The other day I was reading the story in Deuteronomy 10 about God’s giving the Ten Commandments to Israel.  The text admonishes us to reverence God, to walk in God’s ways, to love and to serve God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep God’s commandments.  (Later Jesus picked up this same language when he summarized the entire law with the injunction to love – love God, neighbor and self.)

Much of what follows in Deuteronomy is commentary on how to apply the Ten Commandments in order to create a just society.  I think that it is significant to look at the first two things that the scripture emphasizes as it begins this extensive commentary on the commandments:  (1) God “executes justice for the orphan and the widow,” and (2) God “loves the aliens, providing them food and clothing.  You shall also love the alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.”

There are few things as central to the ethos of the Hebrew scripture as our obligation toward the poor and the vulnerable and our obligation toward those who are called “aliens, strangers, and sojourners.”  To obey these two principles is fundamental to a Biblical vision of justice.

Centuries of Christian lawmakers and political policies have seen these two commandments of justice to be at the core of our communal responsibilities.  When we make laws today, if they are going to reflect the original laws of God, they will need to promote the welfare of the poor and they will need to make provision for hospitality to the stranger.  These are core expectations throughout the witness of scripture.

That is why it seems so shocking to me that people who characterize themselves as Christians sometimes make it central to their political philosophy to oppose laws that give equal and supportive power and security to the “fatherless and widows,” to the poor and vulnerable, to single mothers. 

It is also anti-Biblical and anti-Christian to pass oppressive measures against the alien, the stranger and the sojourner.  How can anyone who accepts the name “Jewish” or “Christian” ever support punitive and inhospitable laws toward the alien or the poor?  To do so violates a core theme of scripture and of our identity as God’s people. 

Yet in this legislative session in Little Rock we’ve seen bills introduced that would make it a felony to assist an immigrant in need, would prevent a non-citizen from holding a driver’s license for the same term as a citizen, would require all non-citizens to have their status checked in order to get a job, would require the use of a faulty system to determine their eligibility for a job, and would require local police to detain immigrants who were without their documents.

Underlying much of this kind of legislation is simple prejudice and racism.  It is often racism couched in legal rationalizations.  Anti-immigration rhetoric speaks of “illegals,” just like segregationists talked about “state sovereignty.”  It is prejudice couched in legal rationalization.  

Our national immigration laws are unjust, just like the Jim Crow laws of our segregated past.  They need to be reformed not enforced.  It is virtually impossible for a laborer to immigrate legally or for a settled worker to achieve citizenship in less than a decade.  These laws need to be changed at the national level, not enforced with prejudice at the local level.

Lawmakers and citizens who say they respect the Bible need to look again at our laws and change them whenever they do not uphold the welfare of the poor and whenever they fail to express God’s intention of love for aliens, strangers, and sojourners. 

People may choose to oppress the poor and the alien.  Just don’t do it and imagine that God is pleased.