Bryan Fischer
Nae goes rogue on immigration
By Bryan Fischer
The National Association of Evangelicals claims to speak for me and 30-50 million other evangelical Christians. Sadly, on the issue of immigration, the NAE no longer speaks for me or for countless other Christians who believe in the rule of law and legal immigration.
NAE president Leith Anderson, perhaps seduced by the lure of the powerful and famous, met yesterday with House speaker Nancy Pelosi and assured her of the organization's support for amnesty legislation.
Now the NAE will claim that they do not in fact support amnesty, but it plainly does. The legal penalty for violating our border law is deportation, and the NAE wants that scrapped. They don't want the penalty the law prescribes to be enforced. That's amnesty, no matter how vehemently they deny it.
As atheist blogger Allahpundit (who writes, by the way, for a website owned by Christian-run Salem Communications) says, "What kind of bizarre Christian principle provides that we should be good Samaritans to the people who broke the law in coming here but not to the people just across the border who desperately want to come? Give me chapter and verse where Jesus says, 'Okay, that's enough charity towards strangers. We really can't afford any more.' If you can't, then what's the limiting principle on this?"
In other words, there is no logic to the NAE's position. It's view on this makes the law a meaningless concept and makes the concept of borders meaningless.
Yet the New Testament itself teaches that God is the one who has "determined ... the boundaries of their (= the nations) dwelling place" (Acts 17:26). So nations with defined borders is God's idea, not that of crazed, whacked-out Minutemen.
Nations who build fences to secure their borders, as we should do, are simply protecting their national sovereignty, as God certainly authorizes them to do. We should build a double layer security fence along all 2,000 miles of our southern border, because, as the saying goes, good fences make good neighbors. A nation without a border is not a nation at all.
It is the Judeo-Christian tradition that has given us our respect for the rule of law rather than the rule of men, and for laws that conform to God's law. What about the word "illegal" does Leith Anderson not understand?
What about Romans 13:2 does the NAE not understand? "[W]hoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment." I find nothing mysterious or ambiguous here, nor should the NAE.
The media has been agog over the 15-year old Mexican boy who was shot to death by a Border Patrol agent who fired in self-defense. But as Fox News reports, It turns out the youth was not as innocent as the out-of-the-mainstream media wants us to believe. He was in fact a known smuggler, had been charged with alien smuggling in 2009, and was on a "most wanted" list of juvenile smugglers compiled by U.S. authorities in the El Paso area.
The death of this boy is a tragedy and we grieve with the family who has lost a loved one. It is truly a terrible thing for parents to lose a child at such a young age.
But when we look around for someone to blame for this tragic death, we need look no further than the boy himself. He was old enough to engage in criminal behavior and old enough to experience the consequences of his choices. His family learned the hard way that "those who resist (God-given authority) will incur judgment."
Here are Allahpundit's closing words:
"Except ... are there any prominent Christian conservative pols who oppose a 'path to citizenship'?... Exit question: Who among us is 'un-Christian' enough to enforce the law? Besides your humble atheist correspondent, that is."
Well, Allahpundit, I am not a "prominent Christian conservative pol" but I a Christian conservative, an evangelical, and I am with you and not my brothers at the NAE on this one.
© Bryan Fischer
June 10, 2010
The National Association of Evangelicals claims to speak for me and 30-50 million other evangelical Christians. Sadly, on the issue of immigration, the NAE no longer speaks for me or for countless other Christians who believe in the rule of law and legal immigration.
NAE president Leith Anderson, perhaps seduced by the lure of the powerful and famous, met yesterday with House speaker Nancy Pelosi and assured her of the organization's support for amnesty legislation.
Now the NAE will claim that they do not in fact support amnesty, but it plainly does. The legal penalty for violating our border law is deportation, and the NAE wants that scrapped. They don't want the penalty the law prescribes to be enforced. That's amnesty, no matter how vehemently they deny it.
As atheist blogger Allahpundit (who writes, by the way, for a website owned by Christian-run Salem Communications) says, "What kind of bizarre Christian principle provides that we should be good Samaritans to the people who broke the law in coming here but not to the people just across the border who desperately want to come? Give me chapter and verse where Jesus says, 'Okay, that's enough charity towards strangers. We really can't afford any more.' If you can't, then what's the limiting principle on this?"
In other words, there is no logic to the NAE's position. It's view on this makes the law a meaningless concept and makes the concept of borders meaningless.
Yet the New Testament itself teaches that God is the one who has "determined ... the boundaries of their (= the nations) dwelling place" (Acts 17:26). So nations with defined borders is God's idea, not that of crazed, whacked-out Minutemen.
Nations who build fences to secure their borders, as we should do, are simply protecting their national sovereignty, as God certainly authorizes them to do. We should build a double layer security fence along all 2,000 miles of our southern border, because, as the saying goes, good fences make good neighbors. A nation without a border is not a nation at all.
It is the Judeo-Christian tradition that has given us our respect for the rule of law rather than the rule of men, and for laws that conform to God's law. What about the word "illegal" does Leith Anderson not understand?
What about Romans 13:2 does the NAE not understand? "[W]hoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment." I find nothing mysterious or ambiguous here, nor should the NAE.
The media has been agog over the 15-year old Mexican boy who was shot to death by a Border Patrol agent who fired in self-defense. But as Fox News reports, It turns out the youth was not as innocent as the out-of-the-mainstream media wants us to believe. He was in fact a known smuggler, had been charged with alien smuggling in 2009, and was on a "most wanted" list of juvenile smugglers compiled by U.S. authorities in the El Paso area.
The death of this boy is a tragedy and we grieve with the family who has lost a loved one. It is truly a terrible thing for parents to lose a child at such a young age.
But when we look around for someone to blame for this tragic death, we need look no further than the boy himself. He was old enough to engage in criminal behavior and old enough to experience the consequences of his choices. His family learned the hard way that "those who resist (God-given authority) will incur judgment."
Here are Allahpundit's closing words:
"Except ... are there any prominent Christian conservative pols who oppose a 'path to citizenship'?... Exit question: Who among us is 'un-Christian' enough to enforce the law? Besides your humble atheist correspondent, that is."
Well, Allahpundit, I am not a "prominent Christian conservative pol" but I a Christian conservative, an evangelical, and I am with you and not my brothers at the NAE on this one.
© Bryan Fischer
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