As the writer of a weekly editorial, I often can predict which editorials will generate a flurry of damning letters to the editor. From time to time, the flurry turns into a real winter storm, and once in a long while it catches me like a blizzard, catching me by surprise. So it has been this past week as critical letter upon letter has popped into my inbox.
My shoulders are broad enough to handle such reactions. God well prepared me for this role long before calling me to it. But from time to time I feel the need to set the record straight – to counter fallacious arguments against what I’m convinced is right and true. This is one of those times.
Two preliminary thoughts:
First, the very first letter received was prescient. Toby Brown warned, “Godwin's Law alert! If you want us to take your arguments seriously and discuss them, comparing people with whom you disagree to Nazis is pretty much a conversation killer.” Uh, I didn’t compare anybody to the Nazis. But my mere mention of the Nazi Holocaust did unleash a host of knee-jerk reactions, producing many letters that argued against points that were nowhere to be found in nor implied by my editorial. Note to Toby: “Bro, it kills me to admit that you were even partly right, but the evidence does show that drawing any kind of analogy to WWII Germany can blind many folks to the point one is making. I will keep Godwin’s Law in mind in the future.”
Second, the editorial does not intend to provide a thoroughgoing apologia for Christians’ advocacy of immigration reform. Neither does it develop the very complicated language that such legislation would require. Such an argument cannot be developed in 700 words or less. Rather, the editorial alludes to such things, with the assumption that readers will be able to fill in the blanks – consistent with my intentions (as over against the erroneous inferences drawn about Nazis). Indeed, the editorial operates like my friendly but frequent critics, Parker Williamson and Jack Adams, the retired editors of the Layman, have operated for years. When quoting folks like me saying something that actually sounded orthodox and/or intelligent, they often would add, “What s/he didn’t say was…” and they’d add some quote from years before, often taken out of context or even fabricated out of the air, to demonstrate that I or the other person really doesn’t believe what we’ve just been quoted as believing. Such a reporting style has served up lots of laughs among friends over the years. Well, in the present case, I would footnote my editorial with “What I didn’t say was…” and I’d throw in the more lengthy arguments that Outlook writers, myself included, have written in the past on the subject of the immigration.
That being said, allow me to explain my position a bit more clearly and systematically than I did in the editorial itself. Three simple points.
1. We must obey God and not man [sic].
When referencing Mary and Joseph’s arrival in an unwelcoming Bethlehem and, soon thereafter, their escape to Egypt, plus the allusion to heroic Christians protecting Jews during the Holocaust, I was illustrating an obvious truth for us believers: when the laws of our homeland counter the laws of God, we must obey God. I could have illustrated that further by talking about the survival of Moses in his infancy, or of Israel’s escape from the Egyptian armies, or Elijah’s defiance of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, or young David’s challenges to King Saul, or the eating habits of Meshach, Shadrach and Abednego, or just about any page in the book of Acts.
So many stories of believers in the Scriptures and through the past two millennia highlight the deep conviction that when the laws of the land conflict with the laws of God, we must obey God. In fact, that point is so self-evident that it hardly needs to be mentioned.
…except for the fact that for many, many American Christians, the application of God’s laws regarding strangers and aliens gets qualified by drawing a dichotomy between the two categories of “legal” and “illegal.” While such categories certainly play a role in the development of immigration legislation, such categories cannot be given sacrosanct status. Such a dichotomy does not exist in Scripture, and, accordingly, we must – at very least – call such a dichotomy into question if we are going to treat God’s law as sacrosanct.
2. God’s will for our treatment of immigrants is explicitly taught in holy Scripture
Pull out a concordance. Look up the words, “stranger” and “alien.” Read what each of those biblical texts says. The message is clear: God loves strangers and aliens. God commands us to love strangers and aliens as ourselves – an explicit clarification of the Great Commandment. The contexts of those texts make clear that they’re talking about migrants. And the power of the gospel is expressed as Christ’s mission of welcoming those of us who were aliens and strangers to God and to the people of God, leading to the end results of making us all citizens with the saints. The teaching of the Bible is explicit and emphatic. And, while the particular intentions of some immigrants are hostile and subversive to our way of life, our approach to immigrants must be guided first and foremost by those biblical teachings.
3. Illegal aliens don’t wish to be either
They don’t wish to be illegal. Most don’t even want to be aliens.
Yes, some immigrants are crossing our national borders to import illicit drugs or terrorist plots. Our border patrols need to be provided the tools to identify and capture such individuals, to seize their destructive products, and to set the stage for their conviction and punishment.
But, as suggested in the editorial, most immigrants have not come here for such reasons. Most have come here for the same reason that their parents and grandparents did: to earn a living that can provide for their families. In most cases, their fathers and grandfathers left behind wife and children for three to six months at a time, journeyed across an invisible border to a farm or ranch, and worked there during harvest or round-up, and then, returned home with enough funds to sustain the family through the rest of the year. Their homeland’s backward economy and corrupt government did not offer a better alternative. But their annual migration patterns served them well enough: they fed their children. And the pattern served American farms and businesses: it provided laborers that helped them prosper.
That all changed when an economic policy was formed into tri-national law during Bill Clinton’s administration. As is usually the case, the intentions were good, but unintended consequences kicked in. Border protection expanded. Those who had been migrating seasonally now were being treated not as guest workers but as interlopers, even as criminals. Many were arrested. And, the prosperity that that legislation was supposed to deliver to their hometowns did not materialize. The workers now faced a choice between two terrible options: to stay home all year round, struggling to eek out an existence within an economic structure whose unfairness was deteriorating from despair to hopelessness, or to take the whole family and try to sneak into the U.S. and make it their permanent home. The latter option became the choice of many. Those who succeeded are now dubbed “illegal aliens.”
What turned them into illegals? It wasn’t that they started doing something evil. It was that our laws changed. Now, a dozen years later, those undocumented immigrants – a much better term – numbers in the millions.
What are we to do about that? Well, as the editorial suggests, we can rewrite those laws. George W. Bush wanted to do so, but he ran into a buzz-saw of political opposition. John McCain promised to do so if elected. Barack Obama promised to do so, too. But nothing has happened, in part because the president and the democratic congress have been pouring most all their energy into healthcare policy reform. But they also have not done so because of a huge anti-immigrant hostility that has been fueled by a growing populist protectionism.
That populist movement has joined together strange bedfellows. “America First” patriots of the political right oppose immigrants largely out of a love for the values, traditions and principles they fear outsiders will disrupt. Their loyalty to the rule of law is offended by any suggestion that some amnesty might be extended to those operating illegally in any sector of society. On the other hand, labor unions oppose immigrants due to those immigrants’ willingness to accept lower wages, thereby endangering the wages of the workers they represent. Again, those intentions are understandable and commendable.
Fact is: most of the strangers and aliens among us do not wish to operate outside the law. They don’t want to be “illegals.” And most don’t really want to live here at all. They would welcome a temporary worker status, thereby enabling them to spend the bulk of their time in the village or community they call home.
Here’s the real problem: we are now caught in a bind. As Christians we are commanded to love the aliens among us as we love ourselves. But the law prohibits us from harboring aliens and being accomplices to their criminal status. Our legislators know that many aspects of the tri-national economic policies adopted in the past two decades have created unintended consequences, but they are hard pressed to take action in the light of the concerns among their constituencies. The rapid growth of the number of undocumented immigrants has become a huge mess to address, especially since our American respect for the rule of law gets offended by the thought of granting amnesty to lawbreakers.
Any elected official who would try to rewrite our immigration policies to address such a challenge faces the same buzz-saw that caused George W. Bush to back away.
It is in the light of those realities that I have suggested that we Christians do one simple thing: write encourage our legislators to take some positive action. We have within our power the ability to foster a grassroots movement that could at least counterbalance the movement that has been openly hostile toward immigrants . We could let our leaders know that some folks in their congressional districts believe that we should love aliens and strangers as we love ourselves.
So, what about all those letters to the editor?
Go back and read them. I trust you can see that some of them were reacting and arguing against ideas far different from those stated or implied in the original editorial.
A few more specific responses:
1. By all means a good immigration policy must require us to do background checks on those who would want to come here. Interdiction of illegal drugs, terrorists, money laundering, criminals, etc., must be carried out to the full extent of the law.
2. Our immigration policy should take its cue not from the policies of other, more exclusive countries. Rather it should be guided by the principles upon which this nation has been founded, which include the teachings of Scripture, democratic values, and the multicultural experience that has emerged from our being a nation of immigrants from places far and wide.
3. A general amnesty is not the answer. In all I’ve written on the subject, I’ve never called for that, and frankly, I don’t know of anybody who has. A program for registering guest workers would provide a big part of an answer (and would allow many to return to their home countries to make their primary residence there). A program for welcoming family members of legal aliens would be a part of an answer. The ultimate answer would involve the writing of necessarily complex legislation, given the complexity of all the issues involved.
4. Drawing a connection between this issue and that of protecting pre-born children is totally appropriate. While folks in the church differ on the matter of pro-life vs. pro-choice, just as we do on matters around immigration,
“God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are in anything contrary to his Word, or beside it, in matters of faith or worship.” Therefore we consider the rights of private judgment, in all matters that respect religion, as universal and unalienable: We do not even wish to see any religious constitution aided by the civil power, further than may be necessary for protection and security, and at the same time, be equal and common to all others. (Book of Order, G-1.0301)
In the light of that, we all are duty-bound to stand up to the power of the government, choosing to obey God rather than the law of the land – when we believe they stand in conflict, which certainly includes policies regarding life and death decisions, including such matters as abortion, euthanasia, waging war, bearing arms for self-defense, and capital punishment.
So, all of this is to say, go back and re-read that editorial. And, yeah, reread the story of the birth of Christ – in a place that made no room for him, except that of a cow stall. And read about the Magi’s obedience of God that required them to defy Herod, thereby making themselves enemy aliens in the land. And read about Mary and Joseph’s escape and sojourn in Egypt, another foreign country, and imagine what they probably faced there. No sentimentality here. Rather a direct consideration of the coming of our Lord as a stranger and alien, by which we who were strangers and aliens “have been brought near by the blood of Christ…” so that we “are no longer strangers and aliens, but … citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God” (from Eph. 2:11-21).
My shoulders are broad enough to handle such reactions. God well prepared me for this role long before calling me to it. But from time to time I feel the need to set the record straight – to counter fallacious arguments against what I’m convinced is right and true. This is one of those times.
Two preliminary thoughts:
First, the very first letter received was prescient. Toby Brown warned, “Godwin's Law alert! If you want us to take your arguments seriously and discuss them, comparing people with whom you disagree to Nazis is pretty much a conversation killer.” Uh, I didn’t compare anybody to the Nazis. But my mere mention of the Nazi Holocaust did unleash a host of knee-jerk reactions, producing many letters that argued against points that were nowhere to be found in nor implied by my editorial. Note to Toby: “Bro, it kills me to admit that you were even partly right, but the evidence does show that drawing any kind of analogy to WWII Germany can blind many folks to the point one is making. I will keep Godwin’s Law in mind in the future.”
Second, the editorial does not intend to provide a thoroughgoing apologia for Christians’ advocacy of immigration reform. Neither does it develop the very complicated language that such legislation would require. Such an argument cannot be developed in 700 words or less. Rather, the editorial alludes to such things, with the assumption that readers will be able to fill in the blanks – consistent with my intentions (as over against the erroneous inferences drawn about Nazis). Indeed, the editorial operates like my friendly but frequent critics, Parker Williamson and Jack Adams, the retired editors of the Layman, have operated for years. When quoting folks like me saying something that actually sounded orthodox and/or intelligent, they often would add, “What s/he didn’t say was…” and they’d add some quote from years before, often taken out of context or even fabricated out of the air, to demonstrate that I or the other person really doesn’t believe what we’ve just been quoted as believing. Such a reporting style has served up lots of laughs among friends over the years. Well, in the present case, I would footnote my editorial with “What I didn’t say was…” and I’d throw in the more lengthy arguments that Outlook writers, myself included, have written in the past on the subject of the immigration.
That being said, allow me to explain my position a bit more clearly and systematically than I did in the editorial itself. Three simple points.
1. We must obey God and not man [sic].
When referencing Mary and Joseph’s arrival in an unwelcoming Bethlehem and, soon thereafter, their escape to Egypt, plus the allusion to heroic Christians protecting Jews during the Holocaust, I was illustrating an obvious truth for us believers: when the laws of our homeland counter the laws of God, we must obey God. I could have illustrated that further by talking about the survival of Moses in his infancy, or of Israel’s escape from the Egyptian armies, or Elijah’s defiance of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, or young David’s challenges to King Saul, or the eating habits of Meshach, Shadrach and Abednego, or just about any page in the book of Acts.
So many stories of believers in the Scriptures and through the past two millennia highlight the deep conviction that when the laws of the land conflict with the laws of God, we must obey God. In fact, that point is so self-evident that it hardly needs to be mentioned.
…except for the fact that for many, many American Christians, the application of God’s laws regarding strangers and aliens gets qualified by drawing a dichotomy between the two categories of “legal” and “illegal.” While such categories certainly play a role in the development of immigration legislation, such categories cannot be given sacrosanct status. Such a dichotomy does not exist in Scripture, and, accordingly, we must – at very least – call such a dichotomy into question if we are going to treat God’s law as sacrosanct.
2. God’s will for our treatment of immigrants is explicitly taught in holy Scripture
Pull out a concordance. Look up the words, “stranger” and “alien.” Read what each of those biblical texts says. The message is clear: God loves strangers and aliens. God commands us to love strangers and aliens as ourselves – an explicit clarification of the Great Commandment. The contexts of those texts make clear that they’re talking about migrants. And the power of the gospel is expressed as Christ’s mission of welcoming those of us who were aliens and strangers to God and to the people of God, leading to the end results of making us all citizens with the saints. The teaching of the Bible is explicit and emphatic. And, while the particular intentions of some immigrants are hostile and subversive to our way of life, our approach to immigrants must be guided first and foremost by those biblical teachings.
3. Illegal aliens don’t wish to be either
They don’t wish to be illegal. Most don’t even want to be aliens.
Yes, some immigrants are crossing our national borders to import illicit drugs or terrorist plots. Our border patrols need to be provided the tools to identify and capture such individuals, to seize their destructive products, and to set the stage for their conviction and punishment.
But, as suggested in the editorial, most immigrants have not come here for such reasons. Most have come here for the same reason that their parents and grandparents did: to earn a living that can provide for their families. In most cases, their fathers and grandfathers left behind wife and children for three to six months at a time, journeyed across an invisible border to a farm or ranch, and worked there during harvest or round-up, and then, returned home with enough funds to sustain the family through the rest of the year. Their homeland’s backward economy and corrupt government did not offer a better alternative. But their annual migration patterns served them well enough: they fed their children. And the pattern served American farms and businesses: it provided laborers that helped them prosper.
That all changed when an economic policy was formed into tri-national law during Bill Clinton’s administration. As is usually the case, the intentions were good, but unintended consequences kicked in. Border protection expanded. Those who had been migrating seasonally now were being treated not as guest workers but as interlopers, even as criminals. Many were arrested. And, the prosperity that that legislation was supposed to deliver to their hometowns did not materialize. The workers now faced a choice between two terrible options: to stay home all year round, struggling to eek out an existence within an economic structure whose unfairness was deteriorating from despair to hopelessness, or to take the whole family and try to sneak into the U.S. and make it their permanent home. The latter option became the choice of many. Those who succeeded are now dubbed “illegal aliens.”
What turned them into illegals? It wasn’t that they started doing something evil. It was that our laws changed. Now, a dozen years later, those undocumented immigrants – a much better term – numbers in the millions.
What are we to do about that? Well, as the editorial suggests, we can rewrite those laws. George W. Bush wanted to do so, but he ran into a buzz-saw of political opposition. John McCain promised to do so if elected. Barack Obama promised to do so, too. But nothing has happened, in part because the president and the democratic congress have been pouring most all their energy into healthcare policy reform. But they also have not done so because of a huge anti-immigrant hostility that has been fueled by a growing populist protectionism.
That populist movement has joined together strange bedfellows. “America First” patriots of the political right oppose immigrants largely out of a love for the values, traditions and principles they fear outsiders will disrupt. Their loyalty to the rule of law is offended by any suggestion that some amnesty might be extended to those operating illegally in any sector of society. On the other hand, labor unions oppose immigrants due to those immigrants’ willingness to accept lower wages, thereby endangering the wages of the workers they represent. Again, those intentions are understandable and commendable.
Fact is: most of the strangers and aliens among us do not wish to operate outside the law. They don’t want to be “illegals.” And most don’t really want to live here at all. They would welcome a temporary worker status, thereby enabling them to spend the bulk of their time in the village or community they call home.
Here’s the real problem: we are now caught in a bind. As Christians we are commanded to love the aliens among us as we love ourselves. But the law prohibits us from harboring aliens and being accomplices to their criminal status. Our legislators know that many aspects of the tri-national economic policies adopted in the past two decades have created unintended consequences, but they are hard pressed to take action in the light of the concerns among their constituencies. The rapid growth of the number of undocumented immigrants has become a huge mess to address, especially since our American respect for the rule of law gets offended by the thought of granting amnesty to lawbreakers.
Any elected official who would try to rewrite our immigration policies to address such a challenge faces the same buzz-saw that caused George W. Bush to back away.
It is in the light of those realities that I have suggested that we Christians do one simple thing: write encourage our legislators to take some positive action. We have within our power the ability to foster a grassroots movement that could at least counterbalance the movement that has been openly hostile toward immigrants . We could let our leaders know that some folks in their congressional districts believe that we should love aliens and strangers as we love ourselves.
So, what about all those letters to the editor?
Go back and read them. I trust you can see that some of them were reacting and arguing against ideas far different from those stated or implied in the original editorial.
A few more specific responses:
1. By all means a good immigration policy must require us to do background checks on those who would want to come here. Interdiction of illegal drugs, terrorists, money laundering, criminals, etc., must be carried out to the full extent of the law.
2. Our immigration policy should take its cue not from the policies of other, more exclusive countries. Rather it should be guided by the principles upon which this nation has been founded, which include the teachings of Scripture, democratic values, and the multicultural experience that has emerged from our being a nation of immigrants from places far and wide.
3. A general amnesty is not the answer. In all I’ve written on the subject, I’ve never called for that, and frankly, I don’t know of anybody who has. A program for registering guest workers would provide a big part of an answer (and would allow many to return to their home countries to make their primary residence there). A program for welcoming family members of legal aliens would be a part of an answer. The ultimate answer would involve the writing of necessarily complex legislation, given the complexity of all the issues involved.
4. Drawing a connection between this issue and that of protecting pre-born children is totally appropriate. While folks in the church differ on the matter of pro-life vs. pro-choice, just as we do on matters around immigration,
“God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are in anything contrary to his Word, or beside it, in matters of faith or worship.” Therefore we consider the rights of private judgment, in all matters that respect religion, as universal and unalienable: We do not even wish to see any religious constitution aided by the civil power, further than may be necessary for protection and security, and at the same time, be equal and common to all others. (Book of Order, G-1.0301)
In the light of that, we all are duty-bound to stand up to the power of the government, choosing to obey God rather than the law of the land – when we believe they stand in conflict, which certainly includes policies regarding life and death decisions, including such matters as abortion, euthanasia, waging war, bearing arms for self-defense, and capital punishment.
So, all of this is to say, go back and re-read that editorial. And, yeah, reread the story of the birth of Christ – in a place that made no room for him, except that of a cow stall. And read about the Magi’s obedience of God that required them to defy Herod, thereby making themselves enemy aliens in the land. And read about Mary and Joseph’s escape and sojourn in Egypt, another foreign country, and imagine what they probably faced there. No sentimentality here. Rather a direct consideration of the coming of our Lord as a stranger and alien, by which we who were strangers and aliens “have been brought near by the blood of Christ…” so that we “are no longer strangers and aliens, but … citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God” (from Eph. 2:11-21).
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