Injustice of Biblical Proportions

The world was supposed to end last Friday, did you know?

It’s funny how most of the folks who are obsessed with Biblical prophecy are only obsessed with a very narrow slice of Biblical prophecy. Contrary to what you’d think, the books belonging to the category of “prophets” have more to say against injustice toward society’s most vulnerable than anything apocalyptic, eschatological, or millenial.

(Which is maybe why, as a recent survey suggests, frequent Bible reading can make you more liberal.)

I’ve been hearing about tomatoes and other crops rotting on the vines in Alabama. Which made me think about some Biblical prophecy, like this:

Be ashamed,

for the wheat and the barley,

because the harvest of the field has perished.

The vine dries up;

the fig tree languishes.

Pomegranate, palm, and apple,

all the trees of the field are dried up,

and gladness dries up

from the children of man.

(From Joel 1)

Alabama’s new immigration law makes it a crime to appear in public without proof of your immigration status, and requires law enforcement officers to stop anyone who “appears illegal.” If you don’t have proof of legal residency when you go to pay your utility bill, they can cut off the water to your house.

Women are afraid to go to the hospital to have their babies, preferring to birth at home with no one in attendance.

Parents are keeping their children home from school.

And people are afraid to go to the grocery store, instead relying on church groups that are mercifully making deliveries to people’s houses.

Even though helping so-called “illegals” is punishable as a crime, too!

Which means Alabama has made it illegal to love our neighbor as ourselves.

In theory, these harsh laws were made to help create jobs for documented American workers. But non-immigrant workers can’t or won’t take on the backbreaking work of picking crops.

One Alabama farmer said:

“The tomatoes are rotting in the vine, and there is very little we can do. We will be lucky to be in business next year.”

Nearly one-third of Alabama households are already not getting enough to eat. As one reporter wrote “letting crops rot in the fields is downright immoral.”

Indeed.

This Draconian immigration law is a fake fix that diverts attention from the real problems in our economy and blames the most powerless.

As one writer put it:

“Alabama’s latest experiment shows us that we can’t reclaim our economy by surrendering our humanity.”

And surrendering our religion, too.

{Read more about this here, here, and here, if you like.)