"illegal" immigration
Exodus 22.20: You shall not molest or oppress an alien, for you were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt.
I have mixed feelings quoting the following excerpts of Right In Two by Tool; it's a brilliant song, and if you've not heard it before, I really wish you'll hear the entire song before reading this; just reading bits of the lyrics cheapens the song when you do hear it.
...
Don't these talking monkeys know that
Eden has enough to go around?
Plenty in this holy garden, silly monkeys,
Where there's one you're bound to divide it.
Right in two.
...
Monkey killing monkey killing monkey.
Over pieces of the ground.
Silly monkeys give them thumbs.
They make a club.
And beat their brother, down.
How they survive so misguided is a mystery.
...
Fight over the clouds, over wind, over sky
Fight over life, over blood, over prayer,
overhead and light
Fight over love, over sun,
over another, Fight...
...
Finally, and a bit cliche at this point, Imagine by John Lennon: Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one
(Before you jump on the bandwagon that Lennon was antireligion and antiGod with this song, realize first that this song is simply about peace, and people continue to kill each other over religion. Take it with a grain of salt.)
If you know me, you know I don't understand boundaries and limitations. This one particular boundary I don't think I'll ever understand.
What makes your property your own? The fact that you paid for it? Where did the money come from? Do you earn money, or are you blessed with it? Is your money your own -- is anything truly yours? Are even your talents your own? or were you given them?
I wonder precisely how we decided that we had the right to tell people where they may and may not live. God put this tree in this corner of the neighborhood for me and me alone -- you go sit somewhere else. When God made earth, did God plant a canvas of individualized squares, dictating where people may live? Did God also decide to make these squares shrink over time, as more people enter the planet? (After all, the limit of the surface area of these squares as time becomes large is, obviously, zero ... had trouble following that sentence? Blame your public schools.)
The answer for me is clearly no, and that's my problem. It doesn't make sense for me to tell someone that this ground is mine - that is saying that God made this ground for me and me alone. Yes, in the Bible, God promised the Israelites the Promised Land. The difference? It was God saying it, not themselves.
It is the same logic behind the prohibition of murder, inclusive of capital punishment: It is lawful for the referee to eject a player from a football game. That's what the referee does. It is not the place of a player to tell another player to get off the field and go home. Likewise, when a player intentionally slidekicks another, intentionally breaking his leg so that he can no longer play, that player is likewise ejected from the game - by, of course, the referee. It doesn't make very much sense for someone else to come along and injure that player ... (Unless, of course, there is no referee.)
Is it not our statesmen, enforced by public opinion, that pass these laws? Are we not ourselves assuming the authority of God to claim land? We did not make it. The only way we can truly claim something as property is if we made it, and then there is the question of who made what we used to make it ... (I can't steal lumber to build a house and then say the house belongs to me...) Obviously, everything in existence belongs to God. (Thus the prohibition against suicide: it's vandalism and theft.)
I would not challenge our system if God had established it. I would whine and complain and beg to be told why, but I certainly couldn't say it was wrong, for the obvious reason that God defines what is right. But it seems to me that Jews have a right to Israel because God said so, and the rest of us are meant to share the remaining land. That is, God did not instruct us to go around planting fences, flags, and land mines.
Of course, there is always the fact to consider that the Israelites slaughtered and plundered surrounding tribes ... There are two ways to reconcile this: Either they suffered for those actions (in addition to denying the Christ) as shown through the events of history, as well as by being scattered across the Earth as they are now, or else they had the tacit approval of God when they did it (certainly true in some cases), in which case, as unfair as we may think it, tough.
Enough of the tangent. I think I've made my point. Perhaps the laws concerning immigration are only borderline sinful ... What do you think? Necessary for the good of the country, given the present state of things? Of course, because when God created us, God wanted us to be fighting all the time. And the best way to treat a tumor is just to make the limb more comfortable. Return to the top of the page and reread Right in Two: God gave us a paradise.
Am I an idealist or a realist? What do you think: Are the principles established from the Bible real, or ideal? That is, did God want us to actually do them, or merely think about them?
I have mixed feelings quoting the following excerpts of Right In Two by Tool; it's a brilliant song, and if you've not heard it before, I really wish you'll hear the entire song before reading this; just reading bits of the lyrics cheapens the song when you do hear it.
...
Don't these talking monkeys know that
Eden has enough to go around?
Plenty in this holy garden, silly monkeys,
Where there's one you're bound to divide it.
Right in two.
...
Monkey killing monkey killing monkey.
Over pieces of the ground.
Silly monkeys give them thumbs.
They make a club.
And beat their brother, down.
How they survive so misguided is a mystery.
...
Fight over the clouds, over wind, over sky
Fight over life, over blood, over prayer,
overhead and light
Fight over love, over sun,
over another, Fight...
...
Finally, and a bit cliche at this point, Imagine by John Lennon: Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace
You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one
(Before you jump on the bandwagon that Lennon was antireligion and antiGod with this song, realize first that this song is simply about peace, and people continue to kill each other over religion. Take it with a grain of salt.)
If you know me, you know I don't understand boundaries and limitations. This one particular boundary I don't think I'll ever understand.
What makes your property your own? The fact that you paid for it? Where did the money come from? Do you earn money, or are you blessed with it? Is your money your own -- is anything truly yours? Are even your talents your own? or were you given them?
I wonder precisely how we decided that we had the right to tell people where they may and may not live. God put this tree in this corner of the neighborhood for me and me alone -- you go sit somewhere else. When God made earth, did God plant a canvas of individualized squares, dictating where people may live? Did God also decide to make these squares shrink over time, as more people enter the planet? (After all, the limit of the surface area of these squares as time becomes large is, obviously, zero ... had trouble following that sentence? Blame your public schools.)
The answer for me is clearly no, and that's my problem. It doesn't make sense for me to tell someone that this ground is mine - that is saying that God made this ground for me and me alone. Yes, in the Bible, God promised the Israelites the Promised Land. The difference? It was God saying it, not themselves.
It is the same logic behind the prohibition of murder, inclusive of capital punishment: It is lawful for the referee to eject a player from a football game. That's what the referee does. It is not the place of a player to tell another player to get off the field and go home. Likewise, when a player intentionally slidekicks another, intentionally breaking his leg so that he can no longer play, that player is likewise ejected from the game - by, of course, the referee. It doesn't make very much sense for someone else to come along and injure that player ... (Unless, of course, there is no referee.)
Is it not our statesmen, enforced by public opinion, that pass these laws? Are we not ourselves assuming the authority of God to claim land? We did not make it. The only way we can truly claim something as property is if we made it, and then there is the question of who made what we used to make it ... (I can't steal lumber to build a house and then say the house belongs to me...) Obviously, everything in existence belongs to God. (Thus the prohibition against suicide: it's vandalism and theft.)
I would not challenge our system if God had established it. I would whine and complain and beg to be told why, but I certainly couldn't say it was wrong, for the obvious reason that God defines what is right. But it seems to me that Jews have a right to Israel because God said so, and the rest of us are meant to share the remaining land. That is, God did not instruct us to go around planting fences, flags, and land mines.
Of course, there is always the fact to consider that the Israelites slaughtered and plundered surrounding tribes ... There are two ways to reconcile this: Either they suffered for those actions (in addition to denying the Christ) as shown through the events of history, as well as by being scattered across the Earth as they are now, or else they had the tacit approval of God when they did it (certainly true in some cases), in which case, as unfair as we may think it, tough.
Enough of the tangent. I think I've made my point. Perhaps the laws concerning immigration are only borderline sinful ... What do you think? Necessary for the good of the country, given the present state of things? Of course, because when God created us, God wanted us to be fighting all the time. And the best way to treat a tumor is just to make the limb more comfortable. Return to the top of the page and reread Right in Two: God gave us a paradise.
Am I an idealist or a realist? What do you think: Are the principles established from the Bible real, or ideal? That is, did God want us to actually do them, or merely think about them?