Jitterbugging for Jesus

Dear super-rich, super-privileged Donald Trump Jr.:

I’m still reeling from a, uh, tasteless tweet you published comparing Syrian refugees to Skittles, the candy.

In addition to being tasteless and dehumanizing, the tweet is so much misleading propaganda and fear-mongering.

A report released just last week by the Cato Institute found that an American’s chances of being killed by a refugee in a terrorist attack in any given year are 1 in 3.64 billion–Billion with a “B,” as in Billionaire. (America’s murder rate — at 4.5 per 100,000 capita — is about 163,800 times higher, but that’s another issue for another day.)

But that’s the least distasteful thing about your tweet to me as a Christian.

If you and your Dad and other family “surrogates” have some kind of rational, viable idea as to what to do about these millions of oppressed refugees–including the many and very many parents whose children have died in desperate attempts to find refuge from sure death back where they came from–that would be good.

These are children, not Skittles.

Meanwhile, I pray that you and your family will come to understand how irresponsible and reckless you and your family are with all the demeaning, denigrating, dehumanizing and yes, “deplorable” ways you speak of so many masses of vulnerable people in the U.S. and around the world.

I pray that you will venture out of the secure, insular, Trump Tower bubble world that you and the family have lived in your whole lives and venture into places like refugee camps–places where you could get a firsthand look at some of the suffering that goes on in the world.

Places where you could engage “refugees on the ground” for days, long enough to see the anguish and hear the stories of people in this broken world who, like you, love their families and want the best for them.

This could be an informative and enlightening venture that might shake up your entire world view, which is obviously quite narrow. Places like refugee camps have never been part of the Trump Empire’s orbit.

In Christian language, such ventures are referred to as “getting out of your comfort zone.” Venturing into another, less comfortable zone than that to which you’re accustomed builds empathy and compassion and intellectual growth to-boot.

I pray that you will stop and think before you denigrate or demean one more person in this serious world with some silly “tweet” that adds nothing to serious political and social discourse–language that is long on crushing negativity and short on seeking solutions to so many problems and so much suffering.

The denigrating, desensitizing and extremely un-Christian language that you and your Dad use endlessly, even as you surround yourself with people purporting to be Christian leaders, is helping nobody and nothing in this serious and needy world.

I pray that you will see the light and be as the light.

I pray that you will practice grace and resurrection and speak of human beings in positive, uplifting language to a hurting world from the high-profile pulpit you’re privileged to speak from.

Grace & peace

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*A personal note to readers: As I mentioned in a recent post, I’m trying to raise funds to self-publish my book, The View from Poordom: Reflections on Scriptures Addressing Poverty. The book was supposed to be in print and e-book form in the market by now but was pulled at the last minute when my publishing company went belly up. I’m hoping to get it published by WestBow, a quality Christian publishing company, before the year is over. I cite facts and figures that are somewhat timely and hope to get the book out while those facts and figures are fresh.

I have a GoFundMe account here and ask that readers please consider a donation. Donors will be acknowledged in the Acknowledgements Page: https://www.gofundme.com/2p7pu4c?ssid=744707487&pos=1

Many thanks, my readers!
Paul