¹⁴ What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? ¹⁵ Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. ¹⁶ If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? ¹⁷ In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

James 2:14-17

I have a lot of problems with the Church. There. I said it. Acting like I am someone who upholds every doctrine and verse in the Bible and the catechism of the Catholic church, which I was raised in, would be a lie and I’m not a liar. I have issues with the gender roles that are often assigned to girls and boys at a really young age. I take issue with the pervasive idea that being gay is a sin and I completely support marriage equality and LGBTQ+ rights. I could go on for awhile, but the point remains that I have some issues with the way I, and others, were raised within Christianity.

Yet, still, I find that my faith informs how I look at and interact with others. How could it not? In the Christian way of teaching, we are taught from a really young age what it means to love someone without reserve. What it means to be a self-sacrificing, giving person. What it means to be a person of God and of faith.

That means, by definition, that my faith is not about me. My faith guides me to make the right, just and equitable decision without regard for myself, or it should. All of this is dictated by the same idea: love others, with no asterisk.

In the parable of the Good Samaritan, we see the holy priest bypass the suffering man on the side of the road. But it is the Samaritan, the one whom society has deemed evil, who stops and helps the beaten man. Words without actions have no meaning. You can post a Bible verse on Facebook every day, every hour, but still not be fulfilling what God has directed us to do.

When it comes to refugees, the contrast between acting like a Christian and carrying out the actions of a good Christian becomes stark. You can say you “love” refugees all you want. You can say you “care” about them, but if you are actively opposed to welcoming refugees into this country, or even just silent on the matter, you are complicit in their suffering. Like it says in James 2:14, faith alone cannot save a person in the most dire of circumstances. Your faith, while it may be good for you in the long run, is nothing without an action of love.

Love is empty if it has no force behind it. A Syrian refugee will still starve to death. A child will still die in a bombing. A whole generation of young people will go without an education. But good job, you “loved” them. I hope it brings you peace, but that peace is really just ignorance for the sake of your own selfishness.

You either love all people, including those of different creeds, races, nationalities, ages, sexualities, and abilities, or you don’t. We as Americans are privileged in a way that blinds us to the actual suffering being shown to us by Syrian refugees. The narrative I have seen being preached by Christians is absolutely devastating and antithetical to everything we are supposed to believe.

For one, prioritizing economic interests and “jobs” over helping others is completely self-serving, if we are still using Christian teaching to shape our actions. Refugees are the definition of the “least of these.” We should be putting aside all of our material interests to do what we can for them, even if it’s hard. I would argue that the arrival of a Syrian refugee will have a negligible impact on any American resident, but since that doesn’t seem to be a believable thought, even if you think it will be hard on you, it shouldn’t matter. If we have two shirts, we give the person in need one of them. That’s a lesson I learned in kindergarten Sunday school, I would be happy to hold classes for those of you Christians who can’t get behind this.

And lastly, but probably the most important of all, the prioritization of our own security is fundamentally not Christian. I saw something the other day on Facebook comparing restricting refugees to locking your door at night. While this really stupid metaphor can be deconstructed by the simple addition that refugees are ringing the doorbell and are not something you are simply locking the door against, it’s simply dehumanizing to describe actual people who are living their worst nightmare as something or someone we should be protecting ourselves from.

Of course, I believe there is a difference in what we believe best for our idea of government and religion, but that’s never stopped Christians before so why stop at refugees? Let’s go with it for the sake of the argument.

The very idea of sacrifice means that you are giving up something for others. I will not argue that refugees are safe and not dangerous in any way to your person. That seems to be a fact that no one can accept, so we will ignore it for now. Let’s say for the sake of the argument that refugees could be dangerous, our Christian teaching should tell us that the very chance of saving a child from dying of starvation or by violence is worth every sacrifice. Believing in the good in people and a person’s inherent worth shouldn’t be something that I have to argue, but here I am.

Lastly, I will make my last plea to my fellow Catholics. My plea is this: stop kidding yourself. You are not living out your faith and I am not going to let you live in your bubble. Our church is not just the people we have known our entire lives or the ones who live in the exact same demographic as us, our church is global. The pope has been clear: welcoming refugees is the Christian thing to do. He washed the feet of Muslim migrants. I don’t know what else he has to do to show you what is right. In every area of your lives, you cling to the sanctity of religion and the Mass, but all of that means nothing if you are preaching about security and economics over accepting refugees. It’s as simple as that.

Do you know how horrible it is to be eighteen and see people who have taught you about faith and love your entire life being hypocrites? I will not call you out by name, but you know who you are. It makes me unbelievably sad to know that young people in our church might be hearing the justifications y’all are making for this complicity. You may be older than me, but I know I’m right in this and I think it’s my responsibility to call it out. I shouldn’t have to do this, but again, here I am. I hope this is the wake-up call you needed.

³ Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, ⁴ not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

Philippians 2: 3-4