Equality

 

Jesus is the great equalizer.  Paul, the apostle, declared that all are equally sinners, that Gentiles have equal access to God through faith in Christ, that we share with him equally the inheritance as joint-heirs to God.  This spiritual equality translates into organic unity, where there is neither slave not free, Jew nor Gentile, male nor female.  From this unity flows political, economic and social equality, as in the Jerusalem commune in those first heady days of the church, or in Paul’s collection for the poor saints at Jerusalem, in which he appeals to equality as a worthy goal and a motivating force.  Jesus himself spoke of a Father who causes the sun to shine on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.  He made the neighbor and the enemy both one’s equals, and advised equal generosity both to those who can and to those who cannot or will not repay.  He did not separate life, as weso often do, into secular and sacred components.  To affirm spiritual equality and at the same time to uphold and recognize political, economic, and social inequality, fulfills the divine  prophecy that there will be those who “having the form of godliness deny the power thereof.”  This supposed form of equality turns out to be merely a fantasy, a word-game, and utter hypocrisy.  the power of the Kingdom will be seen when individuals live out its principles trhough the enabling of the Holy Spirit in their own personal lives, and through the same Spirit refuse to separate personal decisions from business decisions, or political ones. 

This paragraph  was written sometime in the mid-1980s. I haven’t backdated this post, though, because all these years later I still agree with what I said then.  

 

The Economics of Immigration

Got to get down some thoughts on the question of immigration. It’s a hot-button political issue right now in the United States. I’ll leave aside for the moment the compilation of biblical texts showing how, in the theocratic state envisioned in the Torah, foreigners were to be treated (hints: not to be oppressed, to be loved as oneself, not to be barred from gleaning the leftovers of the wheat and grape harvest, to be included with those celebrating national feasts), and talk in real-world contemporary political and economic terms about the elephant in the room in the whole conversation about illegal immigration in the United States.

Why do people risk their lives to cross the border from Mexico into the United States? The commonly reported answer: to work at low-paying jobs that American citizens don’t want, usually as fieldworkers in agriculture. This much is pretty well agreed upon. Solutions proposed to this problem range from building a hundreds-of-miles-long fence at the border and hiring lots of agents to keep the border “secure” so as to reduce this flow of workers, all the way to providing a means for these “undocumented” workers to gain some sort of legal “green card” status, allowing them to be in the country for the purpose of working at those jobs, and eventually, perhaps, if they go through all the right procedures, begin the long and arduous task of applying for citizenship; all of which, in current political discourse, falls under the pejorative word “amnesty.” There’s all kinds of political conversation going on right now about these matters, and whether an “enforcement-only” approach or a “comprehensive” approach is better for the country. But nobody is talking about what really needs to happen to stem the flow of people across the border.

What is needed is for jobs paying a decent wage to become available in Mexico (and other countries). And what is needed for that to happen, is for the United States government to adopt a policy