The Overton Salon

By Austin

In light of the recent issues surrounding Arizona and healthcare – the problem of immigration and universal coverage – I thought it might be useful to think a bit more theologically about the grounds for a Christian position on these things. It’s no secret that the God of the really cares about the dispossessed, in the form of the “alien, widow, and orphan.” From the founder of the faith, Abraham (who himself was called to become an immigrant, and became an immigrant in Egypt because of economic conditions where he was, Gen 12.10), to the Law at Sinai, to the fact that the prophets often judged Israel by how they worshiped, and how they dealt with the poor, orphans, widows, and aliens, Yahweh is concerned over and over with the care of the outcast.

The New Testament is just as concerned with this too. A text like James 2.6 (“But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you?”) is shocking to many Christians, as is the fact that most of the earliest Christian community outside Judea were immigrants. In Rome they even had their own ghetto, the Trastevere (where Jews, Christians, and other immigrants lived), across the Tiber – an area that didn’t burn during the famous fire during Nero’s reign, and for which Nero scapegoated the Christians.

In other words, the entire narrative of the Bible makes sense of a verse like this: “The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God” (Lev 19.34).

But why, theologically, is this the case? What is it about God that makes this something obvious to the Israelites and early Christians? Why did God choose, at the beginning, to call out Abraham to become an alien? Or, we could put it another way: what does this say about God? Who is this God that appears to really care about justice and the alien?

I want to suggest that the care God shows to the outcast and the dispossessed has something to do with the two fundamental beliefs that Christians have had from the beginning: that God is the sole creator of all things, and that God is the sole ruler of all things. For most Christians, creation is just a doctrine that is the opposite of evolution, and the phrase “Jesus is Lord” means “Lord of my life,” or “my special friend,” or other pietistic platitude. Yet these two doctrines are not what people think. They are powerful confessions that are world-altering. And they are the basis for all our thinking about what the world is, much less who God is.

In the upcoming posts, I hope to show that in the rubbish heap that we’ve made of the world, these two confessions can only be fully explicated in practice by concern for the outsider, the outcast, the poor and the immigrant.