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On The Other Hand

You know, back when I was a contrarian, and that seemed like conservatism, I would often get annoyed when "liberals" found some "Be kind to the foreigner" verse, and tried to shame us with it. It's quite true that nothing is ever as easy as it seems, especially in politics. I still absolutely agree that most things are complex, more complex than we realize. A certain "anti-politics" driven by emotivism loses patience with the compromise of negotiation, lawmaking, even the very idea of statecraft.

On the other hand, have you noticed the sheer number of references to aliens and sojourners in the Scriptures? And we're just speaking of the Old Testament, the place where people who haven't actually read the Bible go when imagining God as mean and scary. If we throw in the covenant of Our Lord Jesus Christ as well? Forget it; if we built luxury hotels on the border for every sojourner, we might get close to fulfilling that command.

So while it's bad to take a verse and say, "Therefore, X," it's worth a note that many references equals a theme, a thrust, a heart. If we don't allow that to really challenge us, we have to consider the possibility that our religion is only a proxy for something else.

It may behoove our leaders to work backwards and say, "The dignity of the human person is such that we cannot do..." and then choose from among whatever is left.

I always laugh at those people who shout, "Our country is not a theocracy!" More's the pity. They might get more of what they want if it were.

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