Refugees

I have, it seems, been confronted by images and experiences of refugees all my life. As a young child I heard the stories and saw the photos of “refugees” from sand storms, Okies seeking refuge in California. In my late teens, war refugees in Europe came to the USA labeled DP’s, displaced persons. In my late 20’s I worked in Hong Kong among the hundreds of thousands fleeing Mao’s Liberation Army. In more recent decades I have read about, walked among, ministered to and been ministered to by refugees from every corner of the globe: Vietnamese boat people, Lutheran Liberians fleeing slaughter even in their own church sanctuary, Albanian refugees fleeing from Kosova, surviving and then returning to drive these same Serbs into refugee camps.

A very small humanitarian group called “Survivors of Torture International” ministers near my home in San Diego. The director informs me that with only word-of-mouth publicity her office gets appeal after appeal for help from the more than 11,000 survivors of international torture just in our county. They’ve fled here from Iran, Iraq, China, San Salvador, Columbia, the Sudan, Sri Lanka, Chile, Afghanistan, Turkey - the list goes on and on.

It’s disheartening, but not surprising. The first-born Cain fled as a refugee - east of Eden. Moses fled to Midian. David escaped to caves. Our Lord was a political refugee in a distant land before he was two. Many of our ancestors came to this country as refugees from political, economic and religious oppression. Among the saddest of all refugees are those even today being sold and bought into slavery and Native Americans forced into “refugee status” by later arriving refugees.

How to respond to refugees is one of the major political and moral issues of the day. The U.S. government, for example, will admit a limited number of “political refugees” and how can it adequately discriminate between “political” and “non-political” refugees? The persecution of Christians may well be at its highest ever level. Do I as a Christian advocate special treatment for my Christian brother or sister, knowing that my brother in the Sudan is being persecuted into refugee status because he is an animist, not a Muslim?

Refugee and immigration issues are closely intertwined. Is the poor Mexican peasant sneaking into California across the Mojave Desert an economic refugee, an illegal alien, both of the above or neither? What is my personal, political, ethical response to this, my brother and his family?

Do I support the Dali Llama and his claim to be a religious refugee from Tibet? Should I urge my senator to supply and support the Kurds in Iraq in their opposition to Sadaam Hussein? How can I best respond to the Christian in India who writes to tell that she’s a “refugee” fleeing for her life from her Hindu oppressor? Can I do anything about the 150,000 Hindu and Pandit refugees fleeing for their lives from the Muslims in Kashmir?

I ponder these ambiguities and moral dilemmas even as I sit comfortably and write memoirs in an idyllic Mexican resort overlooking the Pacific Ocean. I reflect upon the reality of our common humanity, our shared complicity in evil and the eternal destiny facing each one of us. I pray for compassion, wisdom and forgiveness and for the courage to continue to reflect, care, and act.