Anonymous Asks (357)

“Was Jesus a refugee?”

The question arises out of Matthew 2, the only gospel that tells the story of how Joseph and Mary fled to Egypt on angelic instruction for some indeterminate period (scholarly estimates range from four months to a few years) after the birth of the Lord. Joseph’s objective was to protect his wife’s newborn child from King Herod’s attempt to kill off any potential competition for the throne. The flight to Egypt took place immediately after the visit of the wise men and lasted until after Herod died.

Had the family remained in Bethlehem, the four gospels may well have been a lot shorter. But God was at work, so Herod’s scheme was unsuccessful, and the Lord returned in good time in fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy.

The dictionary definition of “refugee” is “a person who has escaped from their own country for political, religious, or economic reasons or because of a war” (Cambridge). With the exception of three or four very modern English paraphrases, it’s not a scriptural term. The closest biblical equivalent might be “sojourner”. Nevertheless, by the current definition, yes, Jesus was a refugee. Herod’s murder of all male children under two years of age in the Bethlehem region was politically motivated. The situation certainly qualifies.

Off Like a Rocket

On their own, these facts are incidental. Eight verses or so dedicated to a historical event do not a doctrine or precept make. They simply tell us what happened. Christians and unsaved commentators on scripture considered the idea that Jesus was a refugee entirely unremarkable until about 2013, when the usage of those four words in popular culture took off like a rocket.

Why? The leftist media and its cronies in Christian media started using it as one of many arguments for the globalist resettlement of large numbers of migrants from Third World countries to the West. Their logic goes that if Jesus was a refugee, then Christians ought to be in favor of treating anyone claiming refugee status as we would have wanted our Lord and Savior treated: take ’em all, no questions asked. Turn nobody away.

In other words, it was a cynical, political piece of propagandizing.

Most Western countries accept genuine refugees on humanitarian principles in numbers they can assimilate. That’s not good enough for globalists, who want something closer to open borders. Generally speaking, open borders proponents are quite unconcerned to make refugee claimants prove they are actually in any danger of persecution in their home countries, or to demonstrate that they are likely to offer anything of value to the nations into which they wish to migrate. They simply want as many bodies moving around as possible in order to make it easier to realize their dream of a world government and the end of ethnically based nationhood.

A Few Key Differences

We should probably point out a few key differences between our Lord’s “refugee” status in Egypt and the claims of massive numbers from the Third World to a place in the social safety net of the West. (1) Mary and Joseph were not looking for charity, merely a safe place to hide from Herod. Joseph was a carpenter, his skills likely as marketable in Egypt as in Nazareth. Moreover, as previously noted, this incident occurred immediately after the visit of the wise men, who gave the Lord Jesus gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Even if these gifts were not large, they would have enabled the family to pay their own way in Egypt for some time without depending on their host country for handouts. (2) Unlike modern refugee claimants, Mary and Joseph were not remotely interested in staying permanently in Egypt, let alone encouraging large numbers of their own relatives to join them. They were simply waiting for opportunity to return to Israel in safety. The evidence is that they went home as soon as they found out they could. (3) They were acting on the command of an angel, not on their own initiative. Regardless of all other considerations, their claim to refugee status had the Ultimate Authority behind it.

The “Jesus was a refugee” meme has plenty of rhetorical heft but no dialectical substance. The fact that Jesus was a refugee at one point in his life tells us nothing about how we ought to treat refugee claimants in other times and places. To establish a Christian position on that question, we would have to look to other scriptures.