A QUESTION OF FAITH

With Mike Shuter Youth Pastor FOR months now the papers have been flooded with articles for or against refugees.

Recently Gary Lineker has been the subject of a lot of abuse, but raised an interesting point and a great challenge for us in how we think about migrants or refugees. Do we think of them firstly, before anything else, as people?

I appreciate that some of those people may have wrong motives for trying to get to the UK but many of these people are fathers, mothers and children who simply have no other choice or at least don’t think they do.

I keep trying to imagine what I would do in their situation but I can’t. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be chased or bombed out of my home; to travel thousands of miles; to spend all I had to try and get to safety and then when I finally make it to be told I’m hated; I am a potential terrorist; I am trying to steal from someone else’s government; to be told I can’t be trusted. I have never done anything to deserve these indictments yet I am smeared with these accusations by people who have never met me. I can’t imagine that.

As Christians one of the core beliefs that we all have is that Jesus died for every person. There is no one more important than anyone else but Jesus’ sacrifice was for every human being who will accept Him as their King.

In the bible Paul writes a letter to the Church in Galatia and says “There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus”

We are incredibly blessed to have been born in this country, we didn’t do anything to earn that right, in fact many of us may have family who came over to this country years ago. If we look back far enough the likelihood is that our families were all immigrants at some point.

I am not saying we can or should just throw open the doors of the UK and let every person into this nation, there are dozens of countries that can and are helping with these refugees.

What I do want though is for us to change the way we think, to say first and foremost these are not refugees or immigrants but human beings, people, with families, people who may no longer have homes or even lives.

These are people that need help and though we can’t help everyone we can help some. Particularly for those of us who call ourselves Christians, let’s ask ourselves that classic yet timeless question.

What would Jesus do?