Leviticus 19:33-34 (NIV): 33 “‘When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. 34 The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.
In the quiet of our sanctuaries and the bustle of our town squares, we often speak of “neighbors.” We define them by the fences we share or the pews we sit in. But as we look at the current landscape of our nation —specifically the rapid and controversial expansion of detention centers planned across the country — we are forced to ask a more difficult question: Who does God say is our neighbor?
Currently, there is a bipartisan wave of pushback against the construction of these facilities. It is a rare moment in our fractured political climate where people from both sides of the aisle are finding common ground. Some are moved by fiscal responsibility, others by concerns over local autonomy, but many are moved by a stirring of the human conscience. For those of us who look to Holy Scripture as our compass, this isn’t just a political debate; it is a moral crisis that strikes at the heart of our faith.
The foundation for our treatment of the immigrant is not found in modern policy, but in the ancient Law of Leviticus 19:33-34. This scripture is not a proposed suggestion; it is a divine mandate. This same theme resonates throughout the Old and New Testaments. From the Exodus story of a displaced people seeking home, to the warnings of the prophets to protect the “sojourner,” to Jesus’ own words in Matthew 25 where he declares that when we welcome the stranger, we welcome him.
One of the most significant points of friction in our modern dialogue is the distinction between “legal” and “illegal” status. While nations have the right to manage their borders, God makes no such distinction when it comes to the inherent dignity of the person. In the eyes of the Creator, there is no such thing as an “illegal” human being. We are all made in the “Imago Dei” — the image of God. To label a person as “illegal” is to attempt to strip them of the divine spark that God has placed within them.
As a society, we often fall into the trap of elevating human laws to a status higher than God’s law. We use “the law of the land” as a shield to justify a lack of compassion, forgetting that throughout history, human laws have often been used to codify injustice. When our regulations conflict with the fundamental command to “love your neighbor as yourself,” we must check our allegiances. Are we citizens of the human kingdom first, or the Kingdom of God?
The pushback we see today is, in part, a reaction to the profiling that inevitably accompanies the mass expansion of detention centers. When we begin to monitor, stop, or detain people based on the color of their skin, the language they speak, or the accent they carry, we are committing an affront to God’s law. This type of profiling suggests that some people are naturally more “suspicious” or less “worthy” than others based on outward appearance — even though scripture repeatedly tells us that God only looks at the inward appearance of the heart.
Furthermore, we must address the conditions within these planned and existing centers. There have been countless reports of facilities where the living conditions—overcrowding, lack of sanitation, and inadequate medical care, are worse than what we would tolerate in our local humane societies for animals. To treat a human being with less care than a domestic pet is an evil that cries out to heaven. It is a symptom of a society that has become desensitized to the suffering of those it deems the “other.”
This cycle of detention and dehumanization will only end when we, as a community of faith and as a nation, move beyond our own self-interest. It is easy to support policies that make us feel “safe” or “protected” in the short term, but if those policies require us to sacrifice our humanity, what have we truly gained? We are called to view all of humanity through the eyes of God. When God looks at a detention center, what is seen is not a “backlog” or “units.” God sees mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters. God sees the foreigner residing among us as a precious gift whom we are specifically commanded to love.
As these centers are proposed across our nation’s backyards, let us be the voices which call us back to our higher angels. Let us join the chorus of those on both sides of the aisle who say that our greatness is not measured by how many people we can lock away, but by how we treat the most vulnerable among us. May we remember that all non-native Americans have come to this land as strangers, and that our ultimate home is only found in the grace of a God who welcomes all.
— This week’s Reflections column was written by Mark Johnsen, pastor at the Brookings United Church of Christ.
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