One Christian's view of immigration

Tony Woodlief is one of those people who writes like I wish I could, with phrases that evoke just the exact emotion he intends without being syrupy and annoying; as such, he's one of my favorite online writers and I was thrilled when he returned recently from a two-plus-month hiatus brought on by his move to the nation's heartland.

Over the weekend, Woodlief penned (keyboarded?) a very provocative piece on immigration from a Christian perspective, basically arguing that Christian arguments against immigration take a believer's focus away from the critical (The Great Commission) to the insignificant.

After hearing a news report on immigration on his local Christian radio station, he was clearly annoyed at the suggestion that the Christian perspective should be against "people who sneak into the country." He writes (italics in original):

Good Christians, apparently, are glad that someone is stopping these grubby people from coming to our shores; it's a news item Christians care about. It's more likely the case that many wealthy white financial supporters of [American Family Radio] are pleased with such a news item, and well, we've got to pay the bills to keep bringing you the modern music version of Air Supply meets Muzak.

Now, there are economic and policy arguments worth considering on both sides of the immigration issue. But here's the dangerous pressing matter, the thing that if you plan to sit your behind in a church pew today or tomorrow you really just cannot avoid: economics and politics don't matter to God.

Christians have a fundamental calling, and that is to find our lost brothers and sisters. We will not conquer this world for Jesus, and frankly, he doesn't need our help. We will not stop gay marriage and institute a God-approved (the Republican version, of course) tax rate. We will not keep people from philandering, gambling, masturbating, and wearing clothes that fit too tight, and if you think Christ wants you to fix these problems, then you are dreadfully, soul-shakingly mistaken.

"Tend my lambs." Not "stop people from being naughty." No "get the government off the back of the small businessman." Not a hint of "protect gun rights and the death penalty."

And certainly not "keep out the immigrants."

He adds:

. . . here we have this wonderful blessing of living in a country so prosperous that millions of people, many of them with no understanding of Christ, desperately want to come to us, and what is the response of the largest Christian radio network in America? Keep 'em out.

It's clear to me that Woodlief prefers to look at immigration as an opportunity to share the love of Christ. And as someone who is still finding his preferred perspective on the immigration issue, I found this idea to be worth consideration. As a Christian, I should first seek to be "a light for the Gentiles, that [I] may bring [God's] salvation to the ends of the earth" (Isaiah 49:6).

No one is more guilty than me of sometimes focusing too heavily on the politics of the day, to the detriment of God's will for my day. And when it comes to immigration, I want to find a happy medium between letting immigrants run roughshod over the country's laws, and letting the anti-immigration folks treat these immigrants as second-rate garbage. The goal should be to treat immigrants as human beings created in God's image, while holding them to the laws of man with equal accountability.

But I also believe that as Christians, we're too quick to listen to the far-left screams — led by the ACLU and People for the American Way — that believers have no right to use their faith to influence their politics.

And I suspect Tony Woodlief would agree, based on what I see on his website. He links (under the heading of "It's good to be open-minded. It's better to be right") to National Review and the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal.com, both of which deal almost exclusively with the country's leading political issues from a conservative perspective.

He advocates donations to:

• The Libertarian-leaning Institute for Justice, which describes its mission as litigating "to secure economic liberty, school choice, private property rights, freedom of speech and other vital individual liberties and to restore constitutional limits on the power of government."
• The Home School Legal Defense Association, which labels itself "a nonprofit advocacy organization established to defend and advance the constitutional right of parents to direct the education of their children and to protect family freedoms."

Our foremost priority should be the souls of our fellow men, but if we ignore the efforts to delegitimize faith & family, if we pretend we don't see the efforts to take away man's right to self-determination (which is a primary focus of the two organizations listed above), we won't even have the right to go after souls, much less unjust laws. If Woodlief disagreed, I think his links would not reflect a mix of the spiritual and the political.

(If you think I'm exaggerating about losing the right to address injustice, read this story from yesterday's Minneapolis Star-Tribune about the disappearance of free speech rights in Canada when they conflict with the "progressive" homosexual agenda.)

I think it's too simplistic to suggest that "economics and politics don't matter to God." When economic or political issues stake out a position that is clearly against God's law, I think it matters very much to God. When Christians ignore those issues by saying God doesn't want us to "fix those problems," they are technically correct; God doesn't want us to "fix" those problems, as only He can fix them. God doesn't need our prayers to do anything, but he asks us to participate as a way of recognizing our reliance on Him. In this way, we can learn "to act justly, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with [our] God" (Micah 6:8). The hard part is balancing justice, mercy and humility in a way that God desires.

Immigration may not be listed in the Bible, but that does not mean we should ignore it. The issue touches on such facets as law enforcement, public finances and homeland security, and those are issues important to Christians and non-Christians alike. To think otherwise, and to fault believers for such concern, is to be sadly misguided about a Christian's place in the United States of America, 2005.