First let me say that I don’t have a position on this issue. I really don’t. I don’t know a lot about it and most of what I read gets into, or at least alludes to, the economics of employment and how that affects prices of everything from warships to consumer goods. This kind of stuff makes my head hurt. Besides, ideologues on both sides of either issue can point to an economic study and declare that it supports their positions.
Here is one idea that I’ve heard discussed that seems to make a lot of sense. Why don’t we enforce the existing labor laws as they apply to employers as well as individuals? I know that this will cause a lot of financial heart-ache across the country but it is the law, after all. But I’m not here to discuss that. Like I said, I know very little about it.
I want to talk about the Christian Coalition’s position on this issue. You can find it here. The short piece starts out by mischaracterizing the position of the left on this issue. Truth be told, people within both parties take very different positions on this issue. While the writer of this piece can profit with her audience by oversimplifying then bashing the opinion of the left, her logic falls apart based on the facts in her article alone. She claims that 82% of the population of the US wants to keep aliens out of the country then she assigns the opposite opinion to that pesky left wing. In our two-party system a “left-wing” couldn’t survive with only 18% of the population.
But even that isn’t what I want to focus on here. (I’m having trouble staying on track!) My issue is that, rather focusing on the facts and figures of the present to support her argument, the author thought that it would be a nice touch to throw in something from the bible. The passage she chose is Deuteronomy 27:17. I’m going to quote it below but I want to you to stop reading this right now and go get a copy of the bible. Look up the passage and read it for yourself. Read the whole chapter so you can get the context.
This is something that politically active Christians love to do. They scour their book for any verse that can be read in a way that supports their argument. It matters not a bit if the actual contextual meaning – you know, the author’s intention – has anything to do with the argument that the Christian is trying to support. That’s one of the beauties of a book packed with parables, verse, obscure law, and traditional history. It can be made to support anything. It has been used to support slavery, oppression of women, human rights, peace, war, gay bashing, gay rights, creationism, evolution and almost any other political issue you care to come up with.
But I’ve drifted again. If you did as I told you to do then you’ve read that passage by now. My NIV says “’Cursed is the man who moves his neighbor’s boundary stone.’ Then all the people shall say, ‘Amen!’” That version makes discussion of context less vital. But other versions replace boundary stone with things like boundary or landmark. So, the argument goes, God wants us to protect and respect our borders.
This is obviously a discussion of rules governing individuals’ actions. Also included in this list of don’ts is don’t lead blind people down a road that they don’t want to take, don’t build idols, don’t dishonor your parents, don’t sleep with your dad’s wife and, my favorite of this lot, don’t kill your neighbor secretly. I could go on but you get the point. “Neighbor’s boundary stone” has nothing to do with national borders.
The other verse that the author sites is Romans 13:1-2 – that tired bit that says that you should follow the law because it wouldn’t be the law if God didn’t allow it. (Remind me again why it’s OK to fire bomb legal abortion clinics and murder abortion doctors?) I’m surprised that she didn’t fall back to the even tireder “render unto Caesar…” When Christians whip out these verses you know it’s because they couldn’t anything more relevant to their argument.
But let’s, for a moment, embrace the idea that the Bible really does support the idea of national boundaries. The obvious argument is that most of the folks living in America should head back to Europe, Africa, and Asia because we didn’t respect the boundaries of the Native Americans. And even they need to hustle on out because they supplanted another people with a more ancient claim to the land when they arrived. Should all nations return to the borders they occupied when these verses were written? Since most of what’s described in the Bible is mythical that would be impossible but it might be fun to try.
Of course these arguments are insane and trying to apply anything in the Bible directly to the immigration debate is impossible. It is an issue inhabited almost entirely by grey areas and trying to find the answer within the narrow tenants of a black and white religion like Christianity is impossible. This complex issue needs patient debate, human wisdom and compromise; things to which Christians hate turning.