This coming WED FEB 12 we are hosting an event called the G92 in partnership with World Relief and Bethany Christian Services all day on our college campus. We will be talking about the incredibly relevant and significant political and cultural and faith issue of immigration reform. It's a topic I am on a steep learning curve with myself...and one I am more convinced everyday is worthy of our attention and response as biblical followers of Jesus...here's a little piece I put together for our CU community on why we are engaging this issue on a deeper theological and programmatic way in this season of very possible major change in immigration policy:
Why Cornerstone University Cares about
Immigration Reform and Is Hosting a One-Day Event to Raise Awareness and Invite
the Body of Christ to Respond to This Issue
Most
of the people who care most passionately about championing the needs of
undocumented immigrants are the undocumented themselves, or their relatives or
friends. That’s human nature—we have enough problems of our
own, without caring about other people, right?
If we want to follow Christ
well, though, I think there are a number of reasons that we need
to care about the situation of immigration in our country.
First of all, there is a strong biblical mandate to care for the immigrant. God repeatedly tells the people of Israel that the law he is giving them “applies to the native-born and to the alien among you” (Ex. 12:49). God sets for his people the standard that immigrants to their land should be treated equally, with the same rights and the same responsibilities. He commands his people to do so at least in part because they have a history of their own—as foreigners living under Egyptian oppression—and he wants them to do better, loving immigrants as they love themselves (Lev. 19:33-34).
Throughout the Hebrew
Scriptures, we find God calling out immigrants—along with two other
vulnerable groups, orphans and widows—for special attention. God “defends
the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing
among you, giving them food and clothing” (Deut. 10:18). He did so not
just through a sentimental statement of love, but by legislating systems that
would ensure that these vulnerable groups’ needs were met, telling the
Israelites to go over their grain, grape, and olive harvests just once, leaving
the gleanings for the alien, the orphan, and the widow (Deut. 24:19-21).
That linkage extends into the prophets, where Ezekiel condemns the rulers of
Israel for having “oppressed the alien and mistreated the fatherless and the
widow” (Ezek. 22:7).
The New Testament expands upon
the idea of hospitality to strangers: Jesus himself says that
those who welcome a stranger are welcoming him (Matt. 25:35), while the author
of Hebrews suggests that by extending hospitality to strangers, we may be
entertaining angels without knowing it (Heb. 13:2). Many Americans think
of hospitality as preparing a nice meal for our friends or having a guest room
available for extended family, but—while those are certainly noble
activities—the biblical ideal of hospitality goes much further, to those unknown
to us. Anyone can love his friends, Jesus tells us (Luke 6:33), but to
love our neighbor—including those, as Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan
suggests, may be individuals very different than us who are in need—is a larger
task. We do not get to choose who our neighbor is, nor can we except
ourselves from the command to love them because they have broken a law.
While responding to God’s
explicit commands ought to be enough, there is another reason we
would do well to extend hospitality to immigrants: they present a missional
opportunity right at our doorstep. Jesus’ Great Commission to his
followers was to “make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19); with
immigration, the nations show up right at our doorstep. The presence of
immigrants, even undocumented immigrants, is not an accident: Scripture
suggests that “From one man [God] made every nation of men, that they should
inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact
places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him
and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one
of us” (Acts 17:26-27). God’s hand is in the migration of people
precisely because he longs for them to find him.
Missiologists will tell you that
immigrants are amongst the most receptive groups of people to the gospel.
What a tragedy, then, that as a whole, we do such a poor job of welcoming
them. According to the Billy Graham Center, less than one in ten
immigrants will be welcomed into the home of any American, to say nothing of an
American Christian. If we are willing to take up the challenge, we could
see many immigrants enter into a transformative relationship with Jesus Christ.
Finally, we have to care about immigration because it is
already an urgent issue within the church. Research by Todd
Johnson of
Gordon-Conwell Seminary suggests that immigrant congregations are already
accounting for American evangelicalism’s fastest growth, which means that
immigration issues are not an issue “out there” but something we have to face
within the church. If we believe that the Church is bigger than an
individual congregation, but the entirety of the Body of Christ scattered throughout
the globe, we cannot dismiss those parts of the body for which immigration
issues are a daily reality. Further, “If one part suffers, every part
suffers” (1 Cor. 12:26)—and if we are unaware of the suffering that exists
within immigrant churches as a result of a dysfunctional immigration system, it
is probably because we lack meaningful relationships.
Most white evangelicals regret
the way that, for the most part, we sat out on the Civil Rights Movement,
leaving our African-American brothers and sisters on their own as they
struggled for what we now readily affirm was biblically-mandated justice.
This time around, we have the chance to stand with our Latino, Asian, and
African brothers and sisters as they struggle for a more just immigration system.
INFORMATION TAKEN FROM:
For a more thorough answer to this question,
we recommend reading Welcoming the Stranger: Justice,
Compassion & Truth in the Immigration Debate by Matthew Soerens and Jenny Hwang (InterVarsity Press,
2009). Our first year students at CU are reading a chapter from this text
in their spring semester curriculum.
