Lux Lucet

Ruth and Naomi Leave Moab, 1860, by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (1794-1872).

He [the Lord] pours contempt on princes, and disarms the mighty. He uncovers deep things out of darkness, and brings the shadow of death to light. He makes nations great, and destroys them; He enlarges nations, and guides them. He takes away the understanding of the chiefs of the people and of the earth, and makes them wander in a pathless wilderness. They grope in the dark without light, and He makes them stagger like a drunken man (Job 12-21-25).

“Many councils lack strategy for care of returning ISIS fighters’ children,” ran the Radio Sweden headline. Sigh. What shall I say to this?  When coming across an absurdity of this magnitude, I’m almost at a loss for words. Almost, but not quite.

In the article from what I take to be the official Swedish government radio outlet , we are informed earnestly, and one supposes sincerely, that there are grave concerns many areas of Sweden are ill-equipped to deal with problems faces by the families of returning ISIS fighters. Only Gothenburg, we are told, has a strategy in place for this.

Terrorism researcher Magnus Ranstorp states that about 65 women have returned to Sweden after spending time is ISIS controlled areas. Notably Ranstorp says nothing about the status of their husbands who presumably are the actual ISIS fighters.

Ranstrop goes on to note that boys as young as nine have been recruited as soldiers for ISIS, girls are considered marriageable at that same age, and that ISIS uses children as informants against their parents.

Of course, the most obvious question – Why on earth were such people ever allowed to settle in Sweden in the first place, let alone return there after fighting for ISIS? – is never asked. The only concern is how to care for the traumatized families, especially the children, who, based upon what was said in the article itself, may themselves by ISIS recruits.

This is madness.

But as absurd as this story is, it’s but one example of the type of madness one finds with just a little research West’s approach to immigration / migration / and refugee issues.

Back in 2015, another Swedish news source ran the following uber-PC headline, “Rise in Swedes killed during Isis fighting.” The way it’s written, the headline gives one the distinct impression that there must be lots of guys named Bjorn and Thor making haste to leave Sweden for the thrill of toting AK-47s in the Syrian desert for the boys in the black ninja get ups. But I’m thinking that’s probably not the case.

In a speech earlier this year, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who in 2015 allowed more than 1.1 million migrants into Germany, argued that the EU has a duty to accept even more refugees. Further, according to Merkel, Islam is not a source of terror.

This, too, is madness.

The LA Times in a 2015 editorial stuck a similar not concerning US refugee policy. The editorial castigated the US and the world for not doing enough for refugees. “The nation’s, and the world’s, responsibility to aid so many people in such terribly dire straits requires that more must be done.”

It may not be clear at first, but a little thought reveals the statist assumptions underlying this statement. Just what does the Times mean when it says that more must be done by America and the world. Is the editorial arguing for more private charity to help people in need? Almost certainly not. As the broader context of the article makes clear, the Times is talking about increasing the number of refugees allowed in the US from Syria who can take advantage of the federal governments taxpayer subsidized refugee program. The Times is promoting another big-government wealth transfer program, this one designed for foreigners.

Unsurprisingly, the Pope sees immigration, migration and refugee policy in terms of a national duty as well. According to Francis, protecting migrants and refugees is a “moral imperative.” Although the Pope speaks in large, sweeping terms, he never quite gets around to making clear who, exactly, is expected to foot the bill for this “imperative.” He means, of course, primarily the hard pressed citizens of Europe, the United States and other Western nations. From each according to his ability, to each according to his need is the motto of Jesuit Marxist from Argentina, who delights in laying heavy burdens on the backs of others which he himself would never agree to bear.

Not only is the Pope’s proposal madness, more to the point, it is evil.

Three False Ideas

There are at least three false ideas, either explicitly or implicitly stated, common to all of the above examples: 1) the altruistic concept that receiving immigrants / migrants / and refugees is a moral imperative, a duty that cannot be shirked, 2) that governments must at all costs defend the well-being of migrants, refugees and immigrants, even if it comes at the expense of the liberty, property and safety of citizens, and 3) that citizens who dare to complain about the abuse heaped upon them are clearly deplorable, badly in need of ethical reeducation, and must be brought to heel, by force if necessary.

Or to put it more bluntly, the mindset of Western elites is that the nations of the West have an obligation to commit suicide, both financially and culturally, in order to fulfill the moral imperative to transfer their wealth and even their very territory to all the peoples of the world who are deemed to be in need.

But what does the Bible say?

In the first place, the Bible nowhere commends altruism, the notion that one has an obligation to help everyone never considering one’s own interests.

That may surprise even some Christians. I’ve heard a number of people who I take to be sincere in their belief say things such as, “Before I became a Christian, I thought only about myself. But after I came to Christ, I stopped thinking about my own interests and only think about what’s best for others.”

I would like to gently suggest that, however well meaning such individuals are, they are kidding themselves if they think they abandoned self-interest when then came to Christ. But not only are they kidding themselves, they also misunderstand the Bible if they think being a Christian means having no self interest. The Apostle Paul wrote, “Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others” (Philippians 2:4). Note that Paul does not enjoin his readers to abandon their own interests. What he tells them is not to consider only their own interests, but also those of others.

As Christians, we are not altruists tossing our self interest to the wind, but individuals who have a proper understanding of what our self interest is. Jesus asked rhetorically, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” The answer, of course, it that it profits him not at all, that is to say, it is not in a man’s self interest to become a billionaire and spend eternity in hell. It is in his interest to believe the Gospel and walk in God’s law. To, as the hymn says, trust and obey. As Christians, it is in our interest to also consider the interests of others for the simple reason that Christ God commands this of us.

One of the implications of this is that we, as Christians, are under no obligation to selflessly pour out our blood and treasure in pursuit of the impossible task of saving the world from poverty, disease or the ravages of war. As Jesus said, “The poor you will always have with you.” If one is moved to help people in difficult situations, or to use a Biblical term, “to give a cup of water” to someone in need, very well. But that giving is a voluntary act, not a moral imperative. Further, Christian charity must be done in the name of Christ (Mark 9:41).

Second, because giving must be voluntary and in the name of Christ, it is immoral for civil governments to force people to bear the costs of supporting migrants, refugees and immigrants either through taxes or through other means.

For example, Germany has taken the extraordinary step of confiscating privately owned property in order to house migrants. As the Gatestone Institute reports,

Authorities in Hamburg, the second-largest city in Germany, have begun confiscating private dwellings to ease a housing shortage – one that has been acutely exacerbated by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to allow more than two million migrants into the country in recent years.

City officials have been seizing commercial properties and converting them into migrant shelters since late 2015, when Merkel opened German borders to hundreds of thousands of migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Now, however, the city is expropriating residential units owned by private citizens.

In an unprecedented move, Hamburg authorities recently confiscated six residential units in the Hamm district near the city center. The units, which are owned by a private landlord, are in need of repair and have been vacant since 2012. A trustee appointed by the city is now renovating the properties and will rent them – against the will of the owner – to tenants chosen by the city. District spokes woman Sorina Weiland said that all the costs will be billed to the owner of the properties.

This is simply amazing. Not only are landlords forced to quarter migrants in their apartments, but they’re stuck with the bill for any renovations state deems necessary also.

Further, German citizens are being forced from their apartments to make way for migrants. According to the Telegraph, a woman in the town of Eschbach “is being evicted from her home of 23 years to make way for asylum-seekers.”

Similar actions have been taken in Sweden. The Daily Caller reports that, “The Swedish government has issued a notice to a family living in public housing that they must vacate the premises in August to make room for migrants.”

In France, a Calais woman was evicted from her home of more than 40 years to make room for a migrant camp.

It is hard to read about such extreme cases of eminent domain and not have sympathy for those affected. Very clearly, these governments are more concerned with fulfilling their imagined duty to migrants than with upholding the law or looking after the interests of their own citizens.

The job of civil government is to punish evil doers and praise those who do good. Beyond these two things, the magistrate has no Biblical authority.

Third, if any mere citizen complains about the gross abuses regularly foisted upon him and his fellow citizens by his government, he is the one who is singled out as having the problem.

In Sweden, a 70 year old woman is being prosecuted for complaining about migrants in a Facebook post. The woman had written that migrants were urinating and defecating in the streets and setting fire to cars. I do not have a way to verify her claims other than to say that such behaviors and worse have frequently been witnessed from migrants, so it would not surprise me if what she wrote were true. But Swedish authorities are not interested in the truth of her claims. They say she violated a law against inciting racial hatred. Apparently, whether her comments were true or not is not even an factor. The woman faces four years in prison for her crimes.

In the wake of a Somali affirmative action hire police officer shooting an unarmed woman – this woman had called the police to investigate what she thought was a rape happing near hear home – the hijab wearing female mayor of Minneapolis expressed great concern for the city’s Somali refugee population, that there would be a backlash against them.

As far as I am aware, neither the mayor nor the since resigned lesbian police chief of Minneapolis have expressed any concern about the police department’s diversity hiring program, one prompted, at least in part, by resentful Somalis or about the refugee resettlement program of the federal government that has seen the Somali population of Minneapolis swell to 25,000. No, the problem is with anyone who questions the wisdom of bringing so many Somalis to the US at taxpayer expense. In their minds, anyone who does complain is obviously a deplorable.

In Germany, President Joachim Gauck angrily complained, “The people are the problem, not the elites,” in response to citizens expressing doubt about the wisdom and fairness of the government’s decision to take 1.5 billion euros from Germany’s the public health care fund and to give it to refugees and asylum seekers.

Is God Punishing the West?

Having spent several years observing the immigration, asylum and refugee programs in the US and abroad, it’s hard not to come to the conclusion that the individuals who set their nations’ policies are either madmen, evil, or both.

The West has devolved to the point where it is almost impossible to have a rational discussion about immigration. Do Western leaders really believe it’s a good idea to flood their nations, against the will of their own people, with third world immigrants while forcing their people to pay for it? Consider,

• According to the Vienna Institute of Demography, “In less than 30 years, Muslims could become the largest religious group in Vienna.
  
• Frankfurt now has a minority German population.
  
• White Britons are a minority in London, and the British capital city has a Muslim mayor.
  

How is it possible that such things could come to be? Depending on whom you ask, you’ll likely to get very different answers. My explanation is this: God has removed discernment from the minds of the leaders of the West. As the quotation from Job at the top of this post reads, it is God himself who takes away discernment from the chiefs of the people. He causes them to grope in the darkness and stumble as a drunken man.

Over a century ago, the West chose secular philosophy over Christ, and today, drunk on their own foolishness, the people of the West and their leaders are rapidly committing civilizational suicide. The rapid demographic transformation of Western nations and the suppression of their native populations may very well be God’s punishment on a people that have turned their backs on him. I am not a prophet, nor the son of a prophet. I do not claim any special revelation telling me that the ongoing immigration disaster in the West is God’s way of punishing a backslidden people. I offer these thoughts only as my opinion.

But really, is it such a stretch to make a connection between the collapse of Christianity – and by Christianity I mean the Biblical, Reformed faith of the Reformation which taught the doctrine of Justification by Faith Alone – and the ongoing immigration disaster that threatens the very future of nations of Europe and their overseas descendents?

Many times in the Old Testament, God punished backsliding Israel with national calamities. He caused the prophets of apostate Ahab, king of the apostate Northern Kingdom, to believe a lie, encouraging him to undertake what turned out to be a military suicide mission against Syria. 2 Kings 10:32 reads, “In those days the LORD began to cut off parts of Israel.” If God did not spare Israel, is it a stretch to suppose that he would also cut off the faithless heirs of the Reformation?

Or consider this awful summary of the history of Judah found at the end the Book of 2 Chronicles,

And the LORD God of their [the Jewish people] fathers sent warnings to them by His messengers, rising up early and sending them, because He had compassion on His people and on His dwelling place. But they mocked the messengers of God, despised His words, and scoffed at His prophets, until the wrath of the LORD arose against His people, till there was no remedy.

Therefore He brought against them the king of the Chaldeans, who killed their young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary, and had no compassion on young man or virgin, on the aged or the weak; He gave them all into this hand. And all the articles from the of God, great and small, the treasures of the house of the LORD, and the treasures of the king and of his leaders, all these he took to Babylon. Then they burned the house of God, broke down the wall of Jerusalem, burned all its palaces with fire, and destroyed all its precious possessions. And those who escaped from the sword he carried away to Babylon, where they became servants to him and his sons until the rule of the kingdom of Persia, to fulfill the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her Sabbaths. As long as she lay desolate she kept Sabbath, to fulfill seventy years (2 Chronicles 16:15-21).

The Jewish people lost their country because they rejected God to the point where “there was no remedy.” Is it impossible to think that the heirs of the Reformation may lose their countries for the same reason?

The lies of Romanism, Arminianism, atheism, Darwinism, feminism, altruism, humanism, and socialism have led the West to the brink of disaster, to the point where its very existence is threatened.

“There is a way that seems right to a man,” the Book of Proverbs tells us, “the end of which is death.” But the words of Christ are life.

It is my contention that, at its root, the West’s immigration problem is really a spiritual problem. The false philosophies of man tell us it is our duty to adopt a suicidal immigration policy, one that all but guarantees the destruction of Western civilization, or at least what’s left of it, in very short order. For anyone with even a hint of spiritual insight, that should be a clue that there something very wrong with this line of thinking.

Biblical immigration policy is not a suicide pact. God does not tell his people, obey my voice, heed my word, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and I’ll punish you forever. That’s not how he works.

Is it too late for the West? Have we come to the point where there is no remedy for us? I don’t know. But what I do know is this, that if we seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, all these things, and this includes the preserving of our heritage, will be added unto us.  Further, it is my contention that were the West to adopt a Biblical immigration policy, not only would it benefit the citizens of Western nations, but it likewise would prove a blessing to the world.  To put it another way, a Christian immigration policy does not doom the West to suicide nor the world at large to eternal ignorance, poverty and squalor.  Rather, it is a win-win for everyone, both for the people of the West and for those living in other nations.  Lord willing, we will begin to look at what this means in our next installment.