ANOTHER VIEW:
Global refugees need Christian care
___The people counters tell us that there are now 281 million of us living in these United States. That's more than they thought, and demonstrates that America is still the destination of choice for many who need a place of freedom, opportunity and safety.
___Miss Liberty still beckons the "wretched" of the earth, and none are more surely in that category than refugees. They have been coming to America for a long time, fleeing (among other things) famine in Ireland, persecution in Germany, oppression in Southeast Asia, poverty in Mexico and violence in Africa.
___But they are not just coming to America.
___Congolese are movin
g into Zambia, and governmental cruelty in Liberia and a civil war in Sierra Leone are forcing thousands into tiny Guinea, on the east coast of Africa. Earlier in the century, Armenians fled the Ottoman rule in Turkey and Muslims abandoned India for Pakistan. Jews left homes around the globe for Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, in turn, forcing Arabs into refugee camps all around the new Israel. Recently the world watched as Tutsis and Hutus fled each other, neither with any place to go.
___The politically correct word for all of this human tragedy is "unstable living conditions"; it speaks of diplomatic immunity. Better words are "meanness" and "wickedness."
___"Bad men and bad leaders abound," wrote Barbara Crossette in the New York Times. The article was called "The Century of Refugees Ends. And Continues."
___Readers of the Bible know about such things.
___There is a story, often overlooked, of Herod, "that fox." Even secular historians document his appalling violence, his insatiable appetite for revenge, and his irrational fears and insecurities (as we would call them today). He murdered most of his own family and demanded that thousands of citizens be killed on the day of his own death so as to ensure mourning on the occasion of his funeral. So we are not surprised when he sends his soldiers to murder the newborns in and around Bethlehem; the "slaughter of the innocents," it is called. Many died; but one family (maybe more?) fled. Mary, Joseph and their son Jesus became refugees, in Egypt.
___Families, churches and schools around our great country have "adopted" refugee families; my own church in Lexington, Ky., took in a family from Bosnia last year. While living in Pittsburgh a few years ago, our church helped a group of Hmong families from Laos resettle in the hills and valleys of the three rivers.
___Such acts of individual hospitality are vital and certainly reflect the compassionate message that runs through most of the world's great religions.
___But these occasional acts of kindness must be balanced by the organized acts of assistance that come through large church and government agencies.
___The Red Cross & Red Crescent, Refugees International, even the United Nations High Commission for Refugees deserve appreciation and support for their tireless efforts to serve the basic needs of millions of desperate, displaced people who, like Jesus, have nowhere to lay their heads.
___Missionary friends in Somalia spent all their days tending the needs of refugees fleeing famine, death, pestilence and war; the food, medicine and water they distributed was supplied mainly by the United Nations.
___Drink for the thirsty, food for the hungry, clothes for the naked and visitation to the imprisoned are never more "spiritually correct" than when done for those to whom we moderns have given the name refugee.
___Dwight A. Moody is dean of the chapel at Georgetown College in Georgetown, Ky.
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