The other day, I was scrolling through Facebook and stumbled across this reflection from a young man I met while hoboing, reprinted here with permission. I think Stephen’s thoughts are important in terms of both our response to refugees and our understanding of our relationship to this world. He’s not talking about the politics of how to vet refugees or help them to integrate into society, he’s talking about compassion. I’m convicted.
The statement about how America is a nation of refugees and immigrants and therefore it is fundamental that we should open our doors to the needy is important, as is the argument that Christians should extend charity to the needy regardless of whether they are our countryman or a foreigner because all people are our neighbors, but I want to point out a problem with both of these arguments for the Christian. Actually, a fundamental problem with these arguments from the perspective of any Abrahamic religion. Bear with me.
Both these arguments, “we are Americans/we are Christians: our country should be welcoming,” are fundamentally false because, for any follower of Abraham’s God, this is not our country.
A refugee is someone who has lost their native land and has been forced to wander, looking for a home. To be human is to be a refugee because this is not our true country. We are not citizens of this earth. Once we were, but those days have long been lost to us. Ever since we willingly gave the throne of this world to the Adversary we have been refugees in flight, desperately seeking a new country.
Now for Christians there is hope. We believe Jesus came into the world, laid siege to the bastion of Satan, and broke through. He has called us to a new home, our true Home, beyond this world. There we are seeking to be, not here.
So please, my brothers and sisters in Christ, remember this: when you consider helping a person in need you are not considering welcoming a refugee into your home. You cannot. You have no home. You are extending a hand to a fellow refugee as you both flee the same evil, and perhaps sharing with him the Way to safety. You and he are both in flight, and both hope against all hope that when you reach the walls of the True Country its Ruler will be merciful and open the gate.
Stephen Brown is a Christian, a husband, a father, and a med student, hopefully in that order.
We were standing around a bonfire at a remote beach, a group of Catholic college students surrounded by the sound of waves and the light of stars and nothing else. The conversation flitted past religion to politics and there we were talking about Planned Parenthood and the lies they tell and the women they hurt1 and somebody mentioned reluctant women being shepherded into the building by insistent boyfriends or husbands. All the usual pro-life rhetoric, recycled by people who were used to being agreed with.
“That’s what happened to me.”
And a pause. And I stepped toward her and she fell into my arms and wept. Wept and wept like a mother who’s lost her child. And the chatter stopped. As I held her and spoke gently to her, the dozen people circling us stood in silence and I knew—knew—that we were cocooned in prayer.
“Oh, dear heart. Your baby forgives you. You are beautiful and you are so loved. And this doesn’t define you. Nobody blames you. Your baby loves you. God forgives you. And he loves you so much.”
I don’t remember exactly what I said. It must have been five minutes that I held her, friends and strangers lifting us up in prayer, before she relaxed her grip and we stepped back.
“Have you been to confession?” I had to ask. Not for judgment but for healing.
“Yeah, two years after it happened.”
“Then you are forgiven. Absolutely and completely forgiven, like it never happened. And these people here? They love you. Just as much as before—more, even. And if anybody—anybody—ever tries to hold this in your face you hold up the cross that Jesus hung your sin on and you call them out as a heretic. Because that’s not yours to carry anymore and saying otherwise is just plain heresy. You’ve been made new. And one day you’re going to meet your baby and there isn’t going to be any judgment or shame, only joy.”
And she told us the situation—a school that would have kicked her out and a boyfriend who threatened to kill himself and her friends who’d chosen life and how jealous she was. And then she said that it’s hard to hear people talking about Planned Parenthood and not feel attacked. And we promised her that we were saying just what she felt—that we wanted her not to have thought that was the choice she had to make. We wanted her loved and supported through a pregnancy, not shuffled along to a procedure she’ll never stop regretting. And we listened and eventually laughed and the conversation moved on.
It was a beautiful moment. A healing moment. There was so much grace. But it’s a reminder: you never know. One in four women is post-abortive. And you probably have no idea. Be careful, be very careful—even when you’re preaching to the choir—that nothing you say ever sounds like anything but love. This beautiful woman had the courage to tell us her story. How many don’t? How many suffer in shame because pro-lifers glibly recite the arguments they all have memorized? Those arguments whitewash the pain of millions of mothers and fathers, some of whom maybe be standing on the edge of your self-congratulatory conversation. Speak in love.
If you have had an abortion, please know this: you are loved. God is pouring his mercy on you. The Church has nothing but forgiveness to offer. Please seek healing, through confession, through counseling, through a Project Rachel retreat. And please forgive us for the times we hurt you by forgetting your pain in our zeal for the unborn. We love you. You matter. And you are not alone.
Try this for a start, but this post isn’t really about proving that PP is bad for women. [↩]
I’m so sorry. I know how you’ve suffered and I know how you haven’t let yourself suffer because you feel you brought it on yourself. I know you’re miserable and ashamed. I know you feel that you’re a lost cause. I know because I’ve been there. But I need you to know that there is hope. There is mercy and grace pouring out from the cross. There is new life in Christ.
My brother, my sister, he wants you back. Whatever you did, he’s still there, waiting for you, running after you, standing before you even as you mock him and spit on him. And the tears running down his face aren’t tears of pain or disappointment. He weeps because he longs for you. He weeps not because you’ve hurt him but because you’ve hurt yourself. He wants to heal you. Not just to forgive you but to help you forgive yourself.
And this, I think, is what’s hardest. It’s not enough to repent. It’s not enough to fall on your knees before the throne of mercy and to stay there. You have to let him raise you up. You have to look in his eyes and see that his judgment has been wiped away by his mercy. You have been made new,1 my friend, and Christ sees in you not what you were but what you are: a child of God, washed clean by grace.
You are not an adulterer, an addict, or an apostate. You are not a gossip or a blasphemer. You are not a murderer or a temptress or a drunk or a bully. You are a new creation. The old has passed away.2 Whatever the world may tell you about your sin, it’s not yours anymore. It’s been nailed to the cross and you bear it no more. Praise the Lord!3
Forgiven Much by Keith Johnson.
And it’s not just that he loves you despite your sin. I think he loves you the more, somehow, because of your sin. Jesus has always been particularly fond of sinners. He cast seven demons out of Mary Magdalene and then loved her so deeply that he appeared to her first. Before John or even his mother. By the well he sought out a woman, a Samaritan and an outcast entrenched in her sin.4 He didn’t go to the well-respected leaders of the town; he found a sinner. Jesus chose tax collectors and zealots and fools. He looked with love at the worldly5 and the weary6 while the wise were left to fend for themselves. Don’t think he won’t take you back. There’s nothing he wants more.
He is the father running to the son who first ran from him.7 He is the shepherd desperate for his lost sheep. He is the king calling heaven and earth to celebrate the return of one sinner. “For the sake of the joy that lay before him, he endured the cross.”8 You are the joy that lay before him. He suffered for you, desperate for you, willing to go to hell and back—literally—in the hopes that you would let him love you.
He has written your name on his pierced hands.9 Nothing you do can change that. His love will never leave you.10 He will come for you.11 Again and again he will come for you until finally you look up from the mess you’ve made of your life and see his compassionate eyes saying “Come to me and I will give you rest.12 Your sins are forgiven.”13
Dear heart, you are forgiven. You are loved. You are made new. Please come home.
There are so many things I’ve wanted to tell y’all about since I’ve been in Hawaii but God has been blessing me with such full days that there’s no time for anything. Tonight, though, I have to set aside everything I’ve wanted to say about the grandeur of God and the irony of giving a talk on humility and the inadequacy you feel when you’re working for the Lord. Because tonight, God showed up.
This visit has been incredible for so many reasons, but I think the greatest joy hasn’t been the beaches or the food but the opportunity for ministry. I’ve had at least one talk every day and I’ve seen so many of the same faces. These women, these incredible Army wives who stay behind as single mothers while their husbands are out serving their country—after only a few days, I’m so proud to call them my friends. They are strong and beautiful and holy and desperate to live in God’s will and I’m humbled by their service and their hospitality and their fellowship and honesty and brokenness. Again and again I’m amazed by them.
This morning, I had a room full of these incredible ladies for one of my very favorite talks on knowing that you are beautiful and loved and resting in God’s embrace. Friends, it was powerful. We ended with an Ignatian meditation on the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet and women were sharing what the Lord had shown them in prayer. I could really tell that the Holy Spirit had been working.
So I wasn’t totally looking forward to tonight’s meeting. It was all women again and I wanted to give the same talk but I knew it wouldn’t be the same. When it goes so well in the morning, it never feels right in the evening. Besides, some of the ladies had come for round 2 and I didn’t want to bore them. But the Lord is in control, so I started talking, knowing that he would lead.
The talk went pretty well—knowing that God loves you, trusting that he’s working through your pain, accepting that you don’t have to earn his love. I sang “If You Want Me To,” by Ginny Owens, and moved into a meditation on the woman caught in adultery.
Now, I’ve given this meditation plenty of times. Every time, I get the same reactions. The girls are usually the woman, the boys bystanders. Occasionally I find a Pharisee in there, but it’s pretty clearly a meditation on how God forgives people and that’s how people interpret it.
I knew something was up when I looked up after the meditation and almost everyone was crying. Then we started talking about our experiences.
“I was so angry at the Pharisees. I was so, so mad—I’m still mad. I don’t have any idea what it means, but I’m mad.”
“I stood with Jesus and just looked at the woman. I looked at her and I loved her.”
“At the end, Jesus left, but I didn’t go with him. I knelt down by the woman and just stayed with her.”
“When they brought her in, I went and stood in front of her. I was going to shield her from the stones with my body.”
Almost every woman there shared that her meditation was focused on loving the sinful woman. I thought it was strange until the last woman shared.
“I was her,” she said, in a broken voice. “I was her and I don’t feel any better.”
And she sobbed. And we sobbed. And I looked around the room and realized that these women had all along been sitting in a circle around their heartbroken sister. During this meditation, they were surrounding her. In their hearts, not knowing what her struggle was, they were fighting her enemies, defending her, loving her, consoling her. For these women, in this moment, fellowship looked a little less like coffee hour and a little more like prayer warriors going into battle for each other. The Lord put these reflections on their hearts so that she could hear that not only has God forgiven her, so have they. And as we talked and prayed, they prayed and cried and loved her.
Apparently when Army wives say fellowship, they don’t mean it quite the way civilians do.
This, my friends, is what it means to be a Christian. We fight for each other and bleed for each other and weep and live and die for each other. We’re not called the Church Militant for nothing, and these Army wives know it. It’s so easy for women’s groups to become middle school girls’ groups, to be filled with drama and judgment and competition. Today, the Lord worked a miracle to show his mercy. “Neither do I condemn you,” he said. “Neither does she condemn you. And she won’t abandon you. And that one’s ready to go nuclear on anyone who does. Because you deserve it.”
This woman is beautiful and funny and loving. She is an incredible mother and has a husband who loves her desperately. She’s been forgiven. But her heart can’t hear it. So tonight, the Lord raised up a community to speak truth to her heart.
As she drove me home, this song came on the radio, sending that message of forgiveness once again:
All my life I have been called unworthy
Named by the voice of my shame and regret
But when I hear You whisper, “Child lift up your head”
I remember, oh God, You’re not done with me yet
I am redeemed, You set me free
So I’ll shake off these heavy chains
Wipe away every stain, now I’m not who I used to be
If you’re where my dear friend is right now, hating yourself, feeling worthless, certain that God couldn’t really forgive you, please hear this: When God washed you clean, heaven rejoiced. In that moment, the record of your sins was obliterated. Our God is so consumed by his love of you that who you were never crosses his mind. “Though your sins be as scarlet, I will wash them whiter than snow,” he said to David. To David. Like, send-others-to-risk-their-lives-for-me, use-my-office-to-make-a-married-woman-sleep-with-me, send-her-husband-to-his-death-to-cover-it-up David. White as snow.
He could have redeemed you with one drop of his blood but he wanted you to know what you were worth. And so, stripped and beaten, the God of the universe stretched out his arms between heaven and earth to tell you that he loves you, he forgives you, and he longs for you. Not because he had to–because he wanted to. And he’d do it again.
I would stake my salvation on this fact: no matter what, you are loved. I only hope you have a community around you that shows you.
Today, please stand with me and this community, swords drawn, to surround our sister in prayer. Pray with me for comfort for her broken heart. And praise God with me that she is forgiven, redeemed, and made new in Christ. How great is our God.
A refugee is someone who has lost their native land and has been forced to wander, looking for a home. To be human is to be a refugee because this is not our true country. We are not citizens of this earth. Once we were, but those days have long been lost to us. Ever since we willingly gave the throne of this world to the Adversary we have been refugees in flight, desperately seeking a new country.
