OPINION:
Some Christians who oppose stricter immigration laws argue that the Bible orders us to love the foreigner. But God’s command to love the foreigner or sojourner must be understood against the backdrop of God’s character, namely, His orderliness.
Scripture indeed contains several verses about respecting and loving the “sojourner” and the “foreigner.” Leviticus 19:34 calls on the nation of Israel to “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.” Deuteronomy 10:18–19 tells us that God “loves the sojourner” and that therefore Israel should love the sojourner too.
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These verses are important, and they tell us about God’s character: He has compassion for the outcast, displaced, and lonely. But any attempt to use these passages as evidence that the Bible demands allowing both illegal and legal immigration is faulty.
First, it should be noted that many, particularly progressives, who use these passages as support for liberal immigration policy regularly criticize Christian conservatives for using Scripture as support for our own policies, condemning us as tyrannical theocrats. But it’s not only okay but reasonable and right, for a Christian to allow God’s Word to shape what we think about policies and how we vote. We just have to make sure we’re doing so properly, through thoughtful exegesis and application. That means we must seek to understand the context.
When Christian conservatives use Psalm 139:15–16, for example, which says that God carefully, fearfully, and wonderfully knit us together in our mothers’ wombs, as our reason to oppose abortion, we’re not taking the verse out of context. That’s what Scripture says, and that’s what it means: God made us in the womb, therefore we have human dignity in the womb.
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But when progressives use these Old Testament verses as a prescription for unlimited immigration, either legal or illegal, they completely disregard the historical and biblical context of the command to honor the foreigner.
When God called on the Israelites to “love the sojourner,” that wasn’t a green light for every immigrant to enter Israel — or America, for that matter. Let’s look at the context: Just before the Jews left their slavery in Egypt, in the earliest days of Mosaic law, the Lord told His people that the relationship between them and the sojourner wasn’t one-sided. Yes, they were supposed to love the sojourner and treat him with respect, but the sojourner had duties too. They had to follow the exact same Mosaic law as the Jews (Exodus 12:49).
In Exodus 12:48, God told Moses that the stranger “shall be as a native of the land” but only if he “let all his males be circumcised.” God wasn’t condoning uncontrolled immigration, but rather the orderly acceptance of people willing to observe Jewish practices and to assimilate into Jewish culture. Just because aliens wanted to enter Israel didn’t mean that the Jews were obligated to suspend the enforcement of their laws. Reciprocity and respect were requisite. Israel had to respect foreigners and treat them with dignity, but foreigners had to do the same to the nation of Israel, and they could not respect Israel without respecting its laws.
So if we’re going to apply the immigration laws of ancient Israel to the United States, we’re looking at much more restrictive policies than we have today.
America is not ancient Israel, though, so Christians don’t have the responsibility to enact Old Testament laws here. But Christians can and should look at both the Old and New Testaments to learn what actions create a just, peaceful society and what actions enable injustice and chaos.
Scripture depicts walls, both literally and metaphorically, as a defense against disorder and evil.
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Nehemiah called upon his fellow Israelites to “build the wall of Jerusalem, that we may no longer suffer derision” (Nehemiah 2:17). When the wall was finally built, Levites came to “celebrate the dedication with gladness, with thanksgivings, and with singing, with cymbals, harps and lyres” (Nehemiah 12:27).
In the Psalms, David calls upon the Lord to “build up the walls of Jerusalem” (Psalm 51:18) and prayed that peace would exist within the walls of Jerusalem and security within her towers (Psalm 122:6–7).
Solomon admitted the necessity of walls when he wrote that “a man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls” (Proverbs 25:28).
The prophet Isaiah compared the salvation of God to “walls and bulwarks” (Isaiah 26:1) and that when the Jews live in a land without devastation or destruction, “you shall call your walls Salvation and your gates Praise” (Isaiah 60:18).
I’m not offering these passages as precise policy prescriptions for American immigration law, but I do hope to demonstrate how highly God regards order, peace, and security for nations, and that walls — or any form of strong borders — are representative of them.
In short, borders create order, while borderlessness creates disorder. Chaos and disorder always have victims, and they’re usually those with the least physical, economic, or political power to defend themselves.
It is because of — not in spite of — God’s heart for the vulnerable that He gave us the ideas of nations, borders, governments, and laws. Acts 17:26-27 says, “And [God] made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him.”
Contrary to popular opinion, borders aren’t an evil construct devised by tyrants. They’re a concept contrived by God.
And yet, not everyone in the church agrees that we should restrict illegal immigration. In fact, some argue that to do so is against our call as Christians.
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This is an excerpt from “Toxic Empathy,” available October 2024.
Allie Beth Stuckey is the author of “Toxic Empathy” (Sentinel, on sale 10/15/24), “You’re Not Enough (And That’s Okay)” and the host of the podcast “Relatable,” where she analyzes culture, news, and politics from a Biblical perspective. In addition to podcasting and writing, she speaks to various organizations across the country about the importance of constructing a Biblical worldview. She and her husband are the proud parents of three children.
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