Most
mornings I skim the news of Rwanda, Uganda, and the United States.
Heaven is my home. Yet, these three nations have given me hospitality
on my missionary journey. I also most mornings read my Bible. In
these disciplines I try to make sense of life and respond appropriately.
An issue in the newspapers in all three nations is immigration and
refugees. I acknowledge the economies and histories of these nations
are different. I acknowledge the neighborhoods around each nation are
different. I acknowledge the pertinent legalese of each nation’s
immigration policies are different. Yet, I do believe each one has a
pertinent voice to the Global Church. I also believe each nation’s
refugee experience speaks to great truths of our shared humanity. I’d
like to offer 12 missionary reflections on refugees from this journey.
Rwanda has a population of 11.8 million. She has over 150,000 refugees
in her midst. Most come from neighboring nations. Recently, Rwanda
begin accepting 500 refugees from abroad who were stranded in Libya.
Uganda has a population of 44.3 million. Uganda hosts 1.3 million
refugees. The United States has a population of 327.2 million.
Since the USA doesn’t have refugee camps and processes refugees to
become citizens it’s difficult to get a count of how many in the USA
have a recent refugee experience. At one point the USA was the leading
nation in the world to receive refugees from camps and process them into
citizenship. At some points that has been more than 200,000 people in a
year. Recently, that number has been cut to 18,000. The USA has lost
global leadership. The infrastructure of resettlement is being
dismantled. Even if the policy changes it will take several years to
rebuild infrastructure.
With all these nations here are some common
themes of humanity I see:
1. Empathy is a learned behavior.
For instance, if refugee living is part of a significant portion of a
nation’s population’s history, they will intuitively create hospitality
for others. To make it personal my wife, Jana was born in Cameroon
after her family was evacuated from Nigeria due to the Biafra War. I
intuitively feel a level of shared suffering with Nigeria. I
intuitively feel appreciation for hospitality when I meet a Cameroonian.
I intuitively wonder each time I meet a refugee how similar they are
to my wife. I intuitively want to help refugee situations.
I notice
shared communal empathy among many Ugandans and Rwandans and Americans
who are one to two generations removed from refugee living.
2.
Privilege because one’s ethnicity, race, nationality and religion is
real. Refugee settlement simply by the numbers is fundamentally
unjust. Jana’s family had a much better outcome than the ordinary
Nigerians who fled their nation due to the Biafra War. Being a white,
American missionary created a multiple of better options in chaos. For
many that awareness of privilege creates a later sense of
responsibility.
3. Proximity to a neighboring nation’s chaos
creates unavoidable situations. Distance creates choice. Economic
resources aren’t divided by nations based upon the nation’s virtue.
Sometimes you just must deal with the problem. If you make the same
choice over and over it becomes part of a corporate national character.
Uganda is an example of this. She couldn’t avoid the chaos of
neighboring nations and just had to deal with millions of refugees
pouring over her borders. In that process a national value of
hospitality developed as well as the practical infrastructure to deal
with refugees.
4. Refugees always create a stirring of national
debate. Every refugee surge brings public scrutiny. Who are these
people? Why are the here? Will they make us unsafe? Do we have the
resources to care for them? Can’t another take responsibility? Is
there a way to turn them back? I remember these questions in
contemporary news every time there was a refugee surge. Yet, I can’t
ever remember in a history book those who treated refugees out of fear
being affirmed.
History’s consensus affirms nations who are hospitable
to refugees. History’s consensus also looks with regret and disdain
to those who turn away refugees.
5. If a nation has a recent
memory of day by day living in poverty and most people attend a
local
church, they are more willing to take risks of hospitality for refugees.
The memory of surviving when the odds of survival were minimal
create a national sense like Jesus feeding the 5,000. It’s not so
scary to just keep your door open and table available if you too have
been fed in the past when you should have gone hungry. As a nation
grows in her distance from day by day faith in providence, she loses her
sense of responsible hospitality.
6. Yes, refugees are
initially economic takers from systems. Yet, that doesn’t last long
even in the poorest of nations. All nations have jobs that almost no
one born as a citizen in that nation wants to do. Refugees are the ones
who take the most difficult jobs. Without their presence at the low
end of employment many industries would stagnate. Look at the those
washing dishes, sweeping floors, picking fruit in fields, and cleaning
up after livestock to see these refugees as economic contributors.
7. Refugees also many times increase the security and decrease the
crime rate in their host nation. They give access to detailed
information about the situation they fled so that security operations in
the host nation can be better prepared. They also typically move in
family units. As a family unit the most basic instincts are to avoid
trouble, follow the law, get an education, go to church, stay married,
and work. Refugees rarely have unoccupied time to stir up problems in
their host nation.
8. For those whose loyalty is to the Kingdom
of God more so than their national identity a multiple of benefits
happen over time even if they stay as refugees for generations in
their host nation. Their sense of
dual citizenship to earthly nations
can feel troubling to those who only have one sense of nationality.
Yet, the kingdom does remarkable things with dual national loyalties.
Probably, the best examples are in the Bible with leaders such as Moses,
Daniel, and Paul.
9. If the refugees come from a nation that
doesn’t have a strong Christian tradition and arrive
in a nation with
strong Christian traditions it is likely that there will be a movement
to Christ. The Gospel thrives with refugees. This is a means to fulfill the missionary ideal of reaching unreached nations and people
groups. It is easy to quickly find new churches or Christian
fellowships developing among refugees who come from places such as the
Middle East, North Africa, or former Communist block nations in
receiving nations that practice the freedom of religion.
10.
Conversely, if the refugees arrive from a nation with a strong Christian
tradition into a nation in which Christian influence is declining, they
frequently are the source of renewal. The USA currently is an example
of this. Most of us in urban areas of both Europe and North America
can quickly think of church buildings whose native-born members in the
church were on a numeric decline. Then a refugee church begins meeting
in the building and the building became filled. Then over time the
children of the refugees adopted the language of the host nation and the
refugee church became a multi-cultural one that could reach to the host
culture as well as its own original culture.
11. In the children
of refugees not only is there effective multi-cultural Gospel outreach
there is
great athletic, academic, artistic, and entrepreneurial
success. Pick up a local newspaper and start reading the school news
and it’s apparent. Pick up a business magazine and start skimming the
names and stories and it’s obvious there is something about the refugee
experience that produces excellent human outcomes.
12. Refugee
living is not eternal. The original nation will someday be stable.
When that happens there will be a large, educated with professional
skill Diaspora population. Some of them have dual national loyalties
with a deep commitment to God’s Kingdom. They will return to their
historic home. When they return, they will be the builders of churches,
schools, businesses, and government policy.
The Old Testament books
of Ezra and Nehemiah tell this story. If you read international
newspapers, you will also find many contemporary stories of this
Diaspora experience of building out of chaos.
