Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Against Tribalism, even among Christians.

We are informed that "Syrian-American Christians Love Trump Because They Say He's Like Assad":
Yes, that Assad—Bashar al-Assad—the one whose army is accused of killing upwards of a quarter-million Syrians. In some important ways, Moussa said, Trump and Assad sound similar. And he likes it.

Besides appreciating Trump’s plainspokenness and apparent invulnerability to pressure from lobbyists, Moussa and other Syrian-American Christians living in Pennsylvania like Trump for a unique reason: They think he will do the least to undermine Assad—and, by extension, the most to protect their fellow Christians back in Syria.

“Mr. Trump, he is the only candidate that ever said, ‘I am an evangelical and I am proud of it, and I am gonna protect the Christians,’” he said.

I'm sorry, but as a Christian and a Catholic, I happen to be repulsed by what I consider "tribalism" among Christians -- the "it's ok if it happens to you, just as long as it's not me or my kin" mentality.

In the case of Assad, what does it mean that Syrian Christians praise him despite the fact that he "is accused of killing upwards of a quarter-million Syrians"? -- That to me indicates that Syrian Christians put a rather high value on self-preservation, and a rather low-bar on morality and Christian conduct towards their fellow man.

Likewise, Saddam Hussein was praised because he was "a friend to the Christians", but he was "good to the Christians" at the cost of murdering a quarter to half a million of his own citizens.

Does anybody besides me seem repulsed by the suggestion that we should flock to a serial-murderer simply because they deign to spare us?

2 comments:

  1. You make a good point. But in the course of divine providence, it seems that God has often used very despicable men to nevertheless do good things for his people. A biblical example would be Cyrus who decreed that the captive Children of Israel could leave Babylon and return to Israel (Book of Ezra). A secular example would be Franco in Spain, despised by the left but appreciated by the Catholics whose lives and religious freedoms he protected.

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