A Dangerous Elephant

A Dangerous Elephant
01.03.08

We attended a Hispanic church for our first 3.5 years after moving to Lynchburg. With a foreign-born pastor and a congregation comprised of 14 different nationalities from 5 continents, the vast majority of the assembly were immigrants. As you could imagine, in today's culture, a good portion of these arrived within our country illegally.

Illegal immigration was often the elephant in the room. We used to joke that you could herd everybody out after the service by yelling, "immigration!" Beyond the humor, though, I used to wrestle with the question as to how the church—and particularly a pastor—should address the issue. You want to have an outreach to the unchurched expatriates; and you don't want to create a litmus test for attending the church. Not wanting to appear legalistic, racist, or uncommitted to the Gospel, I picked the discomfort of quietness.

Since leaving the church—and creating extricating space—I think the answer is less gray, if gray at all. It didn't come to me by epiphany as much as by consequences. Now our old church is illustrating what happens when the issue is unadressed, or even suppressed.

Now they have a head of discipleship, who has been married to one woman while engaged to another. They have had a youth leader known for her premarital sexual easiness. They have celebrated (from the pulpit) unfit marriages and marriage-bound relationships between 40+ year old divorcees and recently-graduated college coeds. I have attended a church party where they had an alcohol floor and a dry basement.

All churches have sinners. No pastor can prevent sin in his parishioners. But to allow it in leadership or to give unwise approval from the pulpit points to systemic unhealthiness.

How is this related to illegal immigration? How does this answer the question?

If you can cut one topic or sin from discussion, who is to say you can't overlook two? If you can subvert God's wisdom with situational ethics, how do you determine how much of the Bible gets trumped? It's a full stride onto the slippery slope.

Illegal immigration fails to render Caesar his due. It's akin to speeding or tax evasion, bribery or treason. All sin is the same, really—at least according to Scripture. So, their lifestyle is no worse or better than the alcoholic's or the liar's, the sensual or the materialistic.

The New Testament church is to welcome sinners of all ranks, all vices. Like Lady Liberty, we are to invite the broken, the bankrupt, and the becoming. But we are commanded to present the whole Truth, the complete message. For millennia that has not been popular. For centuries churches have beat around bushes and showcased the social gospel.

If the pot-bellied preachers and the pew-counting pastors of America have such a passion for those our government frames as unwelcome, then they need to follow their passion to the dirt-streets where these souls are legal. They can rally support for missionaries and indigenous iglesias already about that task. At the very least, they can nurture the courage to preach the Truth in love, while loving everyone that hears their instruction.