Refugees. The progressive side of the Church in the modern world thinks it has a lock on following what the Bible says about the foreigner, sojourner, or as they would say it in today’s terms the immigrant or refugee. They would simply say that the opposition of Christians to immigration is racist and unbiblical, we are commanded in the Bible to take the foreigner in. So open the gates, and let the welfare checks flow.
They would use a passage like this, Exodus 22:21, “You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt, and this, Exodus 23:9, “You shall not oppress a sojourner. You know the heart of a sojourner, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.” And like this one in Malachi 3:5,
“Then I will draw near to you for judgment. I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired worker in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, against those who thrust aside the sojourner, and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts.”
Case, set and match, they’d say. This means that if you want to be biblical you need to take in refugees, and immigrants, and you need to give them the full rights of citizens as soon as well. To do otherwise is to be like the oppressive Egyptians who exploited the Hebrews when they were sojourners in Egypt. Or so the argument goes.
The problem with this application is that it is not based on what these passages are saying at all. Firstly, to compare an immigrant, or settler, to a sojourner, is simply dishonest. A sojourner is a temporary resident. Someone who is far from their home and on the move. How did Egypt oppress the Hebrews when they were sojourners? By forcing them into slave labour and by not letting them go when they wanted to.
In other words, the progressive Christian actually inverts what the Bible is saying here. They say that to oppress the sojourner is to turn them away from settling in your land, but according to the law, first and foremost, to oppress the sojourner is to keep them in your land for cheap or free labour. Which just happens to be two of the goals of modern immigration policies in our country. Immigration is designed to bring in new settlers and to suppress wages. The way immigration achieves this is by creating more competition for employment, and therefore, allows employers to offer lesser conditions and lower wages. So modern immigration is used to oppress the immigrant and the citizen. The progressive actually inverts what the Bible is saying on this issue.
To not oppress the sojourner is to treat them well as long they are guests in your land, and then send them on their way. Think of it like this: if you have guests in your house, you should go out of your way to treat them well, honour them, and protect them. But if they won’t leave you can kick them out. To oppress them would be to lock the doors and make them slaves in your house. This is exactly what the Egyptians did to the Hebrews. To say, ok, time for you to go home now, is not only not oppression, it is good, right and biblical.
To compare how the Israelites were to treat small groups of strangers in their country to large mass immigration is also very dishonest. The Bible has a term for mass movements of peoples into another land, war. That is what the Israelites brought to Canaan. The mass movement of Israelites into Canaan is called ‘The conquest of Canaan’ for a reason, because that is what it was. How did the Canaanites respond to this invasion? They fought against it. How did the Israelites respond to future attacks on their country by mass movements of people? They fought against them. To politically oppose mass movements of people is not the equivalent of oppressing the foreigner, it is simply the business of being good citizens and wanting to preserve your people’s integrity as a nation.
But there is another significant way in which progressive Christians ignore what the Bible says about the ‘sojourner’ or temporary resident or immigrant. Progressive Christians and even many conservative Christians tend to be very pro-multiculturalism. They tend to consider treating the immigrant justly to mean that they can bring their religion, their culture and their ways to this country, and to say otherwise is oppression. But the Bible does not support this in the slightest.
The law of Israel required all sojourners, whether temporary, which is what the word means, or those who would like to stay, to follow the laws and customs of the people of Israel, or face the same punishments for rejecting God that the Israelites faced. For instance, Exodus 20:8-10, one of the ten commandments says this,
“8 Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”
We all know how strictly the Sabbath law was meant to be applied in ancient Israel. This law was intended for all who lived in their land of Israel, whether Hebrew or foreigner.
Leviticus 24 shows us that this applied to other laws as well,
“Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 14 “Bring out of the camp the one who cursed, and let all who heard him lay their hands on his head, and let all the congregation stone him. 15 And speak to the people of Israel, saying, Whoever curses his God shall bear his sin. 16 Whoever blasphemes the name of the Lord shall surely be put to death. All the congregation shall stone him. The sojourner as well as the native, when he blasphemes the Name, shall be put to death” (Lev. 24:13-16).
Now, of course we do not live under the law of Moses anymore. No one is arguing that we should. But progressive Christians like to pretend that they are closer to the heart of God because they are pro-immigration. They often get strongly involved in pro-immigration and refugee programs. But what would they say if you said, fine those people can come here, but they must give up their religion, their language, their culture, and all their foreign ways and follow Australian founding values and culture from day one? They would flip out and say you were trying to oppress the foreigner. But they would be unequivocally wrong. This is part of what the Bible called loving your neighbour.
To not oppress the sojourner, or foreigner in the Bible was to make sure they were not exploited, to make sure the destitute were treated with mercy (Lev. 19:10 for instance), and to not force them to remain in the country. In other words, the Israelites were to be good hosts and treat their guests well. They were not commanded to take in large amounts of people, like is happening in our country today, and they were certainly not allowed to change their laws and ways to suit foreigners and their desires.
The foreigners even had the opportunity to become part of Israel. We read in Exodus 12:48-49,
“If a stranger shall sojourn with you and would keep the Passover to the Lord, let all his males be circumcised. Then he may come near and keep it; he shall be as a native of the land. But no uncircumcised person shall eat of it. 49 There shall be one law for the native and for the stranger who sojourns among you.”
Numbers 9:14 also reiterates this same law. Foreigners were allowed to partake in the privileges of the Israelites, however they were to first become Hebrews, and the males were to be circumcised. In other words, the law of Israel was designed to avoid the very situation we are in with modern western countries. It was designed to make sure that those who came into the country came in small numbers and conformed to the customs, rules and laws of Israel. Circumcision by itself was a major stumbling block for many.
This article is not an argument for why we should obey the Mosaic law today. It is simply a refutation of the idea that progressives are closer to the heart of God on this issue. A nation is a good thing and it does not exist for foreigners. It exists for the people who are of that nation, the kin of the tribes or peoples from which it was founded. Others can become a part of it, but this only works if it is done slowly, and strictly in a way that preserves the nation’s identity, culture and religion.
What is happening in the West today is more like what Karl Marx argued for, that there should be no nations, just large conglomerations of mixed peoples, than anything from ancient Israel. It is not an accident that our culture is so ungodly and looks just like the godless empire that is ruled by Babylon in Revelation 18:15, “And the angel said to me, “The waters that you saw, where the prostitute is seated, are peoples and multitudes and nations and languages.” The evil one knows what he is doing. Multiculturalism has always succeeded in suppressing the faith of a people.
Don’t let progressive Christians guilt you into think you are less near the heart of God because you are not pro-mass immigration. Whether it is legal or illegal, mass movements of people moving into a nation change it markedly. Just think of it like this: did the mass movements of English settlers from Britain make this country more British or did the settlers become more like the Aborigines? The answer is obvious. Mass immigration is nowhere required of a people in the scriptures, any more than mass apostasy is.
