Why the Universe Has Wiggle Room

Posted on August 20, 2016 by salooper57

The renowned physicist John Archibald Wheeler summed up his long and illustrious career under three headings – three thematic periods that characterized his work. He called the first period, “Everything is Particles.” This covered the time when he worked alongside the legendary Niels Bohrs to understand nuclear fission and was drawn into the famous Manhattan Project.

Wheeler called his second period, “Everything is Fields,” referring to the effect that the strong and weak nuclear forces, electro-magnetism and gravity have on all matter and space-time.

He titled the final stage of his career, “Everything is Information.” During this period, Wheeler was gripped by the question, “How come existence?” The bio-friendliness (to use Paul Davies’ term) of the universe, the astoundingly unlikely “coincidences” that make possible life and mind in our universe, fascinated the older Wheeler.

He never came to believe in the biblical creator (and in fact rejected such a belief), but he was dissatisfied with the way most of his colleagues answered (or simply ignored) the question, “How come existence?” He insisted that there is “an immaterial source and explanation” for the physical world.

In a paper he titled, “Information, Physics, Quantum: The Search for Links” he wrote “that what we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes-no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and this is a participatory universe.”

In other words, physical reality (particles, fields, stars, galaxies, people – everything) arises from information. Wheeler termed this “It from Bit,” where “It” denotes physical things and “Bit” refers to discreet bits (as in a computer’s digital code) of information. Everything in the universe (or multiverse, or whatever our cosmic neighborhood is called) is an expression of information.

According to Wheeler, it is the act of processing (observing, measuring) that information is transformed into reality. Reality, he concluded, does not exist apart from an observer. For Wheeler, that observer might be an evolved (perhaps a billion years into the future) superintelligence with the knowledge to transcend time and space and reform reality.

Some of this could be harmonized (though Wheeler would disparage the attempt) with Judeo-Christian teaching. Long before John Archibald Wheeler, Jews and Christians believed in “an immaterial source and explanation” of physical reality. Biblical writers were certain that a superintelligence created the world through “word” or “reason” (“logos” in Greek), which sounds more than a little like Wheeler’s “It” from “Bit.” According to biblical theology, the universe exists – it holds together as a reality – only because there is an Observer, the one who “saw all that he had made, and it was very good.”

Wheeler, at least in his “Everything is Information” period, came to believe that the rules of physics do not constitute immutable laws. “The laws [of physics] could not have always been a hundred percent accurate,” he asserted. From his perspective, the universe has wiggle room, enough room for an observer – indeed, for all observers – to participate in the ongoing creation of reality.

This too is like the Judeo-Christian teaching that God, as the principal observer, interacts with the universe through his word, both by creating it and sustaining it. And we, as secondary observers, also interact with reality in ways that make a genuine difference. Through the very act of creation (“Bit” to “It”), God made room for his creatures and conferred upon them the dignity of having their own place and the authority to shape it.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 8/20/2016

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The trouble with living a fantasy

Posted on August 13, 2016 by salooper57

When I was in college I had a brainstorm that caused a temporary power outage in my common sense.

A bunch of us were hanging out and talking about what we could do for fun. Two of my best friends were part of the group, one of whom was born in India and raised in Bangladesh. He had taught me a little Hindi and Bengali (insults, for the most part) and sometimes we would banter back and forth. That’s what led to the brainstorm.

I suggested that the group of us go to the mall, pretending to be a security detachment for a foreign dignitary (my friend). We would all wear suits and stand in formation around our exotic visitor, while I translated for him. Our plan was to go to jewelry stores and ask to see their most expensive brooches and necklaces. It would be a hoot.

My brainstorm apparently blacked out everyone’s common sense, and we went. At our first store, my friend and I approached the counter while the security team surrounded us. Each time the salesperson showed us something, my friend would rattle off something in Hindi or Bengali, and I would ask the clerk if there wasn’t a more valuable piece he could show us.

We were all having fun, acting out our charade. That’s when we looked across the store and saw the dean of students (who terrified all of us) browsing twenty feet away! Most of the “security team” melted away into the surrounding stores, but my friend went right up and greeted him. I think the dean was pleased that his students dressed up in their good clothes to go out on the town. He probably thought one of us was buying an engagement ring for a future bride.

Our little charade was not the last time I’ve pretended to be someone I’m not. I’ve pretended to be nonchalant when I’ve been trembling with anxiety, pretended to be loving when I’ve been filled with bitterness, pretended to be holy when my heart and my actions proved that I was not. The charade has been more sophisticated, but not more honorable.

The trouble with living a fantasy is that God does not love illusions. He loves people. He can mend the sick, but he cannot mend a sham. God can save a person, no matter how damaged, but the only thing he can do with a lie is expose and denounce it.

The biblical writer warned that a person “who pours out lies will perish” – not, I think, because he has lied (there is forgiveness for that); but because he has become a lie. The progression seems to go like this: a person tells lies, then walks in lies (as the prophet Jeremiah phrased it), then believes lies, including his or her own (as the Apostle Paul wrote), then becomes a lie (Psalm 62:9).

That is the downward spiral, but there is also an upward spiral. The biblical writers call people to speak truth, walk in truth, and, in St. John’s memorable turn of phrase, to “do truth.” They never refer to people as being true, a designation reserved for God alone, but the task of becoming true is set before us.

It is a monumental task, and one that is quite beyond us because we are often unaware of, and incapable of seeing, the falseness in our own lives. We can’t become true without God’s help, and the help of the people around us.

The goal of this monumental task is to become people of truth. This is more than speaking truthfully, though that is included. It involves removing pretense, every time we become aware of it, and intentionally pursuing transparency. This will be an uncomfortable process, but the reward – the joy and freedom that comes from being who we really are – is worth whatever price we must pay.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 8/14/2016

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I Resent That: The Art of Taking Offence

Posted on August 6, 2016 by salooper57

Once when I was preaching, two men stood up in the crowded auditorium and marched out. They did it in a way that was meant to draw attention to themselves. They wanted everyone to know they were offended.

A week or two after that, I had an interesting and respectful conversation with the men, who were openly opposed to the Christian faith. I asked them why they marched out while I was speaking. They explained that they took exception to something I said and were compelled by their beliefs to make public their sense of indignation.

It’s funny: in private, they did not seem the least indignant but in public they felt it was necessary to register their offence for all to see. Taking offence was for them a tool they used to make a point and manipulate public opinion.

I see the same kind of thing happening on a much bigger stage. Taking offence has become an art form in our culture and in the world generally. It has become an effective tool for changing public sentiment, revising moral codes, and evoking passion among the electorate. Even corporations have learned to use the prickly tool of moral offence to protect themselves and promote their agenda.

When the BBC investigated working conditions in Third World factories that produce Apple Corporation products, a senior Apple executive not only denied the accusations made against his company, he went on to say that he was “deeply offended” by them.

Politicians do the same thing. They release a press statement in which they display their outrage and claim to be deeply offended. The treasury secretary was “deeply offended” by criticism made against him by The Wall Street Journal. A former senator and presidential hopeful was “deeply offended” by the president’s handling of Afghan political corruption. Congressmen, governors, state and county officials are all “deeply offended” on a regular basis.

And it’s not just corporations and politicians. White males are “deeply offended” by the DNC. Females are “deeply offended” by Donald Trump. Blacks are offended. Whites are offended. Asians are offended. We’re all offended—and if we’re not, our lack of offense will surely offend someone.

This mindset of offence seems to serve a purpose. It is forward-looking. It gives the offended a platform from which to demand that other people (parties, races, organizations) change their behavior. One could be excused for thinking that some people can’t wait for the chance to be offended.

As a long-time, serious follower of Jesus, I know that this strategy of taking offence does not harmonize with his teaching. Manipulating the behavior of others by the use of emotionally-charged language contradicts Jesus’s instructions: “Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.”

It’s not that it’s somehow unchristian to get offended – “offences will come” – but what we do when we have been offended makes all the difference. Someone was recently offended by something I said, though I was unaware of it. But after a little time passed, she came to me, in keeping with the teaching of Jesus, explained what she was feeling, and we were able to deal with the problem. She did not march out of the room or issue a press release. She came to me.

What if we all – friends, co-workers, politicians and activists – did the same? What if, instead of using an offence for personal advantage, we spoke directly and truthfully to the person who offended us? We would restore relationships rather than ruin them.

This is the way Jesus taught us to handle offences. “If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over.” Winning them over was more important to Jesus that winning over them. If only it was more important to the rest of us.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 8/6/2016

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The Surprising Problem of Prayer

Posted on July 30, 2016 by salooper57

In Christian devotional writings it is common to come across the phrase, “the problem of prayer.” The fact that prayer has problems is widely acknowledged, and the one that gets the most attention is the problem of unanswered prayers.

For example, last Sunday morning, more than twenty-five local churches converged at our county fairgrounds for a combined service of prayer. It was quite an undertaking. The logistics were complicated, but there was a genuine sense of anticipation. People had been praying for months in advance of the service, and one of the prayer requests was for good weather.

Gratefully, the heavy storms that passed through the area missed us, but we were praying for more than that – we had asked for comfortable temperatures and a light breeze. Instead, it rained cats and dogs.

Why did God not answer our prayers in the way we asked? For that matter, why does God not answer all our well-intentioned prayers in the way we ask? “Heal Mary of the cancer, Lord.” “Help my daughter’s husband come to his senses and halt the divorce.” “Don’t let my child get mixed up with the wrong friends.” We pray, but sometimes things go from bad to worse.

Devotional writers have offered helpful insights into this most obvious of problems. It is not insoluble, nor is it, at least from my perspective, the most serious problem related to prayer. The way God answers is less a problem than the way we ask. We must learn that prayer is more than the words we say or think in God’s direction. Our entire life is a prayer, and sometimes its requests are very different from (and even contradictory to) the prayers we speak.

We may say, “Hallowed be thy name,” while our life’s prayer is, “My name be respected.” We can say, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,” even as our life shouts, “My authority be established, my desires be gratified.” We might recite, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,” while our life demands, “I want those who wronged me to pay.” We can pray, “Lead us not into temptation” at the very moment our life is saying, “Lead me into temptation as quickly as possible.”

A person’s life is a prayer, a request – and maybe even a curse. A life repeats its particular message over and over, parrot-like, to the heavens, though most of us are unaware of what our life is really communicating. But God understands the language of our lives. He hears our real voice.

What does God hear people say in their real voice? Some say, “Just leave me alone. Leave me alone.” Others repeat idiotically, over and over, “It’s not fair. It’s not fair. It’s not fair.” Still others say, again and again, like a broken record, “My will be done,” to all eternity. On the Day of Judgment the real message of our lives will be drawn out of us, and we will hear, beyond any shadow of a doubt, our true voice. We will know then the prayer our lives have been repeating, and whether or not it matched our words.

St. James describes the person whose lips say, “Thy will be done,” but whose life cries, “My will be done” as “double-minded” or (more literally) “double-souled.”  He says that person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. And that makes sense. Which request should God listen to – the one that rises from a person’s lips or the one that rises from a person’s life?

We’d like to think we would be happy and good if God would just answer our prayers, but I suspect we would be neither. God’s answers will not contribute to our goodness and happiness as long as our words and lives are requesting contradictory things. Bringing our words and lives into alignment might just be the most important thing prayer can accomplish.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, July 30, 2016

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Don’t Ignore the Past, Believe in the Future

Posted on July 23, 2016 by salooper57

There are two kinds of people at a party. There are those whose words and actions announce, “Here I am!” and those whose words and actions say, “There you are!” The “Here I am” person might be the life of the party but it’s the “There you are” person that makes you glad you came.

I met someone the other day – we were alone in a business setting – who hardly acknowledged my presence. That was alright with me. He’s probably not much of a talker and he seemed like a decent guy; I liked him. But it got me thinking that there is a better and a worse way to encounter people, whether one is meeting them for the first time or the thousandth.

I’m not thinking of a technique but of an attitude. One can open doors by using techniques from a book like “How to Work a Room,” but those doors will not remain open unless there is an authentic presence behind the technique. It occurs to me that one of the best things we can do is learn how to encounter people in ways that build and strengthen relationships.

The always-brilliant Apostle Paul urged the local church in Rome to “Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.” Paul was not talking about a technique but a lifestyle, one that he himself lived. When you reads his letters, focusing on the relationships that existed between Paul and his correspondents, it is pretty clear that he was a “There you are!” kind of guy.

Paul urged his readers “to accept one another,” though the sense of resignation in the English word “accept” could be misleading. In the original language, the word is more dynamic. It has the sense of taking someone in or drawing them to yourself. It is a warm word.

There is a beautiful example of this in the Bible. Priscilla and her husband Aquila were great friends of the Apostle Paul and wise and influential members of the early church. When they heard a young evangelist named Apollos preaching (and making some mistakes), they “took him in” – the same word Paul used in his Romans letter. They did not reproach Apollos for his mistakes but encouraged and gently corrected him. How different the history of early Christianity might have been had they not known how to accept another person as Christ had accepted them.

To accept someone as Christ accepted you means welcoming that person into your life warmly, like the father of the prodigal welcomed his son. He did not present his son with a catalogue of grievances but with a party. He made sure his son knew that he was wanted.

If we’re going to accept people as Christ accepted us, we must not throw their failures in their face. Never once in the New Testament do we find Jesus going over a list of a potential follower’s offenses. This doesn’t mean that we ignore a person’s past but that we believe in a person’s future.

When we accept someone the way Christ accepted us, we can’t treat that person as a project to be completed but as a person to be esteemed. We recognize that person’s history and respect his or her autonomy. This means we don’t offer acceptance on the condition that the person meets our expectations. We don’t accept people on condition but on principle.

That being said, it is important to realize that accepting a person as Christ does may require sacrifice, but it will not be the sacrifice of either our principles or our autonomy. Christ did not compromise his beliefs in order to accept me. The idea that accepting a person requires me to endorse his beliefs and behaviors is born of a modern-day moral confusion and not of love.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 7/23/2016

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New Series

Posted on July 19, 2016 by salooper57

I’ve been preaching a new series on prayer at Lockwood Community Church in Coldwater, Michigan. It began on June 26, and you can hear that first message (titled, “Who Do You Think You’re Talking To?”) at http://lockwoodchurch.org/media

Others in the series include, Who’s Asking? (Parts 1 and 2) and Prayer as a Way of Life and Life as a Way of Prayer.

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Life on a Spiral Staircase

Posted on July 16, 2016 by salooper57

When I was in school, English teachers all seemed to be cut from the same cloth – at least the younger ones. They must have all minored in psychology because they were always asking questions that were meant to get us in touch with our feelings. I preferred the old-school type of teacher who read Beowulf in Old English and knew Shakespeare as if she had been his contemporary – and, by the looks of her, might have been.

The younger teachers asked questions like, “How does this make you feel?” In one such “express your feelings” class, we were divided up and made to sit at tables with other class members. We drew cards that asked questions about our thoughts and feelings. The girl on my right (who was voted “Best Legs” by the senior class) was asked to state what she thought of the person sitting on her left (me). She said bluntly, “I don’t think of him.” Ouch.

When I was a senior, days away from graduation, another teacher asked us, “Do you know who you are and what you are going to do with your life?” I remember answering yes on both counts. I knew who I was and I knew what I was going to do. I was mistaken on both counts.

It’s been more than four decades since then and I’m still finding out who I am. That’s the thing about people: we are bigger than we realize. We are more than the sum of our material parts. An individual is deeper and higher and more expansive than anyone but God realizes. A life is really a “lifescape,” a Promised Land to be explored and subdued, cultivated and preserved.

In the course of living in this lifescape, I have sometimes crossed the same ground (perhaps a fear or an unrecognized talent) numerous times. It was too messy the first time I came across it, so I skirted it and let it be. But years later, I came upon it again, and at that time started cleaning it up. Now, years later, I’ve wandered into the same place, and have begun to cultivate it so that something useful can come of it.

This idea of a lifescape has been helpful to me, but many ancient religious leaders preferred the image of a spiritual ladder or staircase, ascending to heaven and to fulfillment. That image has the advantage of expressing the sense of progress conveyed in St. Paul’s words: “I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”

If we imagine life to be a staircase ascending to heaven, it might be helpful to think of it as a spiral staircase. Even after making significant progress in life, we circle through the same issues. We cross, as it were, the same vertical plane. The problems we encountered at 20 are still present in some form at 40 and 60 and 80, giving us the opportunity, which we don’t always appreciate, of dealing with them again from another angle.

And it’s not just problems we encounter, but opportunities. Perhaps we failed to recognize an opportunity when we were 20, still didn’t know what to do with it when we were 40, but now at 60 are ready to take hold of it. At 80 we may actually understand the opportunity more clearly, appreciate it more fully and use it more effectively.

In life we don’t get do-overs, but we do get do-agains, though usually from a different position in the lifescape. It occurs to me that even nations may get this opportunity. For example, as a country we have circled back around to the race issues we dealt with (or failed to deal with) in the 1960s. Things left undone can once again be attempted. Opportunities missed can still be seized.

Whether we (as individuals or as a nation) utilize those opportunities depends on our openness to change and our willingness to receive God’s grace and rely on his help. Our willingness is often in doubt. Thankfully, God’s grace is not.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter

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The Perilous State of Religious Liberty

Posted on July 9, 2016 by salooper57

Religious liberty in the United States is in peril. Many of the people empowered to decide which behaviors merit civil protections and which do not are not religious people. They fail to understand religious liberty because they do not understand the religious life.

That they do not understand the religious life is clear from the message that is repeated among federal and state legislatures, courts and executives: religion is fine as long as it is private. What you do in your home and church, synagogue and mosque, is up to you. But when you step into the public square, your religious protections are no longer guaranteed.

This is to misunderstand the religious life, which ceases to be a life and becomes a mere hobby whenever it is confined to home and church. By its very nature, the religious life extends to everything a person does: prayer, yes, but also work, recreation, entertainment, socialization, education, and politics, to name a few. As early as St. Paul, the watchword was, “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” The Founding Fathers – even the irreligious one – understood this to be the nature of the religious life.

In the early years of the republic, the protection of religious liberties was at the top of the American agenda. The very first amendment to the constitution, adopted in 1791, was about protecting religious liberty. In those days, the conversation about gender and sexual freedoms had not been joined. Sex was private, religion was public. But in many ways, the opposite is true today: sex is public and religion is private. Sex is increasingly protected in the public square while religion is only safe in the home and the sanctuary.

There are reasons for this change. The general loss of a creation theology, the ascendancy of tolerance as the chief of virtues, and the replacement of the church by the school as the provider of moral education have all contributed to the current indifference toward religious liberty. Then there were the events of 9/11, which moved some people from indifference to mistrust and even hatred of religion. The results of this ideological shift are now becoming apparent.

Consider the course taken by the Iowa Civil Rights Commission. Its public policy states that all places of public accommodation must acquiesce to state laws regarding gender and sexual orientation. If a church is deemed a place of public accommodation, it must open its restrooms to people based on their chosen gender identity rather than their sex at birth.

The policy statement includes a list of questions meant to clarify the purpose and extent of the law. It specifically asks, “Does This Law Apply To Churches?” It answers that religious institutions are exempt with respect “to a bona fide religious purpose.” However, it subsequently states that if an institution “offers some services, facilities, or goods to the general public, it will be treated as a public accommodation for those services.”

Does this mean that churches that house the homeless, that allow non-members to use their facilities for weddings or funerals, or that host community meetings are in violation of Iowa law? And what if churches allow non-members to attend concerts or worship services (as they all do)? Do they become a “public accommodation,” and thereby lose their protection as a religious organization?

Let’s admit that the restroom dispute has bordered on hysteria. Further, let’s grant that the state has an obligation to protect the rights of all its citizens. Nevertheless, the Iowa policy is a sign that the freedom accorded religious expression is currently valued below the freedom granted to other forms of expression, particularly ones related to sexuality.

It’s likely that the furor over gender identity and restroom use will die away in the months and years to come. The sooner the better. One only hopes that religious liberty won’t die along with it.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 7/9/2016

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Why Is it so Hard to Live in the Moment?

Posted on July 2, 2016 by salooper57
Early Morning Mist

Early Morning Mist

My wife and I are just back from a week on a large lake in Quebec. We left our car in a gravel lot that was slowly surrendering its borders to the encroaching wilderness, loaded our gear on a boat and were carried off to a cabin a few miles away.

It was our first time on this 70,000 acre lake, and as we made our way to the cabin I tried to store the shoreline and islands in memory. It’s surprising how hard that is to do. One pine tree looks pretty much like the next, and each rocky island is virtually interchangeable with every other one. It’s an easy place to lose your bearings.

A strong front came through the night we arrived and high winds kept us off the lake the following day. The fishing was slow the day after that, so I determined to get up early the next morning to see if I could do any better at first light.

Morning Mist

Morning Mist

There was enough light to see by 4:30 the next morning. I got up, made some coffee and was in the boat around 5:00. I knew where I wanted to fish: in a bay that ran a mile or so to the north, and lay on the other side of a nearby point, just east of our cabin. As I pulled away from the dock, the clouds began to break up. Steam was rising all around me from the water’s surface. A loon was calling from somewhere in the fog.

As I drove the boat, I felt I must take some pictures of the fog rising against the now-glowing sky. So without stopping the boat, I retrieved my camera from its case and tried to take pictures, then check the display to see if I was capturing the scene. I was disappointed with the results, but I kept trying. I turned the boat further north as I rounded the point on the way to my destination, but stopped dead in the water a few moments later. I didn’t recognize anything. This was not the bay I meant to enter. I had missed a turn. I had been distracted.

Just Before Sunrise

Just Before Sunrise

Even on a remote Canadian lake, I couldn’t escape distraction. That’s because we carry our distractions with us. We are the distracted generation. The word “distract” comes from the Latin participle “distractus,” meaning “drawing in different directions.” We are being pulled apart, which is pretty much the story of life in the twenty-first century.

Our work draws us away from our families, while our cell phones draw us away from our work. We divide our attention between our spouses and the television, our children and the tablet. We lack focus. Our brains are partitioned into sectors, and we try to operate from all the sectors at once.

There has been a major campaign in recent years to raise awareness of the danger posed by distracted driving. I suspect that many of us who see the ads or listen to the presentations are too distracted to receive much benefit. And that brings us to the core problem: the distractions are not just “out there,” singing their siren call to us. They are “in here.” If there were no cell phones, no iPads, no tweets or Facebook’s posts, we would invent our own distractions.

Why is that? Why is it so hard to live in the moment? Why can’t we listen to the birds singing and watch the sun go down without checking our Facebook page? What is it about humans that always draws us in a different direction from the one we’re facing?

The answer is that we lack integration. Our hearts and minds are divided. We are what St. James once called “double-souled people, unstable in all they do.” Humans are Humpty Dumptys who need to be put together again. That was the prayer of the ancient songwriter: “Put me together, one heart and mind; then, undivided, I’ll worship in joyful fear.”

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 7/2/2016

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How Should We Think About Immigrants?

Posted on June 25, 2016 by salooper57

We have heard more talk about immigrants and immigration policy this election season than any in memory, and the conversation has been highly charged. Since the issue is so prominent just now, it might be helpful to have a sketch of biblical attitudes toward immigrants.

For the sake of full disclosure, I should say where I come down on the issue of U.S. immigration. I think we should endeavor to have both the most compassionate immigration policy and the most secure border in the world. But I am not here advocating a particular view on immigration, which is a discussion for another time. I’m advocating a particular attitude toward immigrants.

My views have been shaped by experience. One of my closest friends is a naturalized citizen who was born in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Another was born in Ecuador. The U.S. is a better place because it counts them as its own.

But my views are also shaped by the Bible, which says a great deal about immigrants. There are many direct statements regarding their treatment. A few will suffice to represent the tenor of Scripture.

Following Israel’s escape from political oppression, God gave these instructions: “Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt.”

Likewise, Scripture teaches, “The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born.” Further, “…you are to love those who are aliens, for you yourselves were aliens in Egypt.”

In matters of law, God’s people were warned: “Do not deprive the alien or the fatherless of justice.” Judges were to make sure that immigrants, who were vulnerable because of their lack of political power and representation, were treated justly. This meant that “You are to have the same law for the alien and the native-born.”

Immigrants were granted equal access to services as the native-born. This included special food distributions and work opportunities. At the national celebration known as “First-fruits,” immigrants were specifically listed among the aid recipients.

Beyond the many specific instructions regarding aliens, there are numerous examples of interactions between the chosen people and the immigrants within their borders. Abraham, the father of the Jewish people, constantly interacted with such people. They considered him a “prince among us” and scripture calls him “the father of many nations” – that is, of many ethnic peoples (the Greek word is ethnos) – and his wife “the mother of many nations.”

The people of Israel were fierce in war, but for their day they were unusually considerate of immigrants. King David employed skilled foreign-born labor in the construction of the great temple and accepted immigrants into military service. The prophets continually urged that foreigners be treated with justice, as when Malachi writes that the Lord Almighty will be against “those who…deprive aliens of justice.”

The idea that immigration is evil and that immigrants are enemies is not sanctioned by the Bible. Disdain for immigrants is repeatedly condemned by the biblical writers and prophets. They insist that justice be done for the vulnerable, and include in that number those who do not have citizenship.

Now immigration in ancient times and immigration today are two different things. The Bible does not provide any kind of blueprint for immigration policy. Rather it urges us to adopt a compassionate attitude toward immigrants. Were this biblical model to inform our policies, it’s not clear how immigration in America would change. There would still be trials and deportations, but our attitude would be different. We would be a light to the world.

But we are not that light today. The current debate has degenerated into a shameless brawl between liberals and conservatives over votes. Both sides need to go beyond what is politically expedient to ask what is right. Yes, good people will answer that question differently, but whatever answer the Christian gives, it needs to be consistent with the biblical command to “love those who are aliens.”

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 6/25/2016

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