I have friends who keep me honest, and I am grateful for that. They don’t always agree with me. In fact, they often disagree with me on various things, but they remain my friends, and I remain grateful for them.

Anyone who follows me on social media knows that I am virtually fixated on the issue of immigration right now. It may seem like a new thing—that all of a sudden I have become woke, liberal, or progressive. Some people who don’t know me well, I am sure, think that about me. The truth is more complicated than that.

I am a lifelong Republican and conservative by nature. I’m also a follower of Jesus, though, and I find that Jesus defies modern political categories and stereotypes. If Jesus looks to me like a Republican or Democrat, “my Jesus” probably is not the real Jesus, and my politics have likely influenced my view of Jesus.

Many people might look at my posts on immigration and feel like I have abandoned all sense of patriotism and national pride. They might think I have become a hater of the United States of America. Again, the truth is more complicated than that.

I grew up with a love for my country and a strong sense of patriotism and pride. I was educated, like most people my age, on the goodness of the United States of America, celebrating Christopher Columbus and Thanksgiving this time of year with idyllic depictions of pioneers living in harmony with Native Americans as our forefathers lived out their manifest destiny in keeping with a divine mandate from our creator to form the greatest, freest country on earth.

I still believe we live in the greatest, freest country on earth, but the truth is messier and more complicated than I once believed. I am grateful for a strong sense of the goodness of the United States of America I learned as a child, and I appreciate the positives in that idealized memory of America. But it’s more complicated than that.

Humanity is nothing if not messy. We are fallen, sinful creatures. We know that, but our idyllic, comforting images die hard.

The pioneers displaced the Native Americans who were here long before us. They were pushed out of their ancestral lands. They were marched in a “trail of tears” to godforsaken territories where they have had to scrape out a meager subsistence ever since then in the literal dust of the barren, rocky places to which they were consigned.

Slavery is a pox on our idyllic history. That it was supported, promoted, and defended by Christians who sought comfort in the Bible while they exploited, oppressed, and dehumanized people for the color of their skin (and wealth they could generate) is a testament to the utter bankruptcy of human beings – even religious ones.

Let’s be honest about this, also: religious people who use their religion to justify their unjust ways are not doing anything different than non-religious people who are unjust. It’s just more insidious for the fact that they contort love of neighbor to love of self.

I have learned to be honest and not to look away from these contrary images of our history and our past. God calls for repentance, and repentance requires honesty. Repentance and heart change are the only proper response to the evil of idolatry and injustice.

Honesty does not mean I do not love my country, and it does not mean that I am not thankful for being born here. I still believe that the good we have brought into the world is not any less good. It’s just complicated, and I want us to live up to the ideals we ascribe to.

In case you could not tell, I am not an idealist, though I certainly do have idealistic tendencies. Not that I am any different than anyone else. We are complicated and complex creatures; human beings. Despite the polarized simplicity of social media that pigeon holes us into two-dimensional, stereotypical ideologues, people and societies are complex.

On the issue of immigration, my “awakening” happened more than a decade ago – in 2014. During the Obama administration, as I watched the Syrian refugee crisis unfold in the news, I realized that didn’t have a robust biblical view on the subject of immigration. I have written about this often, so please bear with me if you have read what I have written before.

I watched as hordes of angry Arab men with darting eyes converged on old European villages. They filed up trains, and walked the highways into cities, roaming the streets and alleys, and causing trouble as they went. I read the terrifying stories of local women sexually assaulted in the streets by these gangs of displaced men. I was horrified.

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The duality of the images of angry men and desperate families haunted me. I could not shake them. And they pulled me in opposite directions.

I realized that I did not have a good sense of God’s heart in what was going on. I knew I needed to go to Scripture, to the Word of God, for help in sorting out what I saw and what I felt, to develop a Biblical, godly view. I knew I needed God’s perspective.

I have spent countless hours since that time pouring over what Scripture says about immigrants (strangers, aliens, and sojourners in the Bible). The initial weekend of study was eye opening to me. I didn’t realize there was so much that is expressly relevant to immigration in the Bible. I wrote the first article in which I worked out what I was reading on November 23, 2014 (Immigration: the Strangers Among Us).

I have continued to study the issue and to be aware of what Scripture says on the subject in my daily Bible reading. I have let go of the political influences, and I have written and spoken often about it. My friends have challenged me to keep me balanced and to keep me honest, but the direction of God’s heart on immigrants seems eminently clear to me.

We live comfortable lives in the United States. Even the poorest among us have safety nets and good institutions to protect us and provide for us (though the Trump Administration in 2025 seems to be changing that). We are the richest, freest, best country in the world.

We do have Christian principles at our root, though not all of the founding fathers were Christian. Many of them who embraced Christian principles in our founding documents were not what we would call evangelical, born again, or orthodox Christians at all, though they found in Christian principles the bedrock of our Constitution. It’s complicated. It’s never as simple as it seems.

It’s never as black and white as we want it to be. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson owned slaves without apology. When the Constitution speaks to the freedom of all men, it did not include black men or women. Human beings are messy in a sinful and fallen world.

At the end of the day, nationalism, patriotism, love, and pride for country all must yield to the sovereignty of God, or they become idols. Our idolatry (and the injustice that always stems from it) will eventually incur God’s wrath. It doesn’t matter how Christian the principles of our founding documents are or how religiously we hold to our faith; if we harbor idolatry in our hearts and do injustice to our neighbors, we will pay the price as a nation.

God did not spare His chosen people. The prophets in the Old Testament pronounced judgment mainly on the nations of Israel and Judah. They did not hold back. They spoke out against the people of God when the people of God strayed from their covenant relationship with God. And when they strayed from their covenant relationship with God, it was inevitably accompanied by injustice.

“If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.”

1 John 4:20

Idolatry and injustice are the two great themes of the Prophets. Our vertical relationship with God impacts our horizontal relationship with people. When we are out of sync in our vertical relationship with God, we become unjust and cruel in our horizontal relationship with mankind.

I am not against a strong and secure border. I am not against careful controls in our immigration process to keep out people who have harmful intent. I do not want murderers, rapists, drug traffickers, human traffickers, or people who are unwilling to assimilate in our country. Allowing them in would not be loving to our American neighbors, but it’s complicated.

We need to love our foreign neighbors because God clearly tells us to love them. Full Stop.

We need to be hospitable to the people who desire to sojourn here. That was God’s instruction to the Israelites, and it stands as God’s instruction to His people everywhere because “God loves the sojourner” (Deut. 10:17-19), and “God watches over the sojourner” (Psalm 146:9)

The United States of America is the most pluralistic nation on Earth, and that is because of the Christian influence. Revelation 7:9 reveals that God’s great plan is to gather people from every tribe, nation, and tongue to Himself, where we will worship and live in relationship with God, our Father, through all eternity. The United States has been a human representation of that design, albeit imperfect, but now we are rejecting God’s design as I write.

We cannot separate mothers from children and not be judged by a God who defends the orphan. We cannot rip spouses out of families and not bring on ourselves the wrath of a God who protects widows. We cannot target immigrants for no reason other than the fact that they are foreigners living among us and receive the blessing of a God who judges those who oppress foreigners.

We are a nation that boasted of being a melting pot when I was young, but not we are forsaking our greatest heritage in the current moment. Right now, masked, anonymous ICE agents in military gear patrol our streets, lobbing canisters of tear gas into crowds of trick-or-treating children, interrupting courts while they are in session to arrest people following the legal process, ramming cars on the street, and shooting women who dare to get in their way.

So eager are we to punish and send away the foreigners in our midst, we have looked the other way as ICE routinely ignores and intentionally violates the most basic due process principals that protect the freedoms of all of us. As we allow those freedoms to be eroded for them, we cut off our collectives noses to spite our face, and freedom becomes an illusion for us as well.

We have become like Sodom and Gomorrah. If you assume the great sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was sexual, you don’t understand the story. The great sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was inhospitality to foreigners and oppression of others to satisfy the materials desires of the wealthy and comfortable (See What Was the Sin of Sodom and Gomorrah?)

God heard the cries of people in distress in Egypt, and He responded. God heard the cries of people in distress in Sodom & Gomorrah, and He and responded. And I dare say, that God hears the cries of people in distress in the United States of America and God will respond if we do not relent. Our nation will be on the sharp edge of God’s sword if we continue in the direction we are going. That is why I write about immigration.

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What do you think? I am ok if you disagree with me. My friends do it all the time.