Refugees and Chaplains

In a recent Counterpunch article by Andre Vltchek entitled the "Refugees are Coming", he identifies the One Percenters of the world as the neo-colonialists who have, through their greedy imperialist policies, claimed the whole world as their oyster at the expense of its inhabitants. For those of us who yet live in the world's few remaining peaceful enclaves, we are now freshly informed that the carnage and bloodshed caused by the West in Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and the Congo, is producing a "world of people" on the move to what they hope will be places of refuge. Andre also describes the hatred and the selfishness of the people in the historic "Colonizer Nations" who resent the onslaught of destitute humanity to their shores. The   vehemently claim that they have no responsibility to care for them, when in many cases their plight is directly attributable to their country's arrogant foreign policy.

Where Andre and I part company is his conclusion, conspicuously placed in a paragraph of its own, attributing the declared religion of the perpetrators to be the philosophical basis on which they do their deeds. He says,  "In the West, in the Christian West, in fundamentalist West, such arrangement is obviously tolerable",  inferring that Christianity is somehow responsible.

Nothing could be further from the truth.
One need go no further than Matthew Chapters 5 and 6 to conclude that the behavior, he attributes to  christianity is not Christian despite its institutional status or its attempts at justification.  For want of another term, and perhaps I am inventing one, such behavior should be called "Pharisee-ism.".  Jesus told the story of the two men praying in the temple, the one a Pharisee and the other a Publican. The Pharisee in pride proclaimed to God his gratefulness for not being like other men, praying often, giving to the poor, professing his loyalty, while the Publican with his head down and beating his breast said, "God  be merciful to me a Sinner."Jesus declared that only the the Publican was justified.

In our contemporary world then, who..... in this illustration would you identify as the follower of Christ? and who would be the Pharisee ? With no hesitation, the institutional christianity of the west is the Pharisee, so why persist in  measuring Christianity by its false professors rather than a measurement using the words spoken by the very author of "the Way" Himself? 

In another well timed article illustrating the depth of this hypocrisy, "Onward Christian  Military Chaplains- Marching as to War", Rev. William Alberts correctly identifies the false doctrines and justification of military chaplains who, for the sake of their career, aid and abet the atrocities of the West, by comforting the troops that commit them. There is no measurement problem here, if we again measure the christianity they profess with Jesus' teaching in The Sermon on the Mount.
"By their fruits shall ye know them"  Matthew 7:16  It's a very simple test and no matter what post you hold in worldly christianity, be it Pope or Deaconess. How you respond publicly to this human tragedy is vital evidence of your conversion ( or no) to "the Way"---  and every one who claims to profess, can take the test.

If Vltchek errs in his wrongly tagging Christianity, Alberts does not go far enough in identifying complicity among professors of Christianity. Because of the alternate media and the internet, we live in an informed world, much different to previous generations. Before the internet, the establishment media had its way with us, and I suppose religious leaders could rightly claim that they did not have enough conclusive evidence nor was any offered by the establishment media. In that far off time, very few knew of the evil policies that are now justified by the west.  But now, there is no excuse. No religious leader, or for that matter, no sincere Christian, can claim ignorance and remain silent.

That said, I would not claim to judge, but by remaining silent, such persons have no cause for confidence in professing that they follow Christ. Their information world is now bigger than their society, their culture, their church, career, and the petty ignorance of uninformed peers. If they would have assurance of who they are before God, they must stand with the oppressed and teach others to do so.