To reject the immigrant is to reject Christ Himself
And to remain silent when the rejection of immigrants becomes de facto policy, while lashing yourselves over lesser matters and putting on displays of piety, as though one were more damaging to the faith than the other, is to reject Paul’s instruction to expose the works of darkness (Ephesians 5:11).
To Reject the Immigrant Is to Reject Christ
To reject the immigrant is to reject Christ Himself.
The Command, Not a Suggestion
To reject the immigrant is to reject Christ Himself.
And any politics that tells you to reject the immigrant is politics that tells you to reject Christ. Period.
Scripture does not ask whether immigrants deserve compassion.
It commands it.
Yes, even if they make you miss a meal now and then.
They are still deserving of compassion, and Scripture commands it.
A Radical Faith, Not a Comfortable One
Is Christianity a radical faith? Yes.
And its hallmark is sacrificial love.
Forget the gospel according to Mammon, which teaches a false Christ, one that promises followers earthly comfort, comfort that must not be shared with “UNBELS,” an old slang from the 1990s used by some of the most self-righteous people I knew to describe those who were not in their circle.
Such is the arrogance the gospel according to Mammon breeds.
Yet immigrants do not make anyone miss meals. If anything, they make those meals more affordable.
They mow lawns.
They do the work many avoid.
They cause no trouble.
They simply want to live their lives within an ecosystem shaped by Christian principles.
And they pay taxes.
Do you see that?
An ecosystem shaped by Christian principles.
The destruction of that ecosystem is the goal.
The Real Agenda
Why?
How many times must this be said?
Their goal is the supplanting of Christ, the replacement of Christ with something other than Christ. What we are witnessing is not a series of disconnected events. It is a coordinated drift, a full-press assault on Christ.
Racism.
The prosperity gospel.
Hatred for Muslims.
Cheering the killing of innocents, with not even a twinge of conscience.
This normalization of callousness.
This proud declaration of personal wickedness.
This shallow, performative Christianity shaped by voices that do not reflect the fullness of truth.
These are not disconnected. They are a full-press assault on Christianity.
And that, that is the goal: deception, to replace Christ with another who is not Christ, but bears His name.
I fear this introduction is longer than the article itself.
But such is the urgency of the moment, that what must be said must be said when it should be said.
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.
Sentiment Without Conversion
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 insists on compassion for immigrants.
The party that loudly proclaims its love for God canonises the man who declared, “Empathy is a made-up word. I hate it.”
Make that make sense.
No, really. Make it make sense.
Faith Invoked, Ethics Ignored
Faith is invoked as authority, yet its most basic ethical demands are violated.
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 political opponents.
For those they have long branded as enemies of God.
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.
What It Means to Reprove
For those who still wish to take seriously the work of their salvation, take Saint Paul at his word:
“And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.”
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 harden.
To admonish before decay becomes culture.
To caution while there is still time to turn.
To warn because silence would be betrayal.
It is to say plainly: this path leads somewhere you do not wish to go.
It is to confront what others avoid.
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 bear witness against.
To bring to light what thrives only in shadow.
To name it.
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.
Postscript: Scripture Is Consistent
Scripture is consistent. Compassion is not optional.
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 25:35, 40
“I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”
“What you do to the least, you do to me.”
Hebrews 13:2
Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some have unwittingly entertained angels.
To reject the immigrant, therefore, is to reject Christ Himself.
Don Kenobi
#MyFrancisEssays
#OldManInTheMolue
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