Wednesday, October 03, 2007

An immigrant's story

<idle musing>
The subject of immigration is a political hot potato right now. You have opinions ranging from, “Throw them all out!” to “Open our arms to everyone.” Everyone seems to have an opinion, always right, of course, since it is theirs! The one thing I don’t hear, and really wish I did, is a Christian take on it. Sure, I have heard christians expounding on it, but I haven’t heard a Christian message in their exposition. It seems to be more of a protection of the status quo, or a political statement. Where is the heart of Christ in all this?

Well, over the weekend I ran across a post on Out of Ur that addresses the issue from what I think is the heart of God. It is written by a second generation immigrant with a Harvard degree, Isaac Canales (which, as an aside, makes me ask, how many generations removed are most of us from being immigrants? My grandfather’s parents had him only 3 years after immigrating). Here is a snippet, but please read the whole thing
</idle musing>

Throughout our history there have been times when non-Christians see through our hypocrisy. They recognize that not everyone is truly welcome in our churches. These are times when we’ve worried about being politically right when we should be focused on being biblically correct.

The root of American evangelical hypocrisy is smugness; a historical inability to understand God’s unfailing mercies for the immigrant, his unfailing love for the poor among us. If our sense of worth is measured by privatized religion and political culture—from our color, to our work ethic, to the neighborhoods we live and worship in—we remain independent of God and self-sufficiently smug. Christ cannot help us. We are not being his church.

Ouch! Blunt, to the point, and correct. We need to repent of our self-righteous smugness and become the church of God.

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