DACA!

It is not Political it is Personal

By Pastor Vinnie

For me it is not political; it is personal, it is spiritual, it is foundational.

DACA stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival. It was a policy set up by the Obama administration in 2012 to allow children brought to America against their will as minors to identify themselves and register for two-year intervals in an attempt correct a problem beyond their control. It was highly controversial because it was argued that the President did so with an expansion of his powers. These children are often called “dreamers” because they dream of fully belonging to the only country they have ever known or had loyalty too.

I do understand the valid point put forth by many on the right who hold themselves as Constitutionists and ergo believe former President Barak Obama did not have the executive power to sign DACA into action. I, too, share the concern that the Executive Branch of government in the US has had its powers extended way past what would be deemed healthy in the long-term. Yet, I also see the point of many on the left who hold themselves as defenders of equality and ergo could not tolerate it any longer when Congress failed for over 15 years to pass legislation to protect the “dreamers.” So, since politically I can see both sides, let’s set them both aside and explore the personal, spiritual, and foundational sides of this problem.

Personal

Jose came to live with us at age two. He had lived in foster care since 18 months old and we were his 3rd foster families. We adopted him at age 3.

My son could have been a been a dreamer. Both his biological parents were. Both his biological parents (as far as I am informed) were brought to this country illegally as children, and without consent. Children rarely have a say in family matters, especially in the cultures from which many “dreamers” come from. We can talk about illegal immigration. We can talk about reform. We can talk on both sides of the issue; and agree on things that can be done but are not done, as a nation. But when that talk about sending cute little children, like the one in my arms, back to countries where they have no connection, likely no more direct family links, and very often don’t even speak the language, we talk about doing evil. Looking at Jose, in my arms (in the picture to the left), he is Hispanic but does not speak a word of Spanish. Let me ask you, would you really send a little babe like him back to El Salvador? He’d have no family connections, and he’d not be able to speak the language. Would you really let this harmless little boy be easy prey for anyone who had nefarious intentions knowing he’d be young, helpless and he’d not even be able to speak for himself nor report misuse or abuse? Because when you support DACA repeal, that is what you are condemning thousands of little lambs like him too. It’s a little harder with a face put to it, at least I’d hope.

Spiritual

The Word of God declares,  “The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it,” (Psalm 24:1)^[1] for, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.” (1 Corinthians 10:26)^[2] God cares little about our nationalism, and He will put His people where he desires. God reserves the sweetness of honey and the richness of milk for those who have been oppressed the most!
“He raises the poor from the dust, He lifts the needy from the ash heap To make them sit with nobles, And inherit a seat of honor; For the pillars of the earth are the LORD’S, And He set the world on them.” (1 Samuel 2:8)^[3]

Let us remember all borders, languages, and all divisions do not exist because of work ethic, worthiness, nor God’s favor. They exist because of sin and man’s desire to expand his power and the sin to Heaven, itself, via the tower of Babel (see Genesis 6). While God may allow nations sovereignty, those nations best recall, His Son is coming with a rod of iron to punish all nations who are not found acting justly (Revelation 2:27, 18:1-24, Isaiah 30:14). And God has made it clear what his expectations are; “The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.” (Leviticus 19:34)^[4]

Those who would like to claim “American exceptionalism” do so based on a false sense of Protestant Work Ethic^[5] superiority. They will tell us, “We worked hard for this success, and it is ours; they can get in line and do the same.” They are welcome to hold those ideas, but good luck trying to sell it to Jesus when He returns! I will remind them that James, the very brother of Jesus, has already made it clear that all our success was not at our own hand but the Father of Light’s, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” (James 1:17)^[6] Yes, we all worked hard for what we have, but why? Was it to kick back, get fat and horde it up? Or was it suppose to be so that we could, “Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.” (Isaiah 1:17)^[7]?

Foundational

Foundationally, we are a land of immigrants, and historically often the most oppressed of immigrants. We can only kick everyone out who came illegally if we kick ourselves and our children out and return it to the Native Indians. Let’s go all DACA repeal on our own children since their forefathers entered this land illegally and without the consent of a pre-existing America.

Look, I am not advocating globalism, nor am I saying there should be no immigration reform, there should be, but for “crying out loud,” what kind of monsters are we? You don’t start reform with helpless children! You start it by curbing your greed for cheap labor and one-sided seasonal work visas which are nearly legalized slavery. The truth is visa (work and tourist) overstays are the main reason for illegal immigrants^[8] but because that would cost Americans money in tourism and cheap labor, we will deport children and build a wall instead. Maybe we can use illegal immigrants to build our wall since they make up 5% of our national workforce and much more of our economy;^[9] doing jobs no one else will do at pay rates no one else accepts. Foundationally, we need reform, but reform that addresses the cause does not seek the easy a-political victim who can’t fight back; like a child.

Last Word

The Last Word goes to Jesus.

“If anyone causes one of these little ones–those who believe in me–to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea” (Matthew 18:6)^[10]

FOOTNOTES:

^[1] NIV

^[2] Ibid.

^[3] Ibid.

^[4] Ibid.

^[5] Also often called Puritan work ethic. It is a system of work ethic that believes that God shows favor on those who work for what they achieve.

^[6] NIV

^[7] Ibid.

^[8] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/visa-overstays-outnumber-illegal-border-crossings-trend-expected-continue-n730216

^[9] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/27/5-facts-about-illegal-immigration-in-the-u-s

^[10] NIV

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Failing Naika

By Pastor Vinnie

Niakia Venant AP stock photo. May she rest in the peace she was robbed of in life.

Naika was 14 years old when she killed herself in front of the whole world on the popular social media platform, Facebook Live. We can blame Facebook; many are doing so. We can blame society, and rant and rave about the dangers of the internet and bad parenting; many will. We can get together on cable news and call for legal action and to force Facebook and other similar social media platforms to be subject to delayed broadcasting and 911 tracking laws and regulations, and I bet someone is already on that.

Still, when that is all done, Naika will still be dead! But because we live by the “headlines,” we will have missed the “fine print” reason. Naika was a victim of repeated sexual exposure and abuse. And the overwhelmed and overworked Foster Care System that took her in as a victim failed to have what it took to heal her of this pain. Naika was removed from her home at age 4 when authorities, according to Cosmopolitan, were ”called to her mother’s home after the girl was left unattended by a male babysitter, with no food or running water.”^[1] What followed was a ten-year cry for help as Naika was bounced in out of 14 different foster- care homes in 10 years until she finally ended it all, hanging herself while broadcasting on Facebook Live to ensure we all heard her cry. How loud must our children cry to be heard?!

Naika had been exposed to not only pornography but also live sex acts performed in front of her from a very young age, and there were reports that she had already begun to mimic aggressive sexual behavior.^[2] She had been beaten, hospitalized, and traumatized over the years. But like so many children in her situation she still loved her mother, and her desire was reunification. The truth is Naika failed to find expressed love, or even safety, both in her biological family or in the care of the state. There has been no end to the blame passing since her death. That has produced as many questions as answers^[3].

Who failed Naika? Her family? The state? The courts? The protection agencies, social workers, and case workers? It is hard to say where all the blame lands because of all accusations being made. But I’d like to ask if the Church should, at least not subjectively, share some of this blame? No, Naika was not some case of church level sexual abuse^[4], but sometimes as a Pastor, I wonder if the people of God have forgotten the high call God has put on protecting children? Are we as a body of believers doing enough to save children like Naika?

It is easy for Christians just to look away and say children like Naika are not our problem and we must attend to our own but that is not at all the way God’s see it. The Old Testament is often wrongly accused by critics as depicting a cold and harsher God than the New Testament. Yet it actually, repeatedly, condemns the sacrificing of children to idols which was culturally common (Leviticus 20:2-5, 2 Kings 21:6, 2 Chronicles 28:1-4, Jeremiah 32:35). It also openly declares God’s judgment on believers who stand idly by as fallen, sinful culture allows for their harm. Furthermore, Psalms declares God’s title to be the “Father of the Fatherless.”^[5] The whole New Testament uses the idea of grafting non-families members into the family and even outright adoption as a constant metaphor for what Jesus has done by extending Salvation to Gentiles^[6] And Jesus, Himself, put the highest curse of damnation on those who allow a child to be harmed.^[7]

Don’t misunderstand what I am about to say; I am as against abortion as anyone. I am anti-abortion and pro-life all the way, and both out of my own pocket and via my church, we give much money to pro-life healthcare to help prevent abortions by supporting at-risk pregnant mothers. But I do sometimes wonder, in particular among the more militant lines in the church, if we tend to focus on saving babies from being aborted only to abandon them once they escape the womb?

We need to save babies, both while in the womb and once they come out of the womb. If we are pro-life then we need to also be pro- Naika’s life (and others like her)! I find it tragically ironic that my twitter feed is filled up daily by Christians decrying abortion but where are the Christians decrying what happened to Naika? It is a sad state of affairs when Cosmopolitan^[8] has more to say about events like this than people of faith.

Adoption and Foster Care is not for everyone. I can personally testify to the fact that it is hard work, emotionally challenging, and brutally exhausting at times. It really is more of a calling than a duty. Hopefully, those who do it are called to it and do not serve robotically. However, you still have to ask sometimes, have you ever sensed God’s calling? Is God calling you maybe, even now?

I have lived a rich, full, and adventurous life, but offering foster care for me was perhaps in the top 2 or 3 most rewarding things I have ever done in my life. I don’t know if any of Naika’s 14 foster care homes were Christian or not. Or if they were, if their Christianity was cultural or authentic. I don’t know, that even if they were authentic if they would have been able to reach Naika after all the damage done to her. What I do know is Naika needed to see what real love looks like and seeing that was her only real hope.

God has called the church into the world to show the world the love that the world knows nothing of. We can’t just leave to the State what God has left to us all. I don’t know, yet, if my fostering has eternally changed lives for the children I cared for or not. But I do know, I loved those kids, and they, beyond any doubt, knew I loved them. They saw what healthy love looked like, and responded to it. The rest I can leave in the hands of the Almighty knowing his love continues when foster cycles end.

It takes a certain kind of skill set. Not everyone can, or should, foster or adopt. However, what we all can be are safe people. We all can ensure any child left in our care is safe, loved, and empowered. We can be supportive to those who do foster and adopt (Shout out to Solid Rock — My church was amazing in support!), and we can all advocate, get the word out, and volunteer in the vast many ways agencies serving children in need.

While Naika’s mom has been scrutinized as being a part of the events that led to her death, I have no way of knowing the full case. What I do know is that The Miami Herald reports her birth mother making a profound statement, “People were calling me, but I was sleep…and the calls were coming on the other line. I wish I would’ve woken up…Her last two breaths she started kicking, she didn’t want to do it, but it was too late.”^[9]

In the end, Naika, did not want to do it, but it was too late. However, it may not be too late for the 428,000 children who on any given day in the US may be in foster care, and who on average will spend at least two years in that care.^[10] Here is a tangible list of ways that you as a Christian can help.

1. Practice being a safe person, at all times, in the presence of Children.

2. If you suspect abuse report it, unless you’re a trained investigator you likely don’t have the skills or authority required to safely intervene. So when there is a reason to question, report it to the proper officials who can investigate fairly.

3. Donate funds to a good Christian foster or adoption agency.

4. Volunteer time at good Christian foster or adoption agency (this can be anything from clerical work, receptionist work, painting office space, sorting, being on a board of directors, or certified childcare)

5. Become a Volunteer Child Advocate (see CASA or Big Brother & Sister type organizations)

6. Spread the word in your church, faith groups, and circles of influence of the great need.

7. If a child (0r adult) expresses suicidal ideology do not leave them, do not assume it will be ok, get help! Call 911 or the national suicide prevention line 1-800-273-8255 (24/7)

8. If you feel a calling explore the options of possible foster parenting or adoption.

Naika is not just a statistic. Naika was someone Jesus died for. Naika was someone who never got a fair chance. Naika is someone who never saw the Love which God intended her to be surrounded. Naika was someone who needed to see the love of God in ways that would have not only changed her life but saved her life. No, her death is not the direct result of the church but her death ought to awaken the church to the fact that God has many ways in which we can reach out and love people like Naika. Let’s bring that love in whatever ways we can creatively find to those in need before it is too late…Again.

Footnotes:

^[1]https://www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/a9130734/naika-venant-facebook-live-suicide/

^[2]See Cosmopolitan

^[3] https://www.bet.com/news/national/2017/03/14/dcf-believes-mother-of-naika-venant-watched-her-live-suicide.html

^[4] At least that we know of.

^[5] Psalms 68:5

^[6] Non-Jewish non-believing people or nations.

^[7] See Luke 17:2, Matthew 18:6

^[8] While a fashion magazine traditionally, most Evangelical Christians likely would see in as a sexualized and liberal publication.

^[9] https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article138936928.html

^[10] https://www.childrensrights.org/newsroom/fact-sheets/foster-care/

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Faith Like Rubik’s Cubes

Simple as a Child

By Vinnie MacIsaac

“I tell you the truth, unless you turn around and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven!” Matthew 18:3

 If you call it the Kiss principle^[1]or Ockham’s Razor^[2] it all amounts to the same core truth, “Simple is better.” Why do we as adults have the need to make things so complicated all the time? In some ways, even looking at my own life and walk with God, I, too, make things more complicated then they need to be, and at times I want for the simple faith of my childhood.

Recently, I took our foster children^[3] to church for the first time. Andrew^[4] who is about 7-ish was so excited to be there. It was unbelievable to watch him follow along in the church bulletin and see which item we were on. Luckily, for me, it was youth day, and so I did not have to preach, and I was able to sit with him. When the preaching started, he asked me to help him find the passage in the pew Bible. He got so excited when he was able to find the words on the page that were being spoken from the pulpit.

 Out of no place, Andrew turns to me in the middle of service and says, “Vince, are you the boss of this whole place?”

Trying to be modest and not give the wrong impression of what a Pastor is I responded by saying, “No, I am not the boss, I am the Pastor, which means I work for them.”

But Andrew responds, “But that means you’re in charge, right?”

“No,” I respond, trying to figure out away deflect his focus from the idea of ministry being about authority, “It means that all these people here are praying for you every day.”

“Oh, I get it now!” Andrew says excitedly, “They are praying for me because you’re their boss and they have too!” and it was at that moment I realized there is just no way to defeat child logic and sometimes you just have to roll with it.

Have you considered fostering or adopting? So many children out there need someone to love them.

When children come to live with you whom you have not raised, you never know the level of understanding they will have in matters of faith. But we teach them to pray, before they eat, before they leave for school, and before bed. We all always have a bedtime Bible story, and our betimes prayers always include their extended family they are away from. But one of the things I have noticed is, regardless of what formal religious teaching they have had or are lacking, Children just have this natural connection to God that just seems to come out of nowhere. Sure, their understanding may be basic, even crude, or flat-out wrong, but their faith is as strong as steel!

So, I am sitting there in Church with Andrew, and after a while, his attention fades because sermons rarely come in child sized bites. Andrew kept listening but, at the same time, picks up his Rubik’s cube and randomly starts turning it. Then suddenly he looks up at me with a great big smile on his face and says, “Look! Look what happened, my Rubik’s cube just made the sign of the cross all on its own at Church! God must have made that happen for me because we are in a church!”

Andrew’s cube made the sign of the cross.

Now you and I are already in our big fat over loaded adult brains saying to ourselves, “Ah that is a sweet kid, but come on, that is just happenstance and random coincidence.” But, why? Why can’t it be true? Why do we as adults have to use the intellect all the time to override the reality of faith and the belief in God’s power and love? Surely God’s love that was significant enough to send his son to earth to die for us forgive us of our sin, and show us His love for us is also high sufficiently to move Rubik’s cubes into crosses to show us His love is real and for us! And it made me wonder if I do not have the Rubik’s Cubes in my life made into crosses, just because my adult logic refuses to see them? Maybe, all day long, every day God is making the sign of the cross, the sign of His love for me, the sign of his attention to me evident to me. But whenever His goodness and love is poured out on me, I rationalize it away.

Is that what really happens when we grow up? Is growing up really the process of deleting all evidence of God’s love and the weeding out of our faith?

Is that what happens when we grow up? Is growing up the process of deleting all evidence of God’s love and the weeding out of our faith? Yes, sadly, and even tragically, for some of us, it is. It is like God gives us all a measure of faith when we are kids; it seems we are just born with it when we come into the world. Then as we grow up, if we are not careful, the things of this world rob it away from us all. Some of us will just stop seeing the magic of crosses in Rubik’s Cube, and other of us just are deprived of all belief in God altogether.

Maybe the problem is that, as adults, we become so focuses on solving the problems of the Rubik’s Cube of life that we can’t see the great insights into God, faith, and love those complication cube solving moments creates for us.

During the appeal, the youth preacher made a call for all the people who had never made the decision to be a follower of Jesus before to check off that decision on their decision card to follow Jesus. Andrew looked up at me and asked, “Can you help me find that on the card? I want to follow Jesus!”

I don’t know that he truly understood all that is involved in becoming a dedicated follower of Jesus, nor the cost of self-sacrifice it would ultimately take to follow Jesus all the way in this world. But does that matter? He had faith that could not be rationalized away by the things of this world. Maybe, he just had the sincere, honest faith to sign up with Jesus without the need to have all the adult check items crossed off his list. Maybe his simplistic childhood Rubik’s Cube faith was more than enough for him to know Jesus was real and worth following. And maybe that is what Jesus meant when he said, “I tell you the truth unless you turn around and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven!” Matthew 18:3

POSTSCRIPT:

After the kids had been off to school this morning, I passed by their bedroom. Looking in I noticed Andrew’s bed nicely made, and all his teddy bears, stuff animals, and favorite toys, all neatly arranged on his bed, and along the bed frame and even a few poking out from the bedsprings of his brother’s bunk bed above his. But I could not help but notice and be moved by the fact that his new Bible, which he got last week, was central among all these toys having received the chief and prized spot on this bed. It was firmly and faithfully placed on his pillow as if to suggest it is the crown of all his possessions. That is what I call faith like Rubik’s Cubes.

Related Articles:

It’s A Beautiful Day

Failing Naika

Fathers To The Fatherless

Simply Faith–not Simple Faith

^[1] K.I.S.S is an acronym for Keep It Simple Silly

^[2] The principle states that among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected. Other, more complicated solutions may ultimately prove correct, but—in the absence of certainty—the fewer assumptions that are made, the better. (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor)

^[3] In Psalm 68:5 God calls us believers to be Father’s to the Fatherless. Have you considered how you could help change a young person life forever and maybe even for all eternity? In the U.S. 397,122 children are living without permanent families in the foster care system. 101,665 of these children are eligible for adoption, but nearly 32% of these children will wait over three years in foster care before being adopted. More than 23,000 of these children every year will age out of the system with no long term family or support system and will need to suddenly be able to fend for themselves. Google Christian foster care and the name of your local area.

^[4] Andrew is a pseudonym to protect his identity and family. Andrew could be anyone of the 397,122 children in foster care in the United States. Children who arrive in care have many reasons for their placement and not all of them involve anyone’s fault, and so all precautions should be taken to avoid any social stigma upon them.

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