I did not change my profile picture to the Facebook French flag thing, and here is why.
I appreciate the sentiment behind it - stand in sympathy with the
French people and the victims. Which is why I put up the Eiffel
tower/peace sign picture. And I don't criticize people who chose the French flag profile, either.
But using a national flag to represent
this sentiment does not sit well with me. The attackers apparently said
things like, "Blame your president" and "This is for the people of
Syria". France is taking part in fighting ISIS. French president François Hollande
has called the Paris attacks an "act of war" committed by a "terrorist
army" - worryingly echoing the words of former predident Bush after
9/11. Now, before
you berate me, I do not condone terrorism as a response to military
attacks - but equally, I do not condone military attacks as a response
to terrorism. Military attacks make too many innocent victims, and
fertilize the soil in which extremism grows. Military attacks, in my
opinion, do not solve anything, but make everything worse. But then, I'm not a diplomat, and I never studied international politics, so I might be blinded by idealism - and this is not me being sarcastic, this is me being honest.
Moreover, I am uncomfortable with any ideology
of "nations". I am uncomfortable with the fact that I have more rights
in my country than asylum seekers do, simply because I was born in the
right place. I did not earn those rights, and they are denied to people
who need them simply because they have the wrong nationality. I don't
like the idea of borders. At the same time, I am grateful to live in a place where I enjoy freedom of speech (one of the things radical Islamic terrorists stand against), so maybe I just want my cake and eat it too.
The French flag thing is also too
reminiscent of the French national party, which preaches national pride
and patriotism, and has a racist ideology. People who will no doubt benefit from the Paris attacks, spout out nationalistic, islamophobic and anti-migrants rethoric - "French people first!", by which they mean only white people, of course, definitely not migrants, not second- or third-generation migrants, not Jews...
Finally, as has been pointed out, and without minimizing the suffering of the victims and their families or the trauma France are going through, the profile French flag thing is incredibly Eurocentric. Such attacks happen regularly in countries such as Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, or Pakistan - and Facebook didn't offer us the option to change our profile picture to their flag. Yet their pain and trauma is the same as ours... only, it doesn't feel so close, does it? They live far from us, they look and live differently. I am pointing at myself too: I felt more shocked by the Paris attack than by the Beirut one. Only later did I realise that I was being biaised in favour of my own culture.
I mourn with the victims' loved ones. But I think this wasn't an just attack on France... this was an attack on humanity. I will mourn and pray... for our whole world.
I was in my car when I heard about the Paris attacks. I felt drained by so much senseless violence and hatred - again.
My first thought was for the victims of this barbarity, and the horrendous pain an shock their loved ones must have felt.Then, I felt overwhelmed by fear for my Muslim neighbours living in the West. Not fear of them; fear for them. They already face
bullying, verbal and physical aggression solely because they're Muslims,
even though the vast majority of them do not condone terrorism in any way. I fear for their
safety and well-being as my human brothers and sisters. And if they meet hostility, hatred and abuse everywhere, how can they live peacefully among us? In fact, this seems to be precisely what ISIS is hoping to achieve.
"The Paris attacks could spark new waves of Islamophobia in France and
beyond — and with it fear of the refugees pouring into Europe from Syria
and other countries. This is exactly what ISIS wants; the group has
vowed to make it impossible for Muslims to exist peacefully in the
West." ISIS wants to force Muslims in the West to choose a camp in the new worldwide war they are hoping to trigger. ISIS wants Muslims to feel alienated and harrassed so they will only have one side to turn to: radicalism.
I am also scared that Western governments will respond with more military strikes. Yet, what good has military involvement done in the past? After 9/11, the US military invaded Afghanistan and Irak. More than 10 years have passed and the Middle East has not been made more stable and safer. It's more volatile than ever. Moreover, the Paris attackers made it clear that they wanted to punish France for its strikes on Syria. Of course, I do not condone terrorism as a
response to military attacks - but equally, I do not condone military
attacks as a response to terrorism. Violence only breeds violence. Any person who is killed in a military strike is someone's son, someone's brother, someone's father - and if his loved ones cannot forgive, revenge is the way they will seek. So what should we do?
I don't know. I really don't. I feel at loss, and I wish I had an easy answer.
As a Christian, I turn to Jesus in such times of grief and chaos.
"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God." Matthew 5:9
"But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If
someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone
takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you.
[...] Love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful." Luke 6:27-31, 35-36.
That's a tall order. Yet I cannot help but think it's the best way to combat violence. I feel that as Christians especially, we have a responsibility to be welcoming and loving to our Muslims neighbour. When so many already blame the Muslim community as a whole and shower them with hostility, if we, followers of Jesus, do not show the way of love, pleace and forgiveness, who will?
However, I am keenly aware that it's very easy for me to
preach peace and forgiveness. I have lost no one. How would I feel if
my mother, my brother, my friend and/or my significant other had been
killed or grieviously wounded? Would I be able to forgive and to avoid
revenge, or would I want "all Muslims dead"? It's easy to be "kind" and
"loving" when I was not directly affected. I can only hope and pray I would have that much grace in my heart.
Yet, choosing the way of violent retaliation and fear will only play into the terrorists' hand. If we don't want them to win, walking unafraid and in love is the best way to counter them.
So this is what I will strive to do: walk in love in the midst of chaos, unafraid - and trusting that my God, on the cross, has already played his hand. His move of sacrificial love is what will ultimately defeat evil, violence, and death.
You may or may not know that since 1 October 2015, I have been working in a Red Cross centre for asylum seekers. This is a job that suits my values and beliefs, and I view it as a great and challenging opportunity to serve God and others, as a Christian.
However, when I mention my work, there is a little sentence that I hear far too often and that really gets on my nerves.
"We cannot take in all the misery of the world!"
Nobody is asking us to take in all the misery of the world. According to recent statistics, 27,000 people registered as asylum seekers in Belgium. This is hardly "all the misery in the world" - not even close. If all conflict and poverty victims really came to Europe, we'd have billions to cope with, not thousands.
Which brings me to my second point. We may be facing an economic crisis, but we are still part of a privileged minority. None of us have to wonder where our next meal will come from, or where we will sleep tonight. We don't have to fear bombing, beheading, or persecution because of our ideas, faith or lifestyle. We enjoy huge amounts of freedom, and we have more than we need. Moreover, the only reason we have that privilege is that we were born in the right place. We did nothing to deserve it. So how dare we reject those who are less fortunate in that respect?
Not all people currently seeking asylum in Belgium will stay. Some decide to go back home when they realise what appalling conditions they'll have to live in for an undetermined period of time (have you ever visited a refugee camp?) Others won't get refugee status - criteria are strict and the procedure itself is complex. Others still will only be granted a subsidiary protection that's limited in time - if the situation in their country gets better, they will be asked to leave Europe.
Some, however, will stay. They will be workers and consumers, enabling our economy to keep going. They will bring their skills (many residents in my centre are engineers). They will be our neighbours, our doctors, or our shopkeepers. I hope they will be our friends, but that all depends on how we welcome them. If we treat them with wariness and hostility, how can they become integrated in our society?
During World War 2, many Belgians fled the country for fear of the Germans. My grandmother recalls that many French citizens regarded Belgian refugees with hostility, with some villages putting up signs that said, "No water for Belgians". How short our memory is!
Finally, if we don't welcome them, what should we do? Should we let them die on our doorstep? They're human beings. They're all somebody's son or daughter. They're fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters. Would you let your mother or your brother die on your doorstep because you worry there might not be enough room inside for them?
If you have a better solution, a human and compassionate alternative, we are all ears.
This may come as a surprise to many of you, but I don't really do religion.
As far as I can tell, religion is a "system" to get you into God's good books.
It can be rituals, sacraments, and ceremonies. Christen or baptize your baby to ensure he'll go to heaven - or be baptized yourself in order to validate your faith. Say a mass for a dead person to shorten their time in purgatory. Have your marriage sanctified by a minister to make it valid. Don't get me wrong here - I know symbols are important reminders, and that as humans, rituals help us through the various stages of life, but they can never replace deeper realities, nor make us acceptable to God.
For some, religion is a set of rules to abide to. One side of that coin is pride: because I follow those rules to the letters, I am a better person than others, and surely God loves me more. I become judgemental of
anyone who doesn't follow those rules - and I end up rejecting certain
categories of people. The other side of the coin is a huge burden of guilt, because no one is perfect. No one can strictly adhere to any moral standard. We all slip up, and when it happens, we feel crushed: surely now God no longer loves me. I am worthless.
It can be praying, singing, fasting, reading a holy book. It can be charity work. At the end of the day, though, it's fundamentally flawed: religions are trying to get God to do something. Magic uses the same premises: you can somehow manipulate the surnatural to your own ends. But if there is a God, surely he is no puppet. You cannot manipulate God into doing what you want through prayer or fasting or good works.
When you get to the bottom of things, religions
are man-made. I do not think they are inherently good. Human beings need
to take responsibilities for their own actions, and maybe atheism helps
in that one cannot use religion as an excuse for being bigoted or
intolerant when one is an atheist.
Even the apostle Paul didn't put any value in religion:
If others have reason for confidence in their own efforts, I have even more!
I
was circumcised when I was eight days old. I am a pure-blooded citizen
of Israel and a member of the tribe of Benjamin—a real Hebrew if there
ever was one! I was a member of the Pharisees, who demand the strictest
obedience to the Jewish law. I was so zealous that I harshly persecuted the church. And as for righteousness, I obeyed the law without fault.
I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done. Yes,
everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of
knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything
else, counting it all as garbage. - Philippians 3: 4-8
It's worth noting that the Greek word politely translated as "garbage" or "rubbish" in most English versions actually means "dung" or "excrement", and may have been as offensive as the English word "shit".
So basically... the Apostle Paul says religion is shit.
You see, faith is very different from religion. Deep faith is about relationship, not about religion. I believe God is a person we can somehow relate to. I could not love or respect a
God who has to be placated through rituals and sacrifices and self-loathing. But that is not the God I
believe in. I believe in a God who got his hands dirty. I believe he
made himself man. He went through what we go through and made himself
approachable. I would even go as far as to say that God learnt from this
experience - now he knows what human life is like, because he's lived
it. To me, that is an immense comfort, because it means he is not a
far-off judge wagging his finger at me. He knows what I'm going through.
He understands. He suffers alongside us. That, to me, is what makes him
worthy of my love and devotion.
I believe in a God who loves us. No ifs or buts. God doesn't say, "I'll love you if you go to church" or "I'll love you if you fast for 40 days" or "I'll love you if you quit smoking" or "I'll love you when you're perfect". God's love is not conditional. We don't need to deserve his love: he's already given it to us. I believe in a God who came to live and die for us. That's pretty big love! And he didn't do it because we loved him... he did it because he loves us.
This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. [...]We love each other because he loved us first. - 1 John 4: 10, 19
When I was 18, I spent a year in London, studying and practising English. The experience shaped the person I am today in many significant ways. The most obvious one is that I became a Christian that year. My faith is the foundation of my worldview, of my values, and of the character I strive to develop. Yet, that is not the only door that was opened in my heart that year.
I fell in love with the English language and its culture. I made friends in London and learnt tidtits of British history, as well as odd British habits and foods - I have become a heavy tea drinker (with milk, please), and I love mince pies, beans on toast and mango chutney (OK, strictly speaking that's not English, but I learnt to love Indian food when I was there).
I started watching movies in English and reading books. Lots and lots of books. Over the years, I've discovered numerous authors and immersed myself in the worlds they created. I walked in the shoes of hundreds of characters, wept with them, laughed with them, trembled for them. As George R.R. Martin puts it in A Song of Ice and Fire, "A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one." Of course, I already was avidly reading French books, too; but reading in English imprinted the structure and flow of the language into my mind.
Partly because I was discovering faith in English, and partly because I was completely immersed in the language and culture, it created a strong emotional bond in my mind. English wasn't just a language I had learnt academically. It became part of me. It became the language of my heart and mind, sometimes even more than my mother tongue.
Like a cuckoo, I had hatched in a nest that wasn't build by my biological breed - but I felt at home. I returned to Belgium vowing I'd go back to the UK, and I spent a long time feeling homesick. Eventually, several years later, I moved to Swindon and lived there for 6 years, weaving English more and more into my personality. I worked with special needs children and discovered autism. English also allowed me to communicate with people all over the world through the internet, further opening up my mind to different cultures, ways of life and of perceiving the world.
Because I went to London, I learnt a new language that became part of me. I became a Christian. I made beloved friends. I opened my heart and mind to different cultures and ways of thinking. I got to know I had autism.
That gap year yielded outcomes that reached far into my future. I would not be the person I am today if I hadn't decided to go.
Roman Road, Eastend of London, where I lived for a year
From time to time, I find things I've written quite a while ago, possibly in another place. I thought I could re-post them here: retro-blogging!
Here is one I wrote in 2011.
The grown-ups, they rush past, all preoccupied with deadlines and
bills and worrying and such like. But I am walking down the streets
listening to music and I'm dancing in my head.
The music lives
inside my head and from there is spreads through my veins; it runs in my limbs all the way to my fingertips. It possesses me and I could dance right here in the street, but I
only just dance in my head.
Long ago, I set a basic rule: in my house, it's still morning as long as I'm still in my pyjamas.
And what a productive morning it has been!
I emailed the publisher about the possibility of translating another book, I paid several bills online, and wrote to my sponsored children, Jacob and Dulce. I tidied up the living room, folded and put away some laundry, and put some more out to dry. I fed the dog (who picked at her food and decided to sleep instead), emptied the cat's litter tray and put some fresh one in (it was high time). I planned a family Sunday lunch with Mum over the phone, and planned a girls' sushi night out with a friend. I planned tomorrow's English class that I'll be teaching to my friends and prepared resources. I replied to a friend's email, several friends' Facebook messages, and participated in a discussion online about women in the church.
All in all, pyjama days are the best.
I suppose I'd better get dressed now, to get on with the rest of my day... After all, it IS 4:30 pm.
