Refugee Politics or The Practice of Selective Indignation

Consider these facts:

• Fact: Kids are dying in war-torn countries.
• Fact: Their houses are being bombed.
• Fact: They are being rendered orphans by merciless military governments.

Now consider another set of facts.

• Fact: Kids are dying inside the womb.
• Fact: They are being torn form limb to limb owing to abortion procedures.
• Fact: They are the victims of merciless individuals who campaign in the name of women’s rights.

If your heart bleeds on hearing one set of facts but turns to stone on hearing another set of facts, you have a problem of selective indignation.

Your fury is fussy.
Your resentment is prejudiced.
Your rage is jaundiced.

Your allegiance is not to humanity but to partisan politics.
Your emotions are not carried on the winds of compassion but ideology.
You are not motivated by true religion but by legalism.

There is something fishy about your mercy.
Something rings hollow about your tenderness.
Your sympathy carries with it the noxious fumes of sanctimony.

Here’s why.

If your compassion is not for all people but some, your cause is not humanitarian but political.
If your ire is only directed at one set of injustices, not all, you are not being fair but duplicitous.
If you reserve kindness for certain groups but not for all, you are not an altruist but a grandstander.

If you want to know what true compassion looks like, consider Jesus Christ.
He healed without favouritism.
He died for His enemies.
He reconciled people from every tongue and tribe and nation to God.

“But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? “Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” — Mathew 5:44-48

Let’s learn to leave politics out of love. May our sensitivity not be tinged with bias. So that we don’t exclude anyone from our compassion. Or our indignation.

Yours truthfully,
Truthscan