Don't Throw the Baby Out with the Terrorist

Normally I don't get political on this blog. But this is a Christian, Kingdom-of-God issue, not a political one. For the record, I consider myself a Reagan-conservative, lest any of my fellow conservatives accuse me of being a liberal. Not that that matters.

In the wake of the horribly deplorable terrorist attacks in Paris last Friday, several US state governors have closed their states to Syrian refugees. After all, so the argument goes, at least one of the terrorists came into Europe with the refugees.

The problem is a lot of other people came with the refugees, too; namely, refugees. Families. Children. Desperate people rejecting ISIS' caliphate and fleeing from it with the clothes on their backs. How many hundreds or thousands of innocents are we willing to leave out in the cold to thwart one terrorist?

My answer is 0. Zero. Zip. Nada. I think this is a Kingdom-of-God issue. Very black 'n' white, according to Matthew 25:31-46, the parable of the sheep and the goats. If we have the means to do so, we have to help those in need, regardless of the risk. Jesus would. We must.

We don't have to be stupid about it. We can use facial recognition software and/or other screening technology to weed out the terrorists. We can monitor their movements, activities, and communications once they're in-country until we've convinced ourselves they're vetted. Yes, no process or technology is perfect; we will miss some. But we will have helped so many more.

At the end of the day, God will not judge us based on how many terrorists we caught, but on how many people we sacrificed to help. He will judge the terrorists for their actions, and he will judge us for ours. In the face of so much evil, let's be found doing good.