and why, I asked, why can’t we just get them to Europe and America then?
My friend explained that most refugees want legal citizenship, but in order to do so, they had a 6 year waiting list. 6 years of not being able to work and living solely in a camp.
Furious now, I span in circles. My spiritual gifts are mercy and logistics, and these two were set against each other as the situation became more and more complex daily.
I wanted a single face, a single name to blame, and now there were too many. Faces of men and women, Iranians and Iraqis, Sunnis and Shiites, afghans and Syrians…..all these faces played a part in this huge mess. Then I noticed that the more I looked, the more their faces looked like mine.
Their anger, fear, mistrust…..was my fear, anger, and mistrust.
Their love for family, devoutness to their God, and desire to prosper….was my love, devoutness, and desire.
There is no difference between the Jew and the Greek…..for the same God is Lord over all.
I realized that the face I’d been looking to destroy, the mastermind to kill, was inside both of us.
As with everything, it starts with my relationship with God. As God frees me from my anger and pride, so God will use me to free them from theirs.
Sin is not unique, it cannot be beaten by the UN, immigration reforms, or by Facebook rants; it can only be beaten by us walking and living in the freedom which has been given to us by Jesus.
