Sorry for the abbreviated title, but I am limited to the number of characters I can use in the title. But you get the point.
You can’t have your cake and eat it too. My mom taught me this, and she was right. You can’t. It’s impossible.
But you can have your cake and eat someone else’s. That’s a win-win as far as I am concerned. Well, it might not be for them, but maybe they didn’t deserve to have any cake. Besides, cake isn’t good for you, so I am helping them out. It’s my good deed for the day.
This is the modus operandi of many right-wing Christians today.
NB: I have often been reticent about referring to partisan politics because once I rebuke one political agenda, I risk being dismissed as a sympathizer for the other. I assure you that I am an equal opportunity offender. I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican, nor a Socialist, Communist, Libertarian, . . . (I assume that you get the point).
Too many Christians are ardent supporters of Israel and of Trump’s radical immigration efforts. I believe that a profound and ironic inconsistency is embedded in these positions.
NB: I am not critiquing Israel’s right to exist, nor the necessity of having strong borders and of ridding the country of violent criminals who are in this country illegally.
Revelation Revealed
At Determinetruth, we are creating a series of videos for our YouTube channel, titled “Revelation Revealed.” There are several keys behind the series.
NB: New videos (8-15 mins) will drop on Wednesdays. Subscribe to the Determinetruth YouTube page and click the alert bell to be notified.
First, we aim to understand the text of the book of Revelation and to apply it to our modern context. Not in the end times paranoia sense—that is not what the text is doing. But in the sense of exposing the empire’s aims and how it endeavors to lure the people of God away from the kingdom of God and towards the empire. This is what I am convinced is happening in the American landscape today!
Second, we want to emphasize the biblical call for the people of God to carry out their mission of cross-bearing love (Mark 8:34). You might say that Mark 8 isn’t in the book of Revelation. But, it is: this is precisely what the book of Revelation means when it describes the people of God as those who “Follow the Lamb” (Rev 14:4).
It is my conviction that too many Christians have capitulated to the empire. The very thing the book of Revelation warns us of. This may sound extremist. You may ardently deny this. But is that because we have bought into the empire’s lies and are unable to see beyond them?
Let’s be honest: too many Christians in the US are towing the party line. They are either unable or unwilling to critique their political allegiances—even when said allegiances run counter to one another and, more importantly, even when they run counter to the Gospel.
Immigration and Israel
Two major issues dominating the American political landscape today are immigration and Israel.
When it comes to immigration, there are deep concerns that Christians who support Trump’s efforts to purge our country of “dangerous and illegal criminals” undermine the biblical command for Christians to love our neighbors and even our enemies.
Let me explain:
For one, there are the repeated biblical commands to care for the immigrant.
For example, Lev 19:33, 34:
“When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong.”
“The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself” (Lev 19:34).
Now, I could cite a host of other verses: such as Lev 23:22; Deut 10:18-19; 14:28-29; 24:17-18, 19-22; 27:19; Ps 146:9; Jer 7:5-7; 22:3; Ezek 47:22-23; and Mal 3:5.
And that is just the OT. The NT includes Matt 25:35, 28, 43; Luke 10:25-37; Rom 12:13; Eph 2:11-22; Heb 13:1-2; and 3 John 1:5.
Yet, it seems that when Trump says the immigrants are bad people and dangerous to America, too many jump up and say, “How high?”
This is one of the dangers of the empire.
“Surely, they must be criminals, and our government has the responsibility to get rid of them.”
Even if that means detaining hundreds, thousands, and perhaps tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of legal residents? Even if that means depriving them of their constitutional rights. Even if it means depriving them of their human rights?
“Yep. Mr. Trump says so, therefore, I say so.”
Folks, yielding unchecked power to any individual is extremely dangerous. And Mr. Trump’s checkered history makes it all the more dangerous.
ICE and US immigration, and Israel
There are numerous problems from a biblical perspective with the actions of the US and ICE. In fact, it is hard to know where to begin. Let me outline some of the issues.
First, as noted above, there is the biblical injunction to care for the immigrant and the foreigner. This injunction does not go away because they are criminals. After all, criminals are human beings who deserve to be treated as such. Besides, most of those detained by ICE are not criminals.
Second, there is the absolute sickening irony concerning those who both support the deportation of immigrants in the US and yet yield unquestioning support to the state of Israel. (This is the having your cake and eating someone else’s part).
It doesn’t matter how you slice it (pun intentional), the Jewish people are immigrants to the land of Palestine. Jews began to immigrate to Palestine in large numbers within the last 150 years.
God gave the land to Israel
“But,” you may say, “the land belongs to the Jewish people. God gave it to them.”
This brings us back to the biblical injunctions.
First, if the land belongs to Israel—which would somehow make the Palestinians the foreigners in this equation—then does not Israel have the biblical duty to care for foreigners?
“But the Palestinians are terrorists.”
Do I really need to respond to this? This is classic imperial rhetoric.
Second, the claim that the land belongs to Israel overlooks the fact that Israel’s own history is littered with immigrants.
This, in fact, is the consistent motivation in the law and its commands to care for the immigrant. I cited Lev 19:34 above. What I didn’t cite was the second part of the verse: “The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the LORD your God.”
Israel was commanded to care for the immigrants and the foreigners because they knew exactly what it means to be a foreigner.
In addition, many of the central characters in the biblical story were immigrants at some time: Isaac and Jacob (from whom the name “Israel” derives); Joseph, Moses, the Israelites, Ruth (who was an immigrant to Israel), David, Elijah, Daniel and his three friends, Esther, Nehemiah, Jesus (yep, Jesus!), and scores of Christians over the past 1900 years.
But there is one biblical hero that I neglected to mention in the above list: Abraham. This is where the story gets even more ridiculous when it comes to the right-wing political landscape in the US today.
The irony in the Abraham story is that Gen 12:1-3—the very passage which Ted Cruz butchered in his interview with Tucker Carlson and that many Christians herald as the key to understanding modern geo-politics—was made to an immigrant!
Look at what Gen 12:1-3 says:
“Now the LORD said to Abram,
‘Go forth from your country,
And from your relatives
And from your father’s house,
To the land which I will show you’” (Gen 12:1)
BTW: Gen 12:1-3 does not include the promise of land. That promise is found in Gen 12:7.
And, as I wrote last week, contrary to Ted Cruz’s claim, the promises to Abraham were not to a nation; Abraham didn’t even have any kids at the time. Sure, the promises are extended to the nation later, but they weren’t, as Cruz claimed, originally made to the nation.
And, as I also wrote last week, the extension of the biblical promise of land to the modern nation-state of Israel is quite a leap.
But I digress.
Israel’s history of immigration speaks to both the issues of this post.
First, if we are going to support Israel, then we must support immigrants in the US as well.
Second, we must also hold the US and Israel to account when it comes to their treatment of the foreigner.
We have bought the lies of the empire
Now, I don’t intend this essay to serve as a refutation of the Christian Zionist claims regarding Israel, the Jewish people, and the land. Nor do I expect you to be convinced about the plethora of issues surrounding immigration.
Instead, I hope that it might move some to begin questioning their allegiances to the empire. We cannot and we must not believe everything, if not most things, that comes from the empire.
Crimmigration
I am not sure where I heard the term “Crimmigration,” but it is very apropos. The US has made immigration a crime worthy of punishment, even though immigration is not inherently a criminal act, but that is for another post.
NB: International law (the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 13) recognizes that people have the right to leave any country and seek to enter another, especially in cases of persecution.
Criminalizing immigration brings us back to the pro-Trump Christian Zionists and their support for Trump’s immigration program.
The irony is that on the one hand, they support the rhetoric that “those who enter illegally must face the consequences.” Yet, on the other hand, they lend, often unquestioning, support for a people who themselves were refugees.
The question arises, “Should Jews who escaped Nazi Germany and broke laws to do so be punished for entering other countries illegally?”
Now, of course, the answer is no!
In fact, for many Christian Zionists, the Nazi holocaust was catalytic for the establishment of a Jewish homeland. Understandable. Why then do we hold to the conviction that Latinos and others who “legally” fled to the US must be treated as criminals and inhumanely rounded up and herded off to other countries?
Remember what mom said: “You can’t have your cake and eat it too.”
If we argue that Israel is justified in seeking asylum and migrating to another place to escape persecution, then we must allow for many of the migrants in the US to do so also.
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