From The Mad Monarchist (26 November 2017)
Since the Bible does not say you must let any and all people into your country as they please, the people who favor this have to come up with something else and it usually comes down to only two or three verses that they repeatedly refer to. I cannot resist pointing out that there are more verses in the Bible that command people to obey kings and princes but I shall try to stay focused here. One of the most cited comes from very, very far back in the Bible, indeed almost to the book of Genesis which, by the way, pretty much all of these people believe to be completely fictions but I am speaking of Exodus 22:21 which says, “You shall not wrong a stranger (aka foreigner) or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” That is pretty simple, calling to mind the trials the Jews suffered in Egypt, it says do not treat others the way that you were treated. Do not oppress foreigners. The Jews, of course, were enslaved by the Egyptians and I don’t think anyone is arguing for the enslavement of foreigners. They want to keep the strangers out which, if they do, will certainly make it impossible to oppress them.
The idea that the Old Testament commands mixing it up, promotes diversity or multiculturalism is so blatantly wrong as to be totally absurd. In speaking of foreigners in the “Promised Land” the people are told in Deuteronomy 7:3-4, “Furthermore, you shall not intermarry with them; you shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor shall you take their daughters for your sons. For they will turn your sons away from following Me to serve other gods; then the anger of the LORD will be kindled against you and He will quickly destroy you.” You might also look at Joshua 23: 11-13, “So take diligent heed to yourselves to love the LORD your God. For if you ever go back and cling to the rest of these nations, these which remain among you, and intermarry with them, so that you associate with them and they with you, know with certainty that the LORD your God will not continue to drive these nations out from before you; but they will be a snare and a trap to you, and a whip on your sides and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from off this good land which the LORD your God has given you.” This is not exactly a call for inclusion and acceptance and there are numerous other verses that say the same thing.
Another passage, sometimes cited, is Leviticus 19:33 which says, “When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong.” For context, the following verse says to love the stranger as yourself and calls to mind the exile in Egypt just as the passage from Exodus did. As with the first verse addressed, this one is basically the same. It does not say to let all foreigners come to your land, it does not say to give them your land, it simply says not to oppress them and this is very interesting for the ‘open borders’ crowd to cite today. I should hope no one would be in favor of oppressing anyone but it is the people who are pro-open borders who are usually the ones who say that White/Western/European people are inherently oppressive which then begs the question of why they want more people to come in to be oppressed? I also cannot refrain from pointing out, to all of these recent, Bible-quoting leftists, that the same people here being told not to oppress the foreigners are also people for whom slavery was okay. Indeed, in the chapter preceding that of the first verse we looked at, which would be Exodus chapter 21, it starts with regulations regarding the treatment of slaves. It is also worth pointing out considering the topic under discussion that what is detailed there is the treatment of Jewish slaves owned by other Jews as foreign slaves were treated differently from Jewish slaves.I point this out simply to show that, very obviously, the Old Testament did not regard all peoples the same or interchangeable and also to point out how, certainly when it comes to things like regulations regarding slavery or animal sacrifice, we are assured that us modern folk are not bound to obey all these regulations. So, when these irritating things called facts are brought up, if the exchange carries on this long, the open-borders advocate will then shift to the New Testament if they had not started out there with a verse that is, if anything, even easier to toss around in any and all circumstances. It will usually be a verse such as or similar to Matthew 22:39 which says, “And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself”. This is really a fun one to get in to as, again, the person quoting it at you is inferring meaning into it which it does not actually say and has no idea of the context in which the verse is given because they don’t actually read the Bible.
The response Jesus gave was the familiar story I am sure everyone knows about “the Good Samaritan”. Jesus was speaking to a predominately Jewish audience and the Samaritans were probably the one group of people the Jews despised more than any other. They were effectively a schismatic sect of Judaism, usually described as being mixed race though this may mean mixed-ethnicity but it doesn’t really matter. The point is, Jesus was talking about a people who professed the same religion as the Jews but who were traditionally hated and shunned by the orthodox Jews. As the story goes, a presumably Jewish man was robbed and left half-dead by the side of the road. His fellow Jews walked by without helping but a Samaritan saw him and immediately stopped to help and was extremely generous to the injured man. Jesus then asked which had shown himself to be a good neighbor and the obvious conclusion is that it was the Samaritan. He saw someone who had been injured and helped him which, contrary to the way most twist this story, makes the definition of “neighbor” even more exclusive rather than inclusive, it is something determined by how you behave.
In Like 9:51-56 we see that Jesus sent two of His apostles ahead of him, while on His way to Jerusalem, to make preparations for a place to stay in a Samaritan village. The Samaritans, hearing that they were headed for the ‘rival’ Temple in Jerusalem, refused to welcome them and when the apostles asked if Jesus might not rain down some fire and brimstone on the Samaritans for refusing to receive them, Jesus said no and scolded them for suggesting such a thing. That is worth keeping in mind because, if one is a Christian, commanded to love everyone, the greatest act of love for a Christian is to save the souls of others from eternal agony by spreading the Gospel to them. At this point in human history, most of the world is probably aware of Christianity and the story of the Gospels. Most of those flooding into Europe certainly know about it but believe it to be wrong, adhering to the Islamic religion which claims to be the final word. So, keeping that in mind, we can see from the reaction of Jesus that raining down Hellfire missiles on these people’s villages would not be the Christian thing to do but we are also told very clearly how to deal with such people and it is not letting them take up residence in your country in massive numbers.
The final point that I think needs to be made, which all of this tends to broadly coincide with, is the notion that Christianity should not even acknowledge nationality but should instead embrace the revolutionary “brotherhood of man” type concept. According to this way of thinking, everyone is your neighbor and even your brother or sister. This is not only wrong, this is anti-Christian. The fundamental mistake that well-meaning people make in parroting this line is to confuse the flock with the faith. Christianity is for all people and does not change according to time, place or nationality. That is not the same as saying these distinctions do not exist and, again, the Bible actually makes clear that the exact opposite is true. How many times does the Bible reiterate the commandment to “Honor your father and mother” to receive God’s blessing? This, particularly in the Old Testament days when people lived much longer, is a command to honor *you* ancestors who are, obviously, not going to be the same as those of everyone else. The numerous genealogical tables found throughout the Bible also attest to the importance of your blood ties, your ancestry, the history and bonds of your family and your people.
However, on this issue the one verse that the “brotherhood of man” types invariably bring up is the line from Galatians 3:28 which says, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave or free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” and, I must say, when it gets to this point you can start planning your victory dance because you are about to win the argument. This verse does not mean that all of these things are the same but that *Christ is the same* for all of them. There is not one Jesus for Swedes and another Jesus for Somalis, there is only Jesus. This is why, in Acts chapter 15, St Peter said that Christianity is not only for the Jews but for the Greeks and Romans as well and that they did not have to be circumcised. This is why Christians do not keep kosher, because such was not their custom, they did not have to become Jews in order to be Christians. Jesus is the same for all people everywhere but people are different and they do not have to all be made the same. Obviously, there were differences between Jews and Greeks as this shows, just as the distinctions between slave and free or male and female no longer ceased to exist. St Paul was approached by a runaway slave and he sent him back to his master, women were told to keep their heads covered in church and so on, there are numerous other verses showing that Christianity did not mean that men and women or different nationalities were all interchangeable but that the faith was the same and the need for the faith was the same for all people everywhere.
The Bible clearly does not teach that all the people in the world are the same and interchangeable. Far from that, the Bible teaches people to have “in group preference”. It says to honor *your* forebears, take care of *your* own family and *your* own people before taking care of anyone else, it says that the teachings of Christ are for all people and not for some people to observe on behalf of other people. It says that the greatest thing you can do is save others from eternal damnation but if people refuse that gift, you are to have nothing to do with them and not even wish them well as you would be wishing them well on a destructive path. For a Christian country such as Poland being asked to take in Muslim migrants, even being scolded by the Catholic hierarchy for being reluctant to do so, the simple fact is that the Bible says not to welcome such people at all, not into your country, not even into your home. There are many *extremely* wealthy Muslim countries which could be taking care of their own just as there are many countries in between Somalia and Sweden for neighborliness to apply. The point about Christianity and Christian morals being the same for everyone means that you take care of yours and that everyone else does the same. You cannot be a good neighbor *for* someone else and taking care of others before you have taken care of your own is specifically anti-Christian. As with so many things these days, actual Christianity is the complete opposite of what so many so-called Christian leaders say that it is.
