Immigration and faith

Dear Editor,

Do you think we should post the Ten Commandments in schools?

What about some other Bible verses about The Law? It may help, because there are some that spell out dealing with immigrants in pretty straight forward terms.

Realize the first Biblical immigrants were the Israelites themselves. God’s Chosen People. In the Exodus from Egypt. Afterward God gave Moses some guidance to follow once they had fled. The Ten Commandments, of course. The ones people want posted. But also the Law. Some deal with immigration.

Deuteronomy 10. God shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. He defends the cause of the orphan and the widow, and loves the foreigner among you, giving them food and clothing. You are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt.

And echoed in Malachi 3:5. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners among you of justice, but do not fear me,” says the lord Almighty.

Pretty clear. And you can’t change the words. So I have been told.

Funny thing. You know who else were immigrants? Mary, Joseph, and Jesus when they fled from Herod in the “slaughter of the innocents.” Matthew 2:14.

Do you think the Egyptians checked the papers of Mary and Joseph when they fled to Egypt after the birth of Jesus? Were they illegals? Should Jesus have been separated from his parents?

Wouldn’t it have been perfectly legal for them to do so?

Does it concern you that Egypt had every right to send Jesus back to be killed?

Sure, they did have a claim for asylum — the Herod thing. But they also were Jews. They could have poisoned the purity of Egypt.

Jesus survived. And you know what he preached about the most in his brief ministry on earth?

Hypocrisy.

Where do you fit in, professing Christian?

James Spangler, OD,

Warren