Black and white hands forming a circle.
Immigration here in America has been a dominate theme in the political world recently. A rising flow of immigrants has done a lot to draw attention to this issue. Here in our country, for example, we received 3 million new legal and illegal immigrants from 2014 to 2015. That is a 39% increase from the previous two years.
Unregulated immigration can be dangerous. This is an important political issue because our Constitution requires every elected official on the federal level to promise to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic …”
I would like to suggest, though, that there is another aspect of the immigration issue that is often ignored.
Historically, when large groups of people move to a new country they are often met with suspicion, and sometimes with open opposition. America is a country made up of immigrants. In spite of that, though, in the past there have been migrants to America who also had to endure isolation and shunning. Our history gives us some examples. When large groups of Italians, Irish, Chinese, or Japanese refugees came to America, they all had to endure an initial resentment from those already living here.
Christians may not like the way our government is handling immigration, but we need to take a hard look at how WE are responding to those around us who happen to live very different lives than we do.
There are two important things that can help us who know Jesus Christ as Savior to genuinely care for those who may speak a different language or who may have come from a different culture.
First, we must remember that all humans have the same Creator. “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness…’” (Genesis 1:26). Being made in God’s image or likeness means that we all share certain traits that reflect the One who made us. For example, since God is eternal we now have souls that will never die. It also means that all of us need to find the most satisfying relationship of all–the one with the God who made us.
Humans all have a lot in common. When we see things in others that are different from us, it doesn’t necessarily mean that our ways of doing things are right and their ways are wrong.
Recognizing that we, too, don’t really fit into this world’s culture is the second thing that helps us to genuinely care about immigrants. The Bible actually refers to Christians as being strangers and aliens in this world. When we see ourselves as aliens in this sin-filled world, it is much easier to accept others who are aliens in our neighborhood (1 Peter 2:11).
This truth is explored in many places in the Bible:“When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the Lord your God” (Leviticus 19:33–34). “You shall not oppress a stranger, since you yourselves know the feelings of a stranger, for you also were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 23:9). “… So show your love for the alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 10:18–19).
Think about it this way. If you have given your life to Christ, because you learned that only Jesus could pay for and forgive your sins, then He has also made you a new and very different person. “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:9–11).
Have you been washed clean through the work of Christ? If so, then you are “…a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). When God changes you from the inside out, you will notice that no longer fit into this crazy world. That’s okay. Let what God has done for you make you sympathetic to those around you All of us in this world are in need of saving. That realization will keep each of us from prideful feelings of superiority. As James Martin Gray put it in a hymn he wrote: “I’m only a sinner saved by grace.”
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