Recommended Reading -- So Far, Though, Not By Me

"The Immigration Crisis: Immigrants, Aliens, and the Bible," by James K. Hoffmeier, Crossway Books, 2008 was recommended to me a couple of weeks ago by erstwhile correspondent Dontbia Nass, who takes me to task not only for simply drawing breath on this planet, but for doing so specifically to advocate for undocumented workers and their human rights.

So I got the book. Paid full price and everything.

I've not read all of it, and I will. But what I've seen so far is disheartening and, perhaps, predictable. There's a strain of conservative Christian thought that reveres the teaching of Scripture and thus applies it to every possible social and individual dilemma. So far, this is a generally a good thing. What separates conservatives like me from liberal Christians is that we take the teachings of Scripture literally, applying the Spirit of God's Word through the maze of context and translation and historicity. But some Bible-loving believers, taking their cues from the Reconstructionist viewpoint of postmillennial Christian dominion, skip blithely over the New Testament and cloak themselves into the strictest, most literal, and usually most obscure Old Testament passages and attempt to apply them literally to current-day situations never encountered in the Bible. That application often doesn't mirror Christ even a little bit.

The same appears to be the case with this book. I've thumbed through it and found a blizzard of Old Testament teachings on aliens, strangers, foreigners, law, government, and Hebraic society, with hardly a mention of New Testament teachings and virtually nothing about our current immigration situation. Hoffmeier excels, I suppose, at his understanding of the Old Testament and the Hebrew laws concerning foreigners and aliens. But a book that purports to answer the dilemma of undocumented immigration here and now, for example, only mentions undocumented Mexicans twice. Instead of guiding believers into how best to minister to immigrants, with or without papers, it sets forth Old Testament standards that simply don't translate well into 2009. It's a fascinating study of the Old Testament and "stranger and alien" applications, but it ignores the New Testament teachings of Christ and offers nothing, so far, that contributes holistically to the problem as it is.

This is a pattern I've seen among Reformed theologians and Reconstructionist Rushdooneyans. It's one thing to elevate the whole testimony of Scripture and bringing the Word of God into a debate. It's quite another -- and very unfortunate -- to do so at the expense of clear teachings of Christ and of the New Testament and the New Way he ushered in. It seems to me that it's become all too convenient to bury social issues that most Christians would agree require humility, service, and agape love under the weight of Old Testament law that was never intended to provide a step-by-step guideline for ministering to the poor today. I saw it in Reconstructionist David Chilton's "Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators," and I'm starting to see it here.

Rather than using the Old Testament to somehow excuse believers from ministry to the poor while comforting them in their inaction, I would hope that Christian social thinkers would use the message of the new Kingdom, the new Covenant, and the new Way of Christ to come alongside those who are struggling. Undoubtedly the Old Testament provides a blueprint for ministry to the stranger and alien, but the frenetic effort to bury the issues with applications drawn from situations not present in Scripture strikes me as the work of those who nestle themselves behind whitewashed tombs.

So much effort spent on exegesis that excuses Christians from acting Christlike. Wouldn't it be wonderful to throw ourselves into an understanding of Christ's message that encourages selfless action on behalf of the poor without filtering our response through a maze of literal teachings that may or may not have bearing on the challenge ahead? Put another way -- is reverence for Scripture really reverence when we use it to find ways to not act with mercy?