Close Encounters with Aliens
I was listening to our local NPR station a couple of days ago when the host interviewed the President and CEO of Parkland Health and Hospital System. Parkland is the only publicly supported hospital in Dallas County, so I expected him to rant and complain about how illegal aliens were costing the system millions. Yet instead, to my surprise, he cited the Old and New Testaments, saying how the Scriptures say we're to take care of the sojourners among us. He said often people of faith are the greatest opponents of helping the most vulnerable, which they wouldn’t do if they knew their Bibles. True, that.
A key argument people in my own political party give for opposing a more welcoming immigration policy is that illegals have broken the law. Yet I've noticed that some of these same members also talk about how they were speeding down Central Expressway or going over the speed limit on I-635. Why don’t they see the disconnect? Getting somewhere faster is worth bending the law over, but helping one’s family get out of poverty is worth holding the line?
I was talking one afternoon with a DTS professor who lived in a Spanish-speaking country for more than a decade, and he was telling me that when it comes to the law, most folks who live outside the U.S. rank human judgment over human rule. But most Americans philosophically rank human rule over judgment (unless, apparently, they left late and need to get somewhere on time). For example if we approach a “stop” sign at 3 AM, we stop. If someone from outside the U.S. approaches a “stop” sign at 3 AM and that person has not seen another car for hours, he or she won’t stop. It’s not a matter of being a scofflaw. It’s a question of whether the human was made for the rule or the rule for the human. The reason for the law is to avoid accidents, right? And good judgment says there’s not going to be an accident. So judgment trumps the rule. Still, we do let ambulances break the law because judgment /need actually do trump law, if we think about it.
One of the challenges we face when trying to reach a consensus about immigration is our conflicting views of law and need.
I’ve noticed in my particular brand of Christendom we talk a lot about widows and orphans, but we leave out one-third of the folks God put on the priority list of those needing our advocacy, love, and mercy.