Welcome to the conversations that matter podcast my name is John Harris. We are going to talk about an article today from

Christianity today with a title is it Christian for Europe to welcome refugees from Ukraine but not Syria.

Mm is a Christian that's a question Christian is it is there a Christian position on this

refugee thing and underlying this is the assumption hey wait a minute is there

like some racism is there some discrimination going on if you're gonna allow

people from Ukraine to come in but you you didn't have the same process with people from

Syria or you vetted them more strongly or something like that. So I want to get

into this piece. I think it actually raises a lot of questions, not the piece directly. I think it actually raises a lot of questions not the piece directly I think it

probably inadvertently raises these issues but we need to think through some

questions and some issues I think it's important for us to start thinking

through these things and and maybe challenging some of the things we've

taken for granted for quite some time. For most of human history, a nation has been defined by things like traditions, habits, religion, race, obviously the

geographic area one lives in and things common to that area which would include professions I mean that that gets tied into the habits and all and I think that really and I don't want to put a time I don't know when I don't know in history it's kind of hard to put a date sometimes on things but but I would say perhaps this is another Enlightenment kind of thing that we've been living with.

This idea that reason or something at least more abstract ideals can bind a nation together.

And the United States has been the chief example of this.

That you'll often hear people say, and I've disagreed with it strongly,

but you'll still hear people say, I've disagreed with it strongly but you'll still hear people

say United States is an idea America is an idea it's not a country right and

other countries in the West have taken note of this and have liberal democracies have have of belonging stability. They just need to have share certain ideals and

really they all boil down to when you really come down to it it's equality of

some kind it's some kind of an egalitarian equality that is shared in

some in in some ways and that is going to enable prosperity and peace and all this. So

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