The Idolatry of Safety

I hear repeated promises from the President that he is going to keep us "safe."  These promises are usually preceded by a description of just how fearful the world is.  Muslims want to kill us. Immigrants are pouring in over the borders.  Inner cities are disasters of slums and violence.

The most common objection I see to admitting refugees to the U.S. is, how can we be sure they are not terrorists?  Are we safe?  Despite numerous factual descriptions of the exhaustive vetting processes that refugees go through, the President still prefers the lie, going even so far as to say recently that refugees are "not screened" before they are admitted to the U.S.  Nothing could be further from the truth, but my point will not be to describe the vetting process.  That is already well documented in other sources (for those with eyes to see and ears to hear).

Rather we should ask, why is guaranteed safety the pre-requisite for admitting refugees?  Is there any act of compassion that doesn't involve some degree of risk to the one showing compassion?  Could the "Good Samaritan" be sure that the injured man in the road wasn't really some kind of trap to rob or kill him?  Or that the man he helped wouldn't take all his money the first chance he had?

If we have to be 100% guaranteed that no refugee will ever turn terrorist before we admit any in, then we have elevated our safety to our highest moral goal.  It becomes our object of worship.  Certainly we can never give such a guarantee any more than we can guarantee that none of the 4 million children born in the U.S. each year will grow up to be a serial killer.  And the odds of being killed by one of those native born is substantially higher than the odds of being killed by a refugee or any other immigrant.  If assurance of safety were our only goal, perhaps a policy of mass infanticide would be in order -- like Herod's plan to eliminate the perceived threat of the newborn Christ.  But, of course, we must abandon such an immodest proposal.

Showing compassion and humanity to refugees is not only part of our international obligations as a country, but it is also part of the moral and just obligations of any country, especially any country with the resources with which we have been blessed.

Sometimes doing the right thing has a cost.  That's not to say we shouldn't do our best to review and vet immigrants and refugees, but to hold off on humanitarian aid purely because of some amped up and unfounded fear is wrong.

I suggest that the burden of proof is not on me or my government to prove that all refugees are safe.  I think the burden is on the anti-refugees to prove that our guaranteed safety is a higher good than our duty to act justly.

In the movie, "Open Range," Kevin Costner and Robert Duvall as two cattlemen, are trying to enlist the aid of some of the town's people in resisting an evil rancher baron and his henchman.  One farmer has two young sons and tells Kevin Costner,

"I didn't raise my boys just to see 'em killed."

To which Kevin Costner replies:

"Well, you may not know this, but there's things that gnaw at a man worse than dyin'."

I'm praying that our treatment of refugees and immigrants in the coming administration will gnaw at us enough to outweigh irrational fears for our own safety.