Monday, June 21, 2010
Phillips Fact-Checking Maury Davis, or: What Would Jesus Do? Be an Illegal Immigrant, That's What
Posted by Betsy Phillips on Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 9:31 AM
Pastor Maury Davis contends that illegal immigration is anti-Biblical.
Unfortunately for Pastor Maury Davis, Bibles are widely available to whomever wants them, for free. Shoot, if you have access to the internet, you can pull up the Bible on one of your internet browser tabs and flip back and forth to it all day at work. You can browse through it to your heart's content. You don't need anyone to tell you what it says. You can read it for yourself.
We can all read together the many, many times that God says to the Isrealites, "Go into that country and kill everyone except the virgins and take it over." Granted, that's a step or two further than illegal immigration, but it's still entering a country without that country's government's permission.
But what if we want an instance that's right on point? Is there a moment when someone in the Bible sneaks into another country whereby we can judge God's attitude towards illegal immigration?
Yes. Yes, there is.
There's a very famous instance of illegal immigration in the Bible. Check out Matthew 2:13-15 in which God essentially says to Joseph, "Go illegally immigrate into Egypt so that Herod doesn't kill this kid."
Jesus was an illegal immigrant.
That's not a parable or a symbolic story you need a pastor to interpret. That's the truth. His family sneaked into Egypt and hid there because God told them to.
Of course, Pith understands why Davis would rather focus on a story that can kind of be sort of interpreted as being applicable to illegal immigration, rather than on the straight-forward account of God ordering Joseph to illegally immigrate to Egypt. The story can kind of be interpreted in a way that supports Davis' foregone conclusion. God's command to Joseph directly challenges Davis' foregone conclusion.
But we can't help but be curious about how Davis squares this circle. He must know the story of the flight into Egypt. Was he counting on the fact that the people who read his opinion piece in The Tennessean wouldn't be?
Comments (9)
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Maury Davis is nothing more or less than a damn huckster. He's got a right rewarding gig up there in Madison and he's gonna' keep right on keeping on. Snake oil works in the twenty-first century just like it did in days of yore. Just got a different smell.
No where does it state Jesus snuck in ILLEGALLY...He was told by God to sneak in and not be seen..no where does it say there were LAWS preventing people to go into that land. We are expected by God to follow laws of the land, so therefore, to assume God would say, do this illegally is an extremely false analogy.
um... You're presupposing that it was illegal for a Jewish couple to travel from the Roman province of Judea to the Roman province of Egypt.
Were there checkpoints at the borders? Did they have to dodge the Egyptian border-patrol?
Not to take up Maury's side on this, but your understanding of the flight into Egypt doesn't seem to square with historical facts.
It's certainly a better analogy than the verse Davis used, which is clearly - even in plain reading - about salvation, not immigration. Betsy's parallel is imperfect, but it's a damn site better than Davis'.
Well, OK. Maybe here are some better ones.
Abraham describes himself to the people of Canaan as "an alien and stranger among you" (Genesis 23).
Abimelech, one of the Canaanite kings, asks Abraham to swear that he and his offspring will treat the king and his kingdom fairly, in consideration of the fact that the king has allowed Abraham and his family to reside there as aliens. Abraham agrees. (Genesis 21)
How about these:
"Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt." (Exodus 22)
"Do not oppress an alien; you yourselves know how it feels to be aliens, because you were aliens in Egypt." (Exodus 23)
"Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the LORD your God." (Leviticus 19)
"When an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him." (Leviticus 19)
"The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the LORD your God." (Leviticus 19)
"And you are to love those who are aliens, for you yourselves were aliens in Egypt." (Deuteronomy 10)
"Do not take advantage of a hired man who is poor and needy, whether he is a brother Israelite or an alien living in one of your towns." (Deuteronomy 24)
"When you have finished setting aside a tenth of all your produce in the third year, the year of the tithe, you shall give it to the Levite, the alien, the fatherless and the widow, so that they may eat in your towns and be satisfied." (Deuteronomy 26)
The Bible's messages of love and social justice are often ignored or coopted to match someone's personal or theological agenda. Though proof-texting is frequently abused to prove a point, Bubbadog did an awesome job of displaying the Book's spirit of love and compassion towards aliens just on quantity of citations.
One Sabbath day as Jesus was walking through some grainfields, his disciples began breaking off heads of grain to eat. But the Pharisees said to Jesus:
Look, why are they breaking the law by harvesting grain on the Sabbath?
Jesus said to them:
Haven’t you ever read in the Scriptures what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He went into the house of God (during the days when Abiathar was high priest) and broke the law by eating the sacred loaves of bread that only the priests are allowed to eat. He also gave some to his companions.
Mark 2:23-28 (NLT)
If it wasn't illegal for Joseph and his family to be in Egypt, why did God tell them to sneak in?
