dave dack

Sometimes I wish I were the kind of person who just knew everything.

What’s the best way to organize and staff a church?  I wish I could just bam! lay it all out there and explain exactly how to do it and have the numbers/research/what-have-you to back it all up.  “This is exactly what needs to be done,” I’d say.  And I would be right.

I see characters like that all the time on The West Wing.  I know, it’s a TV show that has a prepared script and good actors & actresses.  But still, there are actually people like that - political giants that are impossible to argue with even when you don’t like them, because the just know what to do all the time.

A pastor that I know explained to me what he does when people come into his office with big questions about life and faith.  “Pastor, what is God’s will for my life?  How do I decide such-and-such?”  He ponders the question intently and after a moment, looking straight into their eyes, says, “I don’t know.”  Then he says, “That’s why pastoral advice is free.”

Today in class one of the guys who usually sits on the other side of the room from me commented about Zwingli and the Reformation in Switzerland. He noted that Zwingli’s stance (and that of his followers) started out peacefully, but later ended up tangled in violence (Zwingli himself was killed in battle). The seminary president, Jim Holm, mentioned that people tend to have a great deal of passion when it comes to spiritual matters. People will sometimes fight violently for something they are passionate about, even if that very thing is supposed to be peaceful and anti-war.

Anyway, after another student commented about her experience with liberation theology in Nicaragua, I started thinking about how this process moves along. How does a passionate belief in the Gospel end up furthering itself by clearly non-Gospel means?

When people encounter the good news - especially poor or oppressed people - it often generates a huge amount of hope and passion. Understandably, they want to spread this good news and effect the Gospel in their situation. This might mean liberation from a dictator, or another attempt at establishing Christendom… whatever people see as the way things should be in their situation if the Gospel is true. Fueled by passion, in an attempt to expand God’s kingdom people might try to put the Gospel into a larger vehicle that will take it further than it might go on its own. That vehicle might be Marxism, reformation of the church, Emergent, the Crusades, or who knows what. The danger is that these things, whether good or bad, are only ideologies at the end of the day. When the Gospel is embedded in an ideology, people easily make the mistake of committing to the cause rather than to Christ, the good news himself. Things are still done in the name of the Gospel, but really the allegiance is to an ideology that will eventually permit certain actions that the Gospel itself wants no part of.

That’s what I think, anyway.

I’ve realized in the last couple of days how ignorant I am of the reason for illegal immigrants from Mexico. I can’t answer the question, Why aren’t they just crossing legally? Is it our country or theirs that won’t let them immigrate? I don’t know much about the beginning of the issue.

The first post was about framing the situation in a more Gospel-centered way. Maybe I shouldn’t move on so quickly, but I want to begin hashing out practical implications for how churches should respond to 1) immigration reform and 2) immigrants themselves, particularly ones living here illegally.

The PC USA has a Resolution Calling For A Comprehensive Legalization Program For Immigrants Living And Working In The United States. I have yet to read the whole thing, but it seems pretty good to me. “[The resolution] reminds the church that a Christian perspective on immigration challenges us above all to love immigrants, to establish justice for them, and to seek to be reconciled with them in a new and transformed community.” Take a look at it. The PC USA website also explains various pieces of legislation going before congress and how to put in your two cents (usually it means calling your congressman/woman). The Dream Act is one example of that.

For local churches, I wonder how they can help illegal immigrants living near them. Maybe it’s silly, but what about regular classes or seminars that explain to immigrants what their options are? Something where we can help answer the 10 million questions they probably have, especially concerning their kids’ options. In what other ways can local churches help?

I’ve been thinking more lately about immigration reform in this country. It’s a touchy subject, and people have all kinds of different ideas about how to “fix” it, as well as different ideas about how it’s “broken” in the first place.

How should the church approach the issue? I read today part of an article from the October 2007 issue of Presbyterians Today, which outlined the GA’s resolution calling for a comprehensive legalization program for immigrants. The article was titled, “Welcome The Stranger.”

And that’s where I want to start. Understanding immigrants as our (Christians’) fellow strangers in this country is a crucial first step in framing this whole thing properly. Not to be too cliché, but if our citizenship is in heaven then our allegiance must be to God’s kingdom before any other power. We’re supposed to see ourselves as strangers and foreigners wherever we are. I think we need to think of immigrants, legal or not, not as people coming into “our country,” but as other foreigners (like us) coming into the same land we’re in. We need to find face-to-face ways of identifying with them and helping them figure out how to live here.

Immigrants are foreigners here like us (or at least like we’re supposed to be).

The church can’t approach this issue from the starting point of “What’s best for the country.” It has to start with “How are we called to treat foreigners?”

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 19:34)