As always when there is a migrant crisis, loads of folk virtue signal and offer to take one in. Folks like Britain’s richest crisp salesman Gary Lineker, Yvette Cooper MP and Lilly Allen never actually quite got around to taking in a Syrian but the important thing is that we all know that they wanted to because they said so on twitter so many times. So they are all wonderful tolerant folk while anyone not offering to take in a refugee is a knuckle dragging alt-right racist. I get it. I understand the rules here in Airstrip One in 2021. No doubt Gary, Yvette and Lilly will very soon all be offering an Afghan a home too but then not actually getting round to it.
Meanwhile, my wife’s church has offered a chap from Cameroon an opportunity to come and help with God’s work in rural Cheshire. No doubt the elders all thought this was a great idea and folks would, like Gary and Yvette and all the others, be rushing to offer him a home. It appears that now the chap is on the way, nobody is, as yet, actually offering him accommodation.
Apparently he possesses a certificate showing he is of good character and I am sure that he is. Well almost sure. You never do know for absolutely sure do you? And so it was not the Mrs, but I who very firmly said that I would not be inviting a total stranger into a house with two small children though we do have room. I am the bad guy here but she didn’t argue with me.
I concede my approach is not the action of a Christian. I am not being a terribly good Samaritan. If the Church worker was female I know that I would feel differently. I am a bit ashamed of how I feel but there we go. I’d rather have to discuss this with St Peter in due course than face the very small possibility that I invited a wrong ‘un into a sanctuary of safety I have worked hard to create for my family.
Perhaps I might make myself feel better by tweeting that the sister of Gary’s Afghan can use our annexe?