Reading Scripture as an Immigrant

One final perspective from Steeped in the Holy on Bible reading (p. 32-33):

“The third approach to Scripture—and the one that I believe is most useful for preachers—is that of the immigrant. When we come to a new country as an immigrant, we expect things to be different. We may have to learn a new language, or at least new vocabulary; there are different social expectations and cultural mores. To fit in, to belong, we have to adopt new clothing, accents, lifestyles. We never lose the culture of our homeland, but the longer we stay, the more aware we are of the differences. And as an immigrant, we invest in our new country; we develop relationships. We come to call it home. 

When we approach Scripture as immigrants, we come expecting to inhabit this new world. We explore it as insiders, learning the culture and language not as observers but as practitioners. We are necessarily invested in int, with head and heart and sould. It is not enough to have technical skill or academic disciplines: Immigration demands our participation and commitment as people, practitioners, of faith. With such an approach, we cannot help but live what we preach. We live it from the inside. And in this living the text from the inside, in being immigrants and becoming resident, we find that Scripture itself challenges us. It demands certain beliefs, certain actions, certain faith of us. We cannot approach it this way and remain unchanged. And, if we are luck, we fall in love—not just with our new home, but with the God who inhabits it.”

I appreciated these words and the description of this perspective compared to that of the tourist and scientist.

The Old Testament and Immigration

It’s always potentially controversial to mix the Bible and politics, but as Christians, shouldn’t our political views be informed by Scripture? If they are not, isn’t that a problem?

I have written some brief thoughts on the issue of immigration before, but in general, it is surprising and disappointing to me how frequently Christians endorse anti-immigrant political views considering the repeated and consistent witness of the Old Testament.

Consider the following scriptures:

“You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 22.21) 

“When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” (Leviticus 19.33-34) 

“He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing.” (Deuteronomy 10.18) 

“‘Cursed be anyone who perverts the justice due to the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’” (Deuteronomy 27.19) 

“For if you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you truly execute justice one with another, if you do not oppress the sojourner, the fatherless, or the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own harm, then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your fathers…” (Jeremiah 7.5-7) 

“You shall allot it as an inheritance for yourselves and for the sojourners who reside among you and have had children among you. They shall be to you as native-born children of Israel. With you they shall be allotted an inheritance among the tribes of Israel.” (Ezekiel 47.22) 

“Thus says the Lord of hosts, Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another, do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor, and let none of you devise evil against another in your heart.” (Zechariah 7.9-10) 

“Then I will draw near to you for judgment. I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired worker in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, against those who thrust aside the sojourner, and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts.” (Malachi 3.5)

A few brief observations based on those verses:

First, someone will probably be quick to say something like, “All of those scriptures are from the Old Testament; Christians live under the New Testament” (because someone is always quick to say something like that). Of course, in a sense, they would be correct—as a Christian, I am not bound by all of the rules and regulations of the Law of Moses. At the same time, that doesn’t mean that consistent ethical principles from the Old Testament aren’t also meant to apply to Christians today (cf. Micah 6.8; Matthew 5.17).

Secondly, someone might point out that, while we are supposed to be kind and welcoming to immigrants (based on the verses above), according to Romans 13.1-7, we are to be subject to the laws of our land which means that we shouldn’t be supportive of illegal immigrants. And that might be true—I’m not really suggesting that Christians should develop an Underground Railroad to smuggle immigrants into the country illegally. However, if the consistent witness of Scripture is to suggest an “Open Arms” policy toward immigrants, then Christians probably do need to use their political influence to make immigration laws more immigrant-friendly (and thereby enable Christians to be subject to the laws of the land and also loving to immigrants).

Third, it should be remembered that these Old Testament directives were given to the Israelites, a people who were, as a general rule, supposed to remain ethnically pure as a means of ensuring faithfulness to Jehovah (when the people would intermarry with the surrounding peoples, it invariably led to the adoption of idolatry). Despite this, the Israelites were still supposed to be welcoming to foreigners. This is important to keep in mind, as a common objection to immigration has been a fear of the mixing of races or the influence of different religious beliefs.

Finally, a practical argument in favor of immigration has been that the United States is, fundamentally, a country of immigrants—how can we (American citizens) reject immigrants when the vast majority of us are here only because of the immigration of our ancestors? Interestingly, this is a repeated rationale of Scripture as well—how can the Israelites mistreat sojourners, when they themselves were sojourners in Egypt?

I have a hard time identifying closely with either major political party because, I believe, they both fail to consistently embrace biblical principles. When it comes to immigration, I think the rhetoric from the Right (and therefore, from a lot of Christians) often fails to live up to the biblical standard.

Abortion, Part 3: How I Vote

This is the third part in a series on abortion, and specifically on why I feel abortion is the single most important issue when it comes to voting. My views on abortion are based on certain philosophies and premises, which you can catch in Part 1 and Part 2.

In this post, I’m going to shift gears a bit and try to explain how I vote in general. It’s been a difficult post to write in a lot of ways, but it’s been good for me to flesh out my thoughts.

Abstaining From Politics

As a quick note, I should mention that there are some who believe that Christians should abstain from politics and voting altogether. After all, our true allegiance is to Christ, not some earthly office or entity, and Christianity is about being salt and light, not about getting others to do what God wants via legislation.

While I respect that view, I also believe that the thinking behind it is flawed—I’m confident that God wants us to use every avenue we have to influence others for good and inject the values of His Kingdom into the world, including our political voice.

Political Parties

On my Facebook profile, my political views are listed as “Inconsistent”. I described them as such not because I consider them to be inconsistent with each other, but because I consider them to be inconsistent with either of the two major parties that dominate our political landscape today.

Generally, I have conservative views on economic issues. As a product of (among other things) Harding University’s Belden Center for Private Enterprise, I believe that capitalism, low taxation, and limited government regulation of business are generally good things.

That being said, those views (some of which are pretty strong) don’t really impact my vote that much because at the end of the day, no matter which party is in control, as Americans, we are among the wealthiest people in the world. If our economic recession lasts longer than expected and cuts deeper than expected, as Americans, we will still be among the wealthiest people in the world.

Instead, the side of politics that matters more to me are the “social” issues, or maybe a better term (which I’ll use for the rest of this post) would be “moral” issues. From a Christian perspective, it’s fundamental that morality is more important than money—how good you are is more important than how rich you are.

And that’s my major problem with the Republican Party—while they may agree with me on many moral issues, when push comes to shove, they just don’t consider those issues to be as important as money. And worse, I think some Republican candidates don’t care about them at all, but just pay lip service to them in order entice me to vote for them.

Of course, on the other hand, you have the Democrats, who I disagree with on a lot of moral issues and disagree with on economic policies.

So here I am, inconsistent with both major political parties, determining my vote based on the issues that I think are most important—the moral ones.

Moral Issues

Christians (and others) who support pro-choice candidates are quick to point out that there are a lot of moral issues besides just abortion—and they’re right. There’s a bunch of them, and I could probably do weeks’ worth of posts covering them all, but instead, I’ll just briefly mention a few in order to illustrate that my views are somewhat scattered across the political spectrum (I won’t mention abortion, since that’s the subject of the next post).

As I’ve mentioned before in a previous post, the teachings of Jesus on the “Least of These” influence my thinking on a lot of these issues:

“Then He will also say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry, and you gave Me nothing to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me nothing to drink; I was a stranger, and you did not invite Me in; naked, and you did not clothe Me; sick, and in prison, and you did not visit Me.’ Then they themselves also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not take care of You?’ Then He will answer them, “Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’ These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” (Matthew 25.41-46.)

Environment

God created this world for us to use, and also for us to take care of. This idea of stewardship represents a balance that I think a lot of people miss.

Having said that, I think the case for Global Warming (or, “Global Climate Change” now that statistics show that we’re not warming as originally predicted) is unconvincing, and has become overly politicized, as evidenced by the fact that the significant number of scientists who have refuted global warming have been silenced and ridiculed.

Gay Marriage

God defined marriage as being between one man and one woman, and as Christians, I think we should do what we can to support that definition. To me, that certainly includes opposing gay marriage, but at the same time acknowledging that, with the divorce rates we have, American heterosexual couples are doing a good enough job of destroying marriage without help from anyone else. Let’s protect marriage, but let’s also admit that homosexuals aren’t the only ones who are bringing damage upon it.

Immigration

The Bible is pretty clear as to how we are to treat the foreigner—with hospitality. Because of this, I have very little patience with the general position of the Right on immigration.

I realize that we have a lot of illegal immigrants in this country, but I’m also virtually certain that the vast majority of them would choose to become legal if it were easier for them to do so. That’s what I call the iTunes Effect: when the iTunes store gave people an affordable, legal alternative to stealing music, many, many people immediately took advantage of it. I may be naive, but I think immigration would work in much the same way.

Furthermore the U.S. has always been a country of immigrants. It’s how we got our beginning, and it’s what gives us our identity. The Statue of Liberty actually says, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breath free…” but all too many people seem to want to add an “unless they’re from Mexico” clause to the end. I think that’s ridiculous. And sad. And not biblical.

Poverty

I feel convinced in my own mind that ideally, it should be the job of the Church, not government, to take care of the poor, but considering that Christendom as a whole hasn’t done a very good job of that, government helping out might not be a bad idea.

I question whether or not the typical policies of the Democratic Party really help out the poor that much, but at least, in theory, their heart is in the right place. And to those with more conservative views who think that taxation basically amounts to stealing (a view I’m sensitive to), I think it’s important to remember that Jesus didn’t say, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s—unless he asks for more than you want to give him.”

At the same time, I see a lot of inconsistency regarding political views on poverty. If poverty was such a big deal to the Left, you would think they would also oppose things like state lotteries (which statistics have shown feed off of the poor) and alternative fuel sources such as ethanol, which take food (corn) and turn it into fuel when thousands of people around the world starve every day. It makes me wonder if poverty is the Left’s lip service issue just as abortion is the Right’s.

War

I know that this is a major issue with some people, so I may not do it justice in my brief comments, but I’ll try.

I’m not a pacifist. I think war is a terrible thing, and should be avoided when possible, but I also think it can be justified. I think that’s a Biblical view, although I respect the opinions of those who disagree.

Regarding our current war, I know it’s very unpopular, but if we’re honest, I think we’d acknowledge two things. First, back when war was declared, the vast majority of politicians (although our President-Elect is a notable exception) and the vast majority of American citizens were in favor of it. I think too many people are trying to deny responsibility for that. Secondly, having made the decision to go to war, it’s incredibly irresponsible to just pack up and leave in the middle when all indications are that things will get worse if you do. That might be the case now, and it certainly was the case back when the Left first started demanding a pullout.

Having said that, if all the Iraq War accomplished or all it was about was removing a dictator from power who had committed genocide on his own people, then I think it was justified. Similarly, if Hitler had decided not to invade every country in Europe but had still gassed every Jew he could get his hands on, I think war would have been justified in that situation as well.

Conclusion

Once again, my point in bringing up all these issues is not so much to convince anyone on any particular subject, but rather to illustrate what I believe is a consistency among my views on different moral subjects, but an inconsistency between the moral views I hold and the views generally held by either major political party.

So what does that leave me with? Since there are clearly a lot of moral issues, and my views on these issues don’t all line up neatly with a specific party, how can I ever choose to vote for one candidate or another?

Well, if all issues were created equal (you can see where I’m going with this), I wouldn’t be able to—I’d be locked in a stalemate of conscience. But that’s not the case. Sometimes, the magnitude of a particular issue can make it so important that it should take preeminence over all others.

Slavery was such an issue, and abortion is another.