In Exodus 22, in the middle of a list of the very early laws of the very new nation of Israel, we find this passage:
21 “You must not exploit a resident alien or oppress him, since you were resident aliens in the land of Egypt.
22 “You must not mistreat any widow or fatherless child. 23 If you do mistreat them, they will no doubt cry to me, and I will certainly hear their cry. 24 My anger will burn, and I will kill you with the sword; then your wives will be widows and your children fatherless. – Exodus 22:21-24
The first law above in verse 21 concerning resident aliens (i.e., immigrants from other countries) is the subject of this post but I included the other three verses in this section because they do a good job summarizing what I call God’s Big Four. These are those vulnerable ones in any society that God repeatedly highlights in Scripture as those with which he is particularly concerned. In this chapter, consisting (mostly) of pedestrian, day-to-day laws about lending money, leasing a field, don’t steal your a neighbor’s ox, etc., this passage burns white-hot.
My anger will burn, and I will kill you with the sword
God is saying: do not mess with these who are easy to mess with because they have no resources or protections. Do not exploit these who are easy and tempting to exploit, because they are different than you or less powerful than you. They are special to me and have come under my special protection.
He includes immigrants in this list (here and in a lot of other places in Scripture). It should be obvious: the Israelites had just come out of centuries of slavery, of being strangers and aliens in a land that oppressed them. He’s telling his people: don’t forget what that felt like. Don’t turn and become just like your past oppressors.
It has been dismaying, to say the least, to witness the vilification of immigrants in our own time, especially when the vilification is coming from evangelical Christians. We desire to be people of the Book, but there seems to be a filter placed over the repeated commands in Scripture to not oppress the immigrant. We don’t seem to be listening.
Now Scripture doesn’t teach that we shouldn’t have borders, immigration laws, and the like. And I’m certainly not advocating for that. But anti-immigrant sentiment among the political team that most evangelical Christians in America identify with is strong and growing stronger. Mass deportation camps are seriously being considered. This seems both wrong and very foolish.
It is wrong because we are told, by God, not to oppress the immigrant. Repeatedly. I don’t have all the answers regarding how to better enforce immigration laws, and I’m not saying nothing should be done to rectify what many consider to be a crisis. But rounding up men, women, and children, uprooting them from their homes and jobs, and dumping them into another country, effectively making them refugees (again) doesn’t seem to line up with the spirit of Exodus 22 and many, many other passages in Scripture.
It is also foolish. I live in a large city in a border state. What I am about to say is no exaggeration. Immigrants built, and are building, our entire city. Our Entire City. I’ve never (and I mean never) seen or interacted with a work crew, in our neighborhood,, or working on our house, or building a skyscraper, etc., that wasn’t almost entirely composed of first and second generation immigrants from Latin America.
We, many of us, have gotten comfortable with othering these people.
Of first importance: this is wrong. God’s anger may well burn against us for the way we talk about and treat these people made in his image.
Of second importance, it is also very, very dumb.