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On Refugees, Be “Wise as Serpents”

Sep 29, 2015 11:48 am By Ralph Sidway

Muslim migrant influx strains Christian world’s tension between being “wise as serpents, innocent as doves.” Bulgaria offers a way forward.

The Bulgarian Orthodox Church has announced it will help migrants who have arrived in Bulgaria, but has urged authorities not to let any more migrants in, clarifying sharp differences between Eastern European Christian nations and Western secular/post-Christian responses to the mass Muslim refugee crisis.

It is very interesting that most Orthodox and Eastern Christian bishops have shown great restraint in responding to the Muslim migrant crisis overwhelming Europe. One exception was Coptic Bishop Angaelos of the UK, who promptly rejected Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s position of allowing only Christian migrants, saying, “As a Christian I could never justify a policy which only supported ‘our own’… The distinction should be based on people’s need, not their religion.”

To the credit of Christians everywhere, it is primarily the post-Christian West which is stepping up to the humanitarian tragedy of millions of refugees fleeing the Islamic State and the unrest of the Middle East and Africa. 

Britain and France have made commitments to take in 20,000 and 24,000 Syrian migrants respectively, whereas Germany has  accepted over 100,000 in August alone, and if current numbers continue, will have absorbed 800,000 by year’s end. (In contrast to the European welcome wagon, most Muslim nations are accepting no refugees: zero, citing concerns over the terrorist threat.)

To be sure, the Western European sentiment is admirable, and seems the ideal Christian response. Yet even Jesus Christ cautioned his disciples to be “wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” Note, Jesus does not urge them to be “vicious,” “aggressive,” or “poisonous” — other adjectives applicable to certain serpents — merely wise. Serpents protect themselves when they have to, slithering away into holes in the earth, hiding from danger, protecting themselves and their brood. There are times when self-preservation is appropriate, even for the followers of Him who voluntarily went to the Cross for all mankind.

Other observers of Europe’s mass migrant crisis are starting to consider what such “serpent wisdom” might involve, even if they don’t reference Jesus’ specific words.

Rod Dreher (who has seemed lately to have become somewhat muddled on the jihad threat) even considered how wide open Christian Europe should throw its borders to an alien people, asking the question, “Is Christianity A Suicide Cult?” Dreher has been reading, as have other commentators, Raspail’s novel, The Camp of the Saints, and offers an excerpt and some thoughts:

[Raspail writes in Chapter 20:] “Two opposing camps. One still believes. One doesn’t. The one that still has faith will move mountains. That’s the side that will win. Deadly doubt has destroyed all incentive in the other. That’s the side that will lose.”

Raspail, it seems to me, is deadly accurate in his diagnosis of the sentimental humanitarianism of the Europeans, and how their loss of faith in their own civilization compels them to behave in ways that guarantee its destruction by an invading force. The novel also implicitly raises a disturbing question: What cruelties, if any, are justified for the sake of a nation’s defense?

These are extremely complex, morally harrowing questions, and we are seeing them on display now as Europe faces its refugee crisis.

Dreher also refers to an important article by British Christian Alistair Roberts, whose message essentially distills to this: “…As Christians, we certainly have an obligation to show charity to refugees, but that does not mean that we are morally obligated to allow them to settle among us.”

This seems like the prudent course, serpent wisdom combined with Christian innocence. It doesn’t take an especially wise person — just an honest one — to see the existential threat in all the videos and reports of huge mobs of Muslim migrants screaming “Allahu Akbar” and attacking trains and police in Hungary (and Slovenia), prompting a State of Emergency, complete with deployment of tear gas and water cannons.

Then there is the explicit threat from the Islamic State, which promised back in February 2015 to flood Europe with refugees, and now claims to have smuggled thousands of jihadis into Europe. This seems plausible even by the UN’s own statistics, which concludes that far from being primarily composed of families fleeing the unrest of the Middle East, 75% of the refugees are young, fit males. As Mark Steyn notes, “That’s not the demographic distribution of fleeing refugees, but of an invading army.”

Or, as Robert Spencer shows, of an Islamic Hijrah, a deliberate migration in imitation of Muhammad, with the purpose of colonizing Europe.

There seems to be a growing chorus of such sober realists, some of towering stature, urging caution. Revered Nobel Laureate and Solidarity leader Lech Walesa offered this ominous warning, “If Europe Opens Its Gates to Muslims There Will be Beheadings Here.”

Dreher again, on a Hungarian bishop openly defying Pope Francis:

On the same day [as the Muslim migrant attacks on Hungarian trains], September 7, a Roman Catholic bishop of Hungary spoke out:

“Pope Francis’s message Sunday couldn’t have been clearer: With hundreds of thousands of refugees flowing into Europe, Catholics across the continent had a moral duty to help by opening their churches, monasteries and homes as sanctuaries.

“On Monday, the church’s spiritual leader for southern Hungary — scene of some of the heaviest migrant flows anywhere in Europe — had a message just as clear: His Holiness is wrong.

“‘They’re not refugees. This is an invasion’, said Bishop Laszlo Kiss-Rigo, whose dominion stretches across the southern reaches of this predominantly Catholic nation. ‘They come here with cries of “Allahu Akbar.” They want to take over’” (emphasis added).

Raymond Ibrahim provides a powerful historical analysis in defense of the position shared by Bishop Laszlo and Hungarian PM Orban, citing examples ranging from Eastern European nations tyrannized by the Ottoman Muslims for hundreds of years, to Myanmar, where

Popular Buddhist leader Ashin Wirathu… staunchly opposes Muslim presence [warning]: “You can be full of kindness and love, but you cannot sleep next to a mad dog”… Wiranthu’s pamphlets say “Myanmar is currently facing a most dangerous and fearful poison that is severe enough to eradicate all civilization.”

Perhaps most telling is the story — unknown by most — behind how Indonesia became the world’s most populous Muslim country. Ibrahim cites Orthodox Christian priest Daniel Byantoro, a native Indonesian convert from Islam and founder of the Indonesian Orthodox Mission:

For thousands of years my country (Indonesia) was a Hindu Buddhist kingdom.  The last Hindu king was kind enough to give a tax exempt property for the first Muslim missionary to live and to preach his religion. Slowly the followers of the new religion were growing, and after they became so strong the kingdom was attacked, those who refused to become Muslims had to flee for their life… Slowly from the Hindu Buddhist Kingdom, Indonesia became the largest Islamic country in the world. If there is any lesson to be learnt by Americans at all, the history of my country is worth pondering upon.  (Facing Islam, endorsement section, emphasis added).

Raymond Ibrahim notes the inconvenient truth which prompts all those with deep historical experience of Islam to warn of and resist the mass Muslim influx: “Islam’s unwavering Rule of Numbers: whenever and wherever Muslims grow in numbers, the same ‘anti-infidel’ violence endemic to Muslim-majority nations grows with them.”

Which brings us to Bulgaria. After watching the crisis unfold over these past several weeks, the Synod of Bishops of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church has expressed itself in a clear and admirable manner, extolling the innocence of accepting true refugees, but with the wisdom urged by Christ, warning that they have reached their limit, no more refugees should be allowed:

It is not right for the Orthodox Bulgarian people to pay the price of us disappearing as a State.

It is time for Christians to apply some “serpent wisdom,” and “let our ‘no’ be ‘no’.”  The following report on the Bulgarian Orthodox Church offers an example of the way forward.

“Bulgaria should not let more migrants in, Orthodox Church says,” Sofia News Agency via Pravmir, September 26, 2015:

The Bulgarian Orthodox Church has announced it will help migrants who have arrived in Bulgaria, but has urged authorities not to let any more migrants in. 

“We consider that our government should in no way allow more refugees into our country. For those who are already here, it is right for us, as Orthodox Christians and as a society, to look after as much as we can and as much as our scant resources allow us, but not any further,” the Holy Synod – the church’s top executive body – has explained in a statement.

The text also reads that the problem should be solved by “who created it; it is not right for the Orthodox Bulgarian people to pay the price of us disappearing as a State”.

“There should be no doubt whatsoever that the Orthodox Church feels compassion and calls for solidarity with all these people who already among us and really, and not supposedly, need care and material support in accordance with our capabilities… The Church always explores the reasons for misfortune and calls for the removal of the reasons. The fight against consequences, if reasons are not removed, is a foredoomed one.”

Fending off accusations of a “delayed” reaction to the migrant crisis, the Holy Synod has reminded that, “in the millennia-long experience of the Orthodox Church no hasty decision-making is envisaged in transitory situations.”

Apart from issues of migrants’ material needs and of solidarity with people coming into the country, the influx “poses questions about the stability and existence of the Bulgarian state, in principle.”

“Also, [it poses] the question what spiritual context, what spiritual environment will the Orthodox Bulgarian people live in if this influx continues to the extent that it shifts the existing ethnic balance in the territory of our Fatherland Bulgaria that God determined for our Orthodox people to inhabit,” the statement goes on.

The Synod has also advised the government to urge an “end to wars” in the Middle East and North Africa in its dialogue with “all international organizations” and also to table the question of “inter-religious tolerance” in countries such as Egypt, Syria and Iraq.

“We consider that the Bulgarian government should concentrate its foreign policy resources… on an end to wars, and not only on should solidarity with the consequences of their endless continuation.”

Presided by the Patriarch (currently Neofit I), the Holy Synod is the governing body of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, in a country where Orthodox Christianity is the religion of the majority.

_______
Ralph Sidway is an Orthodox Christian researcher and writer, and author of Facing Islam: What the Ancient Church has to say about the Religion of Muhammad. He operates the Facing Islam blog.

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Filed Under: Bulgaria, Eurabia, immigration, Islamic supremacism Tagged With: hijrah, Islamization of Europe, migrants, Orthodox Christianity


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Comments

  1. ZULU says

    Sep 29, 2015 at 11:51 am

    OT

    Saudi Arabia insists UN keeps LGBT rights out of its development goals
    The Saudi Foreign Minister says LGBT rights are ‘counter to Islamic law’
    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/saudi-arabia-insists-un-keeps-lgbt-rights-out-of-its-development-goals-a6671526.html

  2. Joseph says

    Sep 29, 2015 at 12:23 pm

    This among other passages came to mind

    Luke 10:19King James Version (KJV)
    19 Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.

    I think Islam is going to get “theirs” soon. Exactly when???

    • Shane says

      Sep 30, 2015 at 4:05 pm

      Muslims are predators who view all non-Muslims as prey. They will rape and rob infidels without hesitation or mercy.

  3. Michael Copeland says

    Sep 29, 2015 at 12:28 pm

    As Viktor Orban, Prime Minister of Hungary, correctly points out, economic migrants are NOT refugees: they should be deported. Economic migrants who break into a country are criminals. European states owe them nothing.
    Merkel is unconstitutionally overriding the law by inviting in all and sundry economic migrants. She is not empowered to waive the rules. It should be the German Parliament, not the Chancellor, who decide to make any change to the law.
    Europe is being governed by tabloid headlines.

    • Ariel says

      Sep 30, 2015 at 7:09 am

      Unfortunately she is acting like a dictator. The only question is why is Germany hell bent on admitting these invaders as refugees?

      • Shane says

        Sep 30, 2015 at 4:07 pm

        Because non-Muslim women in Germany are only producing about 1.3 babies per family, which is not nearly enough to stabilize the population. Feminism and liberalism are killing Western Civilization as White women put their careers over making enough babies to maintain the population.

        • Angemon says

          Sep 30, 2015 at 4:56 pm

          That’s going to work out well:

          “See, my dear muslim refugees, you have to work hard and pay taxes so we can afford to pay pensions to those old Christian and Atheist Germans who couldn’t even be bothered to have children to rely on”.

  4. Ex-muslim says

    Sep 29, 2015 at 12:41 pm

    I love Eastern Orthodox Christian peoples. They still have some backbone to stand up with. Catholics & Protestants in the West are naïve and are in love with evil islam and muslims jihadists. I don’t have deep theological roots in Christianity but I see a big difference btwn Eastern Orthodox Christians and Western Catholic/Protestant Christians.

    • Joseph says

      Sep 29, 2015 at 2:11 pm

      Ex-muslim says
      Catholics & Protestants in the West are naïve and are in love with evil islam and muslims jihadists.
      ______________________________________________________

      That is a mighty broad brush you are using to paint.
      I also do believe that Robert Spencer is Catholic so just by one person your logic is faulty. Don’t be so quick in judgement, there are many here in the U.S.A. that are fervent anti-jihadists that fit into your category of “lovers of Islam”

      • abad says

        Sep 29, 2015 at 7:41 pm

        I believe Robert Spencer is Melkite Greek Catholic.

  5. RCCA says

    Sep 29, 2015 at 12:55 pm

    Why are the Syrian Christians not going to Bulgaria?

    • RCCA says

      Sep 29, 2015 at 1:19 pm

      The Bulgarian Orthodox Christian Church doesn’t want them. I guess there is more to this story than meets the eye.

      • Ivan Todorov says

        Sep 29, 2015 at 4:45 pm

        The Bulgarian Orthodox Church wants and is ready to host Christian refugees from Syria and Iraq, Two years ago when there was an influx of asylum seekers in Bulgaria, the church offered to host the Christian refugees in its monasteries, but the authorities stopped this and chose to put everyone together in concentration camps.
        The problem may be with Syrian and Iraqi Christians not wanting to come to Bulgaria, as they too prefer more lavish social systems.

        • Ex-muslim says

          Sep 29, 2015 at 6:47 pm

          God Bless Bulgarian Orthodox Church for their generosity and for their kindness they are showing to Iraqi and Syrian Christians. I wish Western nations would do the same for the Christian refugee who are the real victims. Germany says it is ready to receive 800.000 muslims within this year and other Western nations says the same but you rarely hear Western nations talk about protecting Christians and giving them.asylum. Eastern Orthodox Christians tend to be more kind and more understanding to the suffering Christians to the middle east compared to Western nations who are giving more attention to muslim refugees.

        • abad says

          Sep 29, 2015 at 7:48 pm

          Syrian Christians – like other – AHEM – Christians and religious minorities from the Middle East who come to the western world assimilate well, learn the language and customs of the host country, get an education, get jobs, and generally obey the laws.

          Only Muslims go to western Europe for free government handouts which will run out soon, then they’ll all need bailing out.

          Greece may have been the first but I do see Germany being next in line. Then maybe the UK, France, ad nauseum.

    • Ivan Todorov says

      Sep 29, 2015 at 4:50 pm

      They may not want to come to Bulgaria, because even Bulgarian authorities, not to mention the same church, will allow them, not so with many Moslems.

  6. Ex-muslim says

    Sep 29, 2015 at 1:29 pm

    Almost all of the Syrians who are trying to immigrate to Europe are Syrian muslims. 99% of Syrian Christians moved to the area controlled by Assad forces because it is much safer than the area controlled by ISIS and other jihadist groups. Last year, when the Russian Patriarch visited Syria tens of thousands of Syrian Christians sent an official letter to the Russian government asking them for protection
    and resettlement to Russia if ISIS and other Jihadists threaten their security and I believe Russia is taking their request seriously. Please more of this below: http://sputniknews.com/voiceofrussia/2013_10_16/Syrian-Christians-turning-to-Russia-for-protection-8756/

    • RCCA says

      Sep 29, 2015 at 4:54 pm

      Thanks for the link.

  7. Angemon says

    Sep 29, 2015 at 2:28 pm

    and if current numbers continue, will have absorbed 800,000

    I’m afraid I must nitpick the expression I emphasized above because it sicks out like a sore thumb in an otherwise fine text – those so-called “refugees” are not going to gradually become a part of Germany. That’s the whole problem. I’d say “accommodate” would be a more fitting term but they’ll never be happy – they’ll push for more and more demands. “Make room” is more like it.

    • abad says

      Sep 29, 2015 at 7:55 pm

      As in “Make Room for Syrian Jihadis”?

      Is that anything like “Make Room for Saddam”?

  8. R Cole says

    Sep 29, 2015 at 5:59 pm

    Video Australia: Sharing ‘cultural diversity’ in PM Malcolm’s electorate.

    https://youtu.be/z5ltx_NSMbo

    Immigration Debate Down Under

    Some Australians dress up in Islamic gear and go to the newly elected Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s upscale neighborhood – to see if the neighbors would support a petition for the PM’s proposed 12,000 new migrants – to be allowed to move into their neighborhood.

    The Aussie petitioners said they experienced a great deal of ‘intolerance’.

    And in the end – not a single resident in the new PM’s neighborhood signed the petition.

    Hilarious!! Aussie prank style video – sets out to prove a point.

  9. abad says

    Sep 29, 2015 at 7:57 pm

    Sounds like it is once again time for Mr. Seabury’s famous quote which belongs here:

    “Here is a mysterious contradiction. Those who toil for the good of others often lose the respect of those for whom they sacrifice. As we change, under the stress of helping, others may blame us for the lessening of our strength, health, ability to cope and our charm. Altruism should never be the first thing on your agenda.” – David Seabury

  10. Matthieu Baudin says

    Sep 29, 2015 at 9:29 pm

    “…The text also reads that the problem should be solved by ‘who created it; it is not right for the Orthodox Bulgarian people to pay the price of us disappearing as a State’…”

    Bulgaria, alongside Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary; a people who value their independence and still have a clear idea of what a State is and that effort is required to maintain it.
    If a humanitarian effort is to be made then it should be carried out close to the source of the conflict; at present we’re seeing a rupturing wound in the middle east that’s spreading its septic contents wide and far into societies that bear no responsibility for the jihad malaise.

  11. Katnis says

    Sep 29, 2015 at 10:26 pm

    This is a wonderful, well-written article. I think it addresses some of the guilt that we feel and the natural desire to want to help others. But a few of the people quoted in the article understand that it’s important to take a long-term view in dealing with the reality of the situation.

    “It is not right for the Orthodox Bulgarian people to pay the price of us disappearing as a State”.

    Well said.

  12. More Ham Ed says

    Sep 30, 2015 at 1:55 am

    The latest video from Pat Condell is a must-watch video:

    The Invasion of Europe:

  13. Jennifer King says

    Sep 30, 2015 at 5:36 am

    Nazarenes and Christians should help each other first and foremost. Yeshua [Jesus] refused to help a needy Samaritan woman just because she wasn’t Jewish, and called the gentiles DOGS. This is in accordance with Jewish law. Then, when he told his apostles to spread the good news, he told them to go only to the Jews and not the Samaritans.

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