Our Moral Responsibility

In the last few days if I have been asked once I have been asked a dozen times…why would we sign on with the Somos Georgia / We Are Georgia’s BuySpot & Sanctuary Zone Community?

The answer is pretty simple, as Christians, as persons of deep faith we have an obligation to stand up and say no. To speak the truths that this law HB 87 “Georgia Illegal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Act” is probably not constitutional and it is certainly not morally correct.

Rev. Richard Nathan is the pastor of Columbus Vineyard Church made the point a while back when he wrote:

I would hope that Christians would first put on biblical spectacles when approaching the issue of immigration. The biblical Christian would:

1. Begin with the conviction that illegal immigrants are persons made in God’s image and are, therefore, worthy of respect and dignity (Genesis 1:26,28).

2. Appreciate the fact that many of our spiritual ancestors were themselves economic refugees. Thus Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob moved from the Promised Land on several occasions in search of food (Genesis 12:10; 26:1; 41:57; 42:6; 43:1-7). The story of Ruth is the story of an immigrant who continually crossed national borders in search of food. Other spiritual ancestors of ours were pushed out of their homeland because of war or persecution (Joseph, Daniel, Moses, David, and the baby Jesus). So immigration because of economics, war, and asylum seeking is not far from every Christian’s own heritage.

3. Specifically apply the Second Commandment to illegal immigrants: “The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the Lord your God” (Leviticus 19:34).

4. Care for immigrants since they had a central place in the laws and practices of ancient Israel. Israel was commanded to love immigrants because God loves immigrants. “He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigners residing among you, giving them food and clothing. And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt” (Deuteronomy 10:18-19).

5. Be hospitable according to New Testament teaching which literally means to “love the stranger” or the alien (Romans 12:13; Hebrews 13:2; 1 Peter 4:9). Jesus commanded his followers to welcome people who had no social standing, such as the poor, the sick, and the outsider (Luke 14:12-14).

The ACLU has a “Preliminary analysis of the HB 87 “Georgia Illegal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Act” which explains in great detail the constitutional problems with this law.

HB 87 signed into law by Governor Deal does not come close to doing any of those things pointed out by Rev. Nathan.

In fact most of the law does just the opposite.

The law allows the local police to have almost unlimited power to stop, detain and arrest on the simple suspicion of ones immigration status. Let’s be honest here, it won’t be white people the police will be taking a closer look at.

This law does not have the first hint of having Christian morality attached to it.

Pablo Otaola in a blog called Theology of Immigration had this observation;

“The history of immigration to the United States is the history of the country itself, and the journey from beyond the sea is an element found in American Folklore, appearing over and over again in everything from The Godfather to Gangs of New York to Neil Diamond’s “America” to the animated feature An American Tail (Rachel Rupin and Jeffrey Melnick, Immigration and American Popular Culture: An Introduction – 2006). Recent movies that speak to immigration, race and culture are The Namesake, The Visitor, Spanglish, A Day without a Mexican and others all which speak to the fact that there is a social awareness about issues with immigration that people want to dialogue about. Most movies and plays seem to have an overarching theme of sensitivity and amicability to racial differences and immigrant social justice issues that can be compared to God’s commandment to “love you neighbor as yourself,” but somehow these themes do not carry over in United States legislature with immigration laws.”

As Christians we are encouraged to “cast out all fear and replace it with unconditional love”…so then we must ask ourselves how does this Georgia legislation promote the love we are suppose to be living, the love we are suppose to be practicing, the love we are suppose to be sharing?

In our political world today the conservative and progressive’s seem to agree on very little but as a people of faith we indeed have some common ground.

Rev. Brain Clark a conservative pastor of Calhoun First United Methodist made an interesting post on his blog, which makes my point.

“Despite the fact that undocumented persons contribute to the State tax base, bolster the agricultural economy, and keep local businesses alive, the real issue before the committee isn’t economic. The real issue is that Arizona-style legislation is both immoral and unscriptural. The legislation is immoral because it threatens to tear families apart, destroy the lives of countless children and youth already living productive lives in our communities, and does nothing to advocate for a fair earned pathway to citizenship. The legislation is unscriptural because it ignores the biblical mandates to love our neighbors, to offer forgiveness, and to treat others the way we desire to be treated. God loves the undocumented persons living among us as much as God loves every natural born citizen and calls us to treat them with love and respect. Leviticus 19:34 says, “The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”

(NRSV)”


The full blog post can be read here: If we heed his call then we must be willing to sign on to: BuySpot & Sanctuary Zone Community.

http://drbrianeclark.blogspot.com/2011/01/proposed-georgia-immigration.html

We as a people of faith cannot hide behind separation of church and state.

We must consider where we stand…how do we love others? Is this love up to the standards set by Christ?


Brothers and Sisters, what is written in the scripture?

And a certain teacher of the law got up and put him to the test, saying,
Master, what have I to do so that I may have eternal life?
And he said to him, what does the law say, in your reading of it?
And he, answering, said, has love for the Lord your God with all your heart
and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind;
and for your neighbor as for yourself.
And he said, you have given the right answer: do this and you will have life."
--Luke 10:25-28

If we are to be a state where justice prevails, mercy is a priority and we have true equality then we must not leave anyone behind; we must not leave any part of our community out.

Slicing and dicing families and turning them into fugitives from the law are not what our faith teaches in these matters.

Jesus came to proclaim good news for the poor. Right up to his death, he made himself one with the poor, including strangers. In this way he broke down the barriers that human beings erect and showed that the love of God is for everyone. It is thus correct to say that our treatment of the poor and of strangers is a test of how well we understand the Gospel of the love of God as it is revealed in Jesus Christ. In the parable of the Judgment of the Nations, Jesus exposes the ignorance, indifference and lack of concern that people show towards the least of those who belong to his family. And today, these words penetrate our minds too. No-one can say, "I didn't realize…" Jesus says, "I was a stranger, and you did not welcome me." How do we treat the stranger?

Apparently in the State of Georgia the stranger will be arrested, and those who help the stranger will be persecuted.

As a minister of the Gospel and as a “church without walls’ we cannot let this law go un-challenged. As persons of faith whose lives are dedicated to “doing justice, acting mercifully and walking humbly with God” we cannot and will not obey this law.

"An unjust law is no law at all", said St Augustine, providing the foundation of civil disobedience movements across the world. If a law is not really a law at all, it is argued, one has a right -- even a duty -- to break it. Martin Luther King articulated this view in his Letter from Birmingham Jail: "one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws".

We have signed because it is our moral responsibility and our duty to “walk our talk”.

Forgive Me if I Don’t Raise a Toast

Let me start by saying that in the deepest part of my soul I am opposed to “capital punishment”. The hairs on my neck crawl when the State of Georgia injects killing poisons through the veins of anyone allegedly on my behalf. I take seriously the teaching of Jesus, which say the “one without sin” gets to cast the first stone.

However, I also know if at 2am someone breaks into my house and has gotten past CoCo and Koda (our dogs) and are coming up the stairs to my bedroom the phrase “Your soul had better be with God, because your ass is mine” comes to mind. I will do everything in my power to stop them up too and including killing them. With that I would probably spend the rest of my life in therapy trying to get rid of the nightmares of taking a human life.

Interestingly my husband who if faced with this situation, would simply shoot the intruder dead, go back to sleep and call the trash people in the morning. He would not feel an ounce of remorse because they were there to do him and his family harm.

Now it should be noted that neither of us would see ourselves as heroes nor would we throw a celebratory party with chants of “We got the bad guy”, we got the bad guy”. I know we would be embarrassed beyond all measure if police photos of the scene were made public.

The quandary for me is both scenarios have the same result…a human being dead.

However, it is the aftermath that is the spiritual dilemma. It is not even a question of whether the person deserved to die or not.

I would not be able to find fault in my husband for his lack of remorse or the fact that he killed this intruder. I also think my own hypocrisy is also understandable as well.

So the conundrum is about 2 different worldviews. In my case I make the choice to end another’s life. Right or wrong it is I who makes the choice. We all know there are consequences to choices we make.

In my husband’s view it is the criminal who made the choice and the consequence of that choice is death. However, we also both know and accept there is nothing to celebrate, nothing to be joyous about and most certainly nothing will be the same.

Our dogs would be dead and we would no longer feel safe and secure in our home.

So how does this all square this past week with the killing of Bin-Laden. Well had I come face to face with him I would have most assuredly killed him. There is no doubt my husband would have. However, 3,000 plus people in the United States would still be dead. The thousands of innocent Muslims who have been killed in the hunt for Bin-Laden would still be dead. We would still not feel safe or secure in our homeland.

So why the need to party? Why the chants of USA! USA! as if we have won a World soccer match? Why the chest beating for killing a monster that our foreign policy created?

Why do we need to see the bullet hole in his head? It seems to me President Obama had it right when he said, “there is no need to spike the football”.

Were we not as people of the United States mortified at the celebrations in the Middle East that took place after 9-11 by our enemies? Did we not think this made them especially bad? So is the killing of Bin-Laden and these celebrations the same thing that we say we abhorred on 9-11 but not on 5-11?

Lets deal with a raw truth…

From the moment Bin-Laden chose to come after the United States on her soil, he was a dead man…it is the way the United States and the world does business. However, as a person of deep faith in a loving God I am not sure this is something to be treated like a sporting event.

The real hard truth is killing our enemies will only succeed when everyone is dead. Please read that line again.

So maybe instead of thumping our chests, toasting the death of our enemies and then demanding to see the pictures that are the result of our lust for gore and death, we might find a moment to consider an alternative to killing everybody on the planet or at minimum glorifying the killing of everyone on the planet.

Maybe it is really time to begin to consider some alternatives. After all the current thinking doesn’t seem to be giving us a planet where love and peace are all the rage.

Jesus spent almost his entire time on earth telling us the way to peace was through forgiveness and the road to forgiveness was through the practice of agape (unconditional love). Of course we all know how that turned out. The powers of that day were not going to lose their ability to play God so they killed him.

Seems to me that today the extremists of any of these religious groups are playing God deciding who will live and who will die. Wow, are we slow to learn or what?

Yet we know ultimately in our heart of hearts what he taught was the best if not the only way to peace, security and safety.

So forgive me if I don’t join in the chant of USA, USA. Forgive me if I don’t raise a toast to the killing of an enemy of the state. Forgive me for saying that if the United States is going to lead the world to peace then it’s way of doing business in the world needs to change drastically.

It is time to give more then a fleeting thought to these ideas:

1) "Trying to keep in mind that how I respond to the death of my enemies says as much about me as it does about my enemies." Author Rachel Held Evans

2) “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.... The chain reaction of evil -- hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars -- must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation”. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Strength To Love, 1963

3) “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” Jimi Hendrix

If we can’t grasp that our security, safety, peace and prosperity can only be found when we are serious and intentional about practicing the afore mention ideas…then I fear somewhere in the universe we will not be remembered as a great people but rather a people who are extinct. God have mercy on us all.