An article by the Liberal MP Petro Georgiou

Click here for this article concerning asylum seekers in Australia. I think his views are worth listening to.

Guess who this is

Guess who this is. Someone wanted to harm him, and so he fled to another country and sought asylum. In fact, he was only a child, under two. His parents took him to another country and became refugees. Fortunately the leaders of that country did not call them "illegal arrivals" and let them stay, for soon the leader in their home country killed everyone who were two or under in the city that the child was born.

Reflection: An asylum seeker's story

Some time ago I got to know a lovely Christian man who came to Australia for asylum because of political persecution in his home country. He told me how reading the Bible sustained him, and how he was separated from his young family as he fled his country - and that he hadn't seen them since. His story breaks my heart. More recently we heard that his application for refugee status was rejected. He was devastated and had problems sleeping. His faith was tested. Many Christian friends gathered to pray for him. We waited patiently for the hearing of his appeal to take place. But the hearing was indeed 'short' because they decided to delay the hearing just before the schedule date. But last week I heard that the hearing eventually took place and straight after that he was granted permanent residence status to live in Australia. We are thankful to God for his mercy, but continue to feel his pain of being separated from his family. We struggle to understand why such a lovely Christian man has to go through all that hardship, but rejoice with him for the grace God has shown him.

Socioeconomic hardship and persecution in the earliest church

Recently I had a chat with a theological college lecturer about whether Christians in the earliest church suffered from socioeconomic and political hardship when they were persecuted. For him, there is no evidence for that. But for me, it's quite obvious.

Think about why Joseph, Mary and Jesus had to escape to Egypt as refugees in Matthew 2. They left for Egypt because the magi just visited them and that they had told Herod that there was a King born to the Jews. Jesus was a political refugee! And that's because he was to be the King. Any refugee would know that socioeconomic hardship was part of their life. (The life as refugees would not be easy for Jesus' family despite the magi's gifts.) Imagine that you were a Christian living in the Roman Empire and that you declared that Jesus was the true Lord and King of the whole world (hence by implication Caesar was not Lord). You would not assume that your life would be easy, would you?

Another example. The imprisonment of Paul and Sila in Philippi (as in Acts) sounds like that they were in a carcer (a type of prison in the Roman Empire). According to Capes, Reeves & Richards, Discovering Paul, "The carcer entailed the harshest conditions for the worst criminals. Prisoners feared this form of custody since many died from malnutrition, exposure or disease. There were no food rations or state-issued clothing for criminals or laws governing due process. These prisons operated at the discretion of the magistrate; many prisoners were left to rot in jail." (p. 205)

Paul and Sila left the prison with relatively little hardship. But one can imagine that for many Christians in Philippi (a Roman colony), they would expect harsh socioeconomic hardship if they were persecuted. They might not be put into a carcer type of prison. But nonetheless its condition would not be like the prisons in Australia. They would have to rely on relatives and friends for food and clothing. If they were freed in the end, their health would have been deteriorated greatly. They and their loved ones would be suffering socioeconomically, which, in turn, was part of the unjust ancient Roman political system.

Ask Christians who suffered in the former Soviet Union, or ask a Christians who suffers in an oppressive regime today, they would tell us how they suffer socioeconomically and politically when they were/are persecuted.

I wonder how much our theology today is influenced by our own middle-class Western thinking? Let's read the Bible in its own social and historical context. Most Christians in the earliest church knew what it means to be poor and how it feels to live in an unjust social and political system. Let us enter their world and allow God to speak to us.

Reflection: The kids in my son's school

My son goes to a small Christian school. It's a great community and I have met some wonderful Christian families there. I am very grateful to God for that.

Here is an encouraging story about some students at the school. A group of them were on a school trip to Canberra. On their way back they had lunch in a country town. As they had lunch someone was watching how they behaved and afterwards he commented on their good behaviour and maturity. He is right, I think. The school is a good school. Most of the parents are Christians. They provide a stable and secure home environment, and know how to teach their children to behave.

But my thoughts go to the kids in other schools, schools in the low socioeconomic suburbs of Melbourne. I hear stories of a Christian school teacher who worked for many years in one of those schools. She found herself spending most of her time dealing with the issues that children from dyfuncational families faced. The fact is that it is not the fault of these children that their behaviour is not-so-good. They just happened to have born into families that were less fortunate. For some of them, their parents were migrants from poor countries. They came to Melbourne to flee from poverty and oppression, and found themselves struggling with the language and the culture. They just happened to be born in a country where life was not at all as easy as Australia.

My heart goes out to those children, whose prospects of life will not be the same as children in my son's school. My heart goes to them because they are in fact in our own "backyard", and I suspect that Jesus would have gone to them if he were here today.

What did the Old Testament law have to offer foreigners?

Christopher Wright says that the Old Testament Law says a lot about caring for foreigners.

What did the Old Testament law have to offer such foreigners? A great deal… The Old Testament speaks of protection from general oppression (Ex. 22:21; Lev. 19:33) and from unfair treatment in court (Ex. 23:9; Deut 10:17-19; 24:17-18); inclusion in Sabbath rest (Ex. 20:9—11; 23:12; Deut. 5:12-15) and inclusion in worship and cov­enant ceremonies of Passover (Ex. 12:45-49), the annual festivals (Deut. 16), the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16:29), and covenant renewal ceremonies (Deut. 29:10-13; 31:12); the economic benefit of the triennial tithes (Deut. 1-1:28-29; 26:12-13) and access to agricultural produce (gleaning rights) (Lev. 19:9- 10; Deut. 24:19-22); and equality before the law with native born (Lev. 19:34).

See also the similarity between the second greatest commandment (as Jesus affirms) and the instruction to look after foreigners (both found in the same chapter in Leviticus).

Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD. (Lev 19:18)

The foreigners residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God. (Lev 19:34)

I hope these Scriptures can help us to formulate our view on asylum seekers.

Source: Christopher Wright, The God I Don’t Understand [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008), page 103-4.

Feberal Budget: Fairer refugee determination process

What we don't hear much about the recent federal budget (12th May 2009) is that it allows for a fairer determination process. According to my own reading of the Bible, this is a very important issue from a Christian perspective. Here are two reports from the Refugee Council of Australia:

Common Sense Changes Build Fairer Refugee Determination Process

THE 2009-10 BUDGET IN BRIEF: What it means for refugees and those requiring humanitarian protection

Welcomed by strangers: Asylum seekers raising money for bushfire victims

In previous post (18th April 2009) I mentioned the Christian mandate to welcome strangers. Today I heard that a group of asylum seekers/refugees in Melbourne are running a fund-raising event for the recent bushfire victims. In a sense, they are showing Australia hospitality and love by their action.

I found a UNHCR (the UN Refugee Agency) report, which shows the following stats regarding the recipients of new asylum seekers in the first half of 2008.

Australia 2,000
Canada 16,800 (10.2%)
France 15,600 (9.5%)
UK 14,500 (8.8%)
Greece 10,200 (6.2%)
Switzerland 5,900 (3.6%)

As you can see, Australia did not take in a lot of asylum seekers at all. Let's be generous towards them. You may want to write you the PM, your MP and the key senators about it.

The Christian mandate to welcome strangers

On ABC Lateline last night there was a piece about the latest political debate on the government (relaxed) policies on detention rules and temporary protection visas. (See the Lateline script here.)

In my own Christian circle I have the opportunities to talk to asylum seekers very often. The fact is that often they still have to wait for a very long time for a permanent residence visa to be granted (if it is granted). Often their temporary visas are renewed for a few months at a time (sometimes monthly), and as a result they have to constantly live in a state of uncertainty.

I talked with one of them recently. He is a kind Christian man who loves God. He loves the Bible and reads it regularly to seek comfort and hope. As I got to know him I found that he was separated from his wife and children as they fled their country. A permanent visa would enable him to travel to the region (not his own country, I suppose) to search for his family. We can hardly understand the hardship he endures as he waits anxiously for his permanent visas and at the same time separated from this loved ones. (A timely article from The Age entitled No Way Back Now would help us to understand the issue further.)

The Bible again and again refers to God's people's obligation to plead the cause of the fatherless, widows and resident foreigners (or "aliens" in the NIV). It is important to realise that in other ancient law codes there were rules to protect/help orphans and widows. But it was only in Israel's Scripture that foreigners (or "aliens") were to be protected because of their vulnerable situation. Israel was to remember that they were once aliens in Egypt and now they were to look after the foreigners in their midst. And of course Jesus told the parable of the good Samaritan because he was asked "who is my neighbour?" Our neighbours are not only those who live in the same street or suburb, but include people from all nations and cultures - and hence when they suffer from persecution and hardship we are to help them. May the church hear the heart of God and respond accordingly.