In the wake of the recent Paris attacks, 26 governors of states across the U.S. have issued statements barring Syrian refugees from entering their states. My Facebook feed has been filled with opinions, calls to prayer, and horrible photos of refugees in camps across Europe.
I’d like to address you, the governors of these states. I hail from one of them- Texas, second largest state in the nation, with our own crisis at the border ongoing. And next month 27 members of my squad of missionaries will be going to Greece to help alleviate the suffering of the refugees streaming out of Syria.
I have a simple request: remember your humanity.
Let the photos of Aylan, the three-year-old drowned off the coast of Greece, make you think about your own children. Let the stories of desperation and despair touch you in a way that makes you uncomfortable. Most of all, when someone asks you what Jesus would do, pause. Look at your Bible, or pray.
But pause and consider.
My parents went to a talk by Red Goldstein, a board member at Brite Divinity School. He spoke about the third commandment, which says, “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.” In Hebrew, Mr. Goldstein said, the word “take” is best translated as “carry,” as in, “Do not carry the name of the Lord in vain.”
The commandment is about carrying the name of the Lord on your life like a promise. If we carry the name of the Lord in vain, then we turn our back on what it means to be a believer; we turn our backs on God in a way much worse than saying shit every now and then.
When the Lord told us not to carry His name in vain, he was commanding that we live brave and true lives, lives that hold the Lord at the center like a deep well in a desert.
How, then, can we claim to be Christians and withhold basic human dignity from others? How can we look at refugees dying on beaches and tell them that Jesus didn’t mean it when he asked us to feed the hungry, heal the sick, welcome the strangers?
I’m asking you, Governors, to either remember your humanity or stop clothing your xenophobia in Christian imagery.
Jesus healed the Samaritan child and gave the good news of himself to an outcast, Samaritan woman. He ate with tax collectors and prostitutes, stopped powerful men from stoning an adulterous woman, and died on a cross at the hands of a government who viewed him as a dangerous refugee.
Jesus is not on your side, and he might not be on mine, either.
But he is on the side of the children breathing in saltwater, the people pressed into train cars and clutching the flimsy sides of boats, the ones who have lost the very thing we have to offer: a home.
