Category: history

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church current affairs history israel

Reasons For Civil Disobedience

A very busy week ago, I was struggling with the Christian’s response to the illegal immigration issue. I must apologize up front: this post is long. There was no way that I could divide this post into three posts without breaking the thought-flow, so I didn’t. Instead, I split it up with headers so that you can follow it piece-meal, if you have to.

I previously raised some surprising issues of civil disobedience which were: (1) Paul’s refusal to obey the Philippian magistrates (Acts 16:37); (2) Paul escaping arrest at Damascus (Acts 9:23-25; 2 Cor 11: 32, 33). I didn’t mention another surprising case and that is (3) Esther (Esther 4:13-16; 5:1).

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church history pray

Prayer Monday 3 – Clement of Rome

Barring my faulty memory (and if I’m not lazy) I want to post prayers on Monday from all over Church History and then throughout the modern day, and then my own. This one comes from Clement of Rome.

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church history

Prayer Mondays 2

Barring my faulty memory (and if I’m not lazy) I want to post prayers on Monday from all over Church History and then throughout the modern day, and then my own. This one comes from the Didache from very early in Church History, but sometime after most of the books of the New Testament.

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history human

Christians, Immigration, and the Law

My thought model sort of worked. It allowed me to see the driving principles that ran through Israel’s treatment of immigrants while yielding some information about how those principles might be applied today; but it kept catching one snag. Our problem isn’t immigration—it’s illegal immigration.

Because of that, I had to reflect on human laws, authority and a Christian’s responsibility.

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current affairs history human israel

An Immigration Thought Model

Christians love Scriptural commands; it makes things easy. We weigh in on an issue by citing a verse (or five) and we’re done—ding! Next problem?

So it is with immigration. We surf through our New Testament and then pause, sighing thankfully that there is a verse that seems to deal with illegal aliens, or at least strangers: “The stranger that you invited inside, fed, and clothed his nudity…it was me, Jesus. When you rejected that stranger and left him imprisoned; you rejected me, Jesus1.”

Well, we blush; it’s not as good as an explicit command. The passage is totally about interaction at the personal level and it doesn’t offer anything in the way of “thou shall”—especially not on the national level.

Ignoring the other post-worthy problems up above, I think there’s a proper goal in finding what Scripture says in regard to immigration. Surely, not for the purpose of finding a new law (wrongheaded, that), but for the purpose of discovering operating principles.

For that, we need to construct a thought model.

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