To reject the immigrant is to reject Christ Himself.

To reject the immigrant is to reject Christ Himself

Scripture Does Not Ask 

Whether Immigrants Deserve Compassion.

It Commands It.

To reject the immigrant is to reject Christ Himself.

A critique of Christian hypocrisy on immigration,

moral authority, and selective judgment,

grounded in St Paul’s command to expose works of darkness.

COMPASSION IS NOT OPTIONAL

Scripture does not pause to conduct a moral audit of the immigrant.

It does not ask whether the stranger is sufficiently productive, sufficiently legal, sufficiently grateful.

It commands.

Care for the stranger.
Welcome the foreigner.
Remember that you too were once strangers.

Not as a suggestion.
As obedience.

They are not an inconvenience to be managed.
They are not a demographic problem to be solved.
They are woven into the mysterious arithmetic of redemption.

The Gospel spreads along roads first walked by migrants.
The Holy Family fled as refugees.
Pentecost itself was multilingual.

And yet imagine claiming to defend Christianity
while actively resisting Christ’s gathering of the nations.

Imagine obstructing the very work you claim to adore.

Imagine speaking endlessly of “Christian values”
while narrowing the heart of God to the size of a border checkpoint.

Every Easter, you watch The Passion of the Christ.

You sit in silence as the Lord is scourged.
You weep as the nails are driven.
You grieve at His suffering.

But when He appears again
in the poor,
in the migrant,
in the stranger at the gate—

your compassion evaporates.

The tears were real.
The conversion was not.

And yes, let us speak plainly.

The producer of that film, Mel Gibson, presented himself as a defender of moral order, repentance, Christian virtue.

A traditionalist voice.
A guardian of orthodoxy.

What followed?

Hate-filled remarks.
Widely reported antisemitic and racist statements.
A moral collapse in full public view.

He is not an isolated anomaly.

He is a pattern.

A pattern in which religious symbolism is exalted
while the ethic of Christ is quietly ignored.

A pattern in which spectacle replaces sanctity.
In which suffering is aestheticized
but mercy is rationed.

It is easy to defend a crucifix on a wall.

It is harder to recognize Christ in the displaced.

The Sacred Heart is not a logo.
It is a wound that bleeds for the world.

And Scripture does not ask whether immigrants deserve compassion.

It commands it.

The Absurd Reversal

And so we arrive at the absurdity of our moment.

The party caricatured as godless and demonic insists on compassion for immigrants.

The party that loudly proclaims its love for God canonises the man who most ostentatiously declared, “Empathy is a made-up word. I hate it.”

Make that make sense.

No, really. Make it make sense.

Faith Invoked, Ethics Ignored

They invoke faith as authority, yet violate its most basic ethical demands.

Not the advanced ones.

The most basic.

We are told that deportations are the issue.

Very well.

Obama deported many more people than his critics care to remember.

So tell me:

Did he violate the most basic ethical demands of his faith, or of any faith known to mankind?

Or is the outrage selective?

Judgment Without Self-Examination

They demand judgment for “sinners”.

For LGBTQ people.

For all Democrats.

For Obama most of all, long branded a “God-hater”.

Yet they recoil at being judged by even a fraction of Scripture.

This, from those who treat the Bible as the gold standard of righteousness.

Modern-day Pharisees.

St Paul’s Instruction, Taken Seriously

For those who still wish to take seriously the work of their salvation, even though many now insist that no work, moral effort, or obedience is required, take Saint Paul at his word:

“And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.”

What “Reprove” Actually Means

To reprove is not to sneer.
It is not to posture.
It is not to enjoy the fall of another.

To reprove is to step into the light and insist that others do the same.

It is to correct when error begins to calcify.
To admonish before decay becomes culture.
To caution while there is still time to turn.
To warn because silence would be betrayal.
To counsel with gravity, not gossip.

It is to remonstrate, to say, This path leads somewhere you do not wish to go.

It is to rebuke when gentler words have failed.
To confront what others politely step around.
To call it out without theatrics.
To challenge what has grown comfortable in its corruption.

To expose.
To denounce.
To censure.

Not for spectacle.
For clarity.

To reprimand because love refuses indifference.
To indict when harm is systemic.
To convict in the court of conscience.

To bear witness against.
To testify against.
To bring to light what thrives only in shadow.

To name it.
To say it plainly.
To refuse to excuse it.
To tell the truth about it.

Reproof is not cruelty.
It is moral courage under discipline.

It is what light does when it encounters darkness.

“And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.”

Don Kenobi

#MyFrancisEssays 
#OldManInTheMolue 

PostScript:
Scripture is consistent. Compassion is not optional. Here are some. ible verses to consider:

• Leviticus 19:33–34: Love the stranger as yourself.
• Deuteronomy 10:18–19: God loves the stranger. Therefore, so must you.
• Exodus 22:21: Do not wrong or oppress the stranger.
• Zechariah 7:9–10: Do not oppress the sojourner or the poor.
• Matthew 25:40: What you do to the least, you do to Christ.
• Hebrews 13:2: Hospitality to strangers may be holy ground.
• Jesus: “I was a stranger, and you welcomed me.” Matthew 25:35
• To reject the immigrant therefore, is to reject Christ Himself.