A Christian Response to Afghanistan

By Quardricos Bernard Driskell, Columnist

I am a healthcare lobbyist. I teach religion and politics. I am not a politician or a policymaker, nor do I lobby on behalf of foreign policy.

And so, I’m not going to prescribe any solutions to the absolute mess and humanitarian catastrophe, which is ongoing in Afghanistan. However, the last few weeks of the ensuing strife in the country has led to widespread criticism from lawmakers, refugee advocates, and humanitarian organizations that its efforts at diplomacy with the Taliban have created confusion and are harming rather than helping specific Americans and Afghan allies who are still trying to leave Afghanistan by air and land.

But I will say this. I have been deeply troubled by the rhetoric around the welcome of refugees from Afghanistan into this country in some circles. I recall in Mark 7, in which Jesus is talking about defilement – specifically in verse 15 – “there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” This language of defilement – that these people who need a place to go, who are fleeing from danger, that they will somehow harm us or affect us or defile us or soil us or sully us is painfully, painfully familiar in American culture. It’s been said about fleeing refugee Afghans in the last two weeks. It is routinely said about immigrants and refugees from Central and Latin America. It was said over and over again about Syrian refugees. And most assuredly, it has been said about Black immigrants across the Diaspora. 

And, I can hear Jesus saying, “You are taking something and naming it as holy to prevent you from fulfilling your actual holy obligation. You are using piety to cover your wickedness.” And he says, this isn’t a problem with the Pharisees. This is a problem with people. This is what people do.

This idea that something out there that people, refugees are escaping danger could come in and pollute your cultural or ideological purity is precisely what Jesus is crying about. What can spoil us is our failure to reach out to those who require our help. It’s not about keeping the world from touching you. It’s about you reaching out to the world God loves and lending it a hand, feeling it yourself. It’s not about keeping others from getting close to you. It’s about having the courage to get close to those others God loves. After all, was Jesus himself not a refugee fleeing from danger?

Thus, when I think about the situation in Afghanistan, I can’t help but think of another parable of Jesus, the Good Samaritan. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus talks about what it means to love your neighbor. This is the revolutionary teaching of Jesus, to love your neighbor. Might we employ this in our discourse about Afghanistan? Perhaps our politics? In our foreign policy? 

Or maybe not. Because, that would be too much like what Jesus would do. 

Quardricos Bernard Driskell is a federal lobbyist, pastor of the Historic Beulah Baptist Church, and an adjunct professor of legislative politics at The George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management. Follow him on Twitter @q_driskell4