Grace and Truth: A Christian Perspective on Immigration Enforcement

Once again, we find ourselves in challenging times, and challenging times require truth.

When it comes to the current travesty in Minneapolis, punctuated by the injury to an ICE officer and subsequent shooting deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, we need truth to be able to navigate it with wisdom, compassion, and justice. The challenge we face is that, in our day of video clips, sound bites, hot takes, zero-sum political battles, and outright deception, it seems very difficult to arrive at truth in order to properly exercise wisdom, compassion, and justice.

Arriving at a biblically faithful way forward requires us to seek both what is true and what is truth.

We recognize something as true if it aligns with reality. (In philosophical terms, this is called the “Correspondence Theory” of truth.) For example, the statements “two plus two equals four” and “George Washington was the first U.S. president” are true because they align with mathematical and historical reality respectively. When it comes to the issue of immigration and immigration enforcement, Christians must diligently seek out what is true of a given situation. And doing so often requires great patience as facts and details slowly emerge. We’re tempted, when we are spurred by a shaky video or 30-second news clip, to lash out in righteous anger. There is a place for righteous anger, but it must align with what is true. That’s one reason the Bible exhorts, “My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires” (James 1:18-19).

Our Christian faith requires us to go a step further than only pursuing what is true. We need to seek out facts and reality, but we must also understand and interpret those things through a larger more fundamental framework. (This is called the “Coherence Theory” of truth.) For Christians, that fundamental framework is God the Father and His revelation through Jesus Christ and the Bible. This is what enables us to make moral and ethical judgments about reality. In other words, things can be true but not necessarily align with God’s Truth. For example, robbing a bank might make you richer (true), but will ultimately make you poorer (truth). We need to seek that which is true and also be in alignment with ultimate truth.

Much of our frustration surrounding social and political issues of our day arises because what is true and what is truth are often hard to see, concealed as they so often are behind a fog of deception, half-truths, hot takes, ideological narratives, click bait, uncertainty, and just plain ignorance. Unless we’re willing to penetrate the fog, we will never arrive at truth and thus will remain stuck in the haze of confusion and angst.

As holiness people, we are called upon to engage our world not only with the hope of the gospel of forgiveness, but also with the full gospel of a pure heart that leads to a transformed life.

In other words, we proclaim the grace of God that makes it possible to be reconciled to Him and to reflect Him through Jesus Christ. To reflect Him includes things like demonstrating compassion, mercy, forgiveness, and peace making. We hear calls for these embodiments frequently during fraught times like these, especially from segments of the Church that are openly more progressive. Of course they are right to challenge believers (and society) to exhibit these acts, but the problem arises when these calls are one-sided and divorced from truth. 

When John the apostle wrote his gospel under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he revealed that Jesus came to us from the Father “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Many today eagerly emphasize the compassion and mercy of God through Jesus while at the same time minimizing His righteousness and truth. Jesus was full of both grace and truth; grace and truth were kept together in full measure. If we are to reflect Jesus, we must reflect the fullness of both together; His heart and ethics were never divorced from truth. You’ve likely heard the saying, “Truth without compassion is cruelty; compassion without truth is enabling.” I would go a step further and say that truth uncoupled from compassion can lead to cruelty (but still be true), but compassion without truth is outright deception. Of course, Jesus told us who the Father of Lies is (John 8:44). 

As Christians, let’s be clear; we should mourn when anyone loses their life, regardless of their affiliation with our opinions, religion, or politics. Those who do not know Christ and go into eternity without being redeemed do not have another opportunity. As a people who have been commissioned by God to make disciples of all the nations, it should sadden us when life is lost. We should be just as grieved when people mock the death of Charlie Kirk as when others belittle the deaths of Renee Good or Alex Pretti. God’s call to love our enemies means that we care about them not only when we disagree with them but even when they suffer for the consequences of their actions. 

That brings us to the current conflagration over illegal immigration and how to deal with it appropriately. Compassion divorced from truth runs the gamut from those saying if someone’s already here, even if they came illegally, we should let them stay all the way to those who insist that national borders are evil. Progressive elements of the Christian Church predicate this view by explaining that the Bible commands us to care for the immigrant among us and will point to verses like Deuteronomy 10:19, “And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt.” Actually, they are correct to point this out. We are to love and even have compassion for foreigners, aliens, immigrants, etc. And in my observation and experience, the Church has done this, from compassionate ministry centers to the fellowship of local churches where immigrants worship. The problem is, the compassion that progressives are calling for is too often divorced from truth, thus creating a deceptive and toxic mixture.  

The fact is, an illegal immigrant is not the same as a “foreigner” or “alien” in the Bible. I don’t have space to exposit the differences here, but you can easily find scholars who articulate them convincingly. Suffice it to say borders and walls existed in biblical times, not just anyone was welcomed, and nations, including Israel, had requirements for those who lived among them as aliens.  

One verse often used to defend illegal immigration is Leviticus 19:34, “The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.”  This verse is often used to claim that it is wrong for a Christian to support immigration enforcement, especially arrest and deportation, because to do so is to not give them the same freedoms that U.S. citizens have. The problem with that interpretation is that it is completely backwards. What the verse actually says (if you read it without a progressive narrative lens) is that both the foreigner and the native born must be treated equally according to the laws of the nation. Applying that to the subject of illegal immigration, we can see that foreigners who break immigration law should face the same consequences as U.S. citizens who break the law. In other words, both should be treated fairly and consistently according to the laws of the land. In contrast, a progressive interpretation calls for a person who has broken the law to be treated with more leniency than those who have not. Clearly that is not consistent with a biblical ethic and does not align with the truth.  

With regard to the events in Minneapolis over the last few weeks, we have to consider what is being called for by some and ask ourselves, “Is it full of grace and truth, or is it a deception masquerading as compassion, in other words, a false grace devoid of truth?” 

During the travesty of the shooting death of Renee Good and Alex Pretti competing narratives were spun quickly. Many on the Left immediately characterized both events as “murder”; Good was simply an innocent mother picking up her kids and trying to leave a tense situation, and Pretti was a gentle nurse who spent his days caring for his patients. People who called immediately for a compassionate view of Good and Pretti were also quick to judge the officers involved in both tragedies as jackbooted thugs. At the same time, there were some who took the worst view possible of Good and Pretti while dismissing any examination of the officers’ actions. The truth is that neither of those narrative positions comported with the facts. Good and Pretti were complex people with complex motives, and ICE agents are nothing like the Nazi Browshirts to which they’re sometimes compared. Yet what followed for weeks (and still continues) was deliberate deception by those claiming to call for compassion for their side’s hero or heroine. That is neither mercy nor compassion, and it definitely is not biblical. When we cannot get to the truth, we’re left with chaos. That is evil, and that is where we are.

We have to ask ourselves what the Bible really means when it commands things like, “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute” (Prov. 31:8) and “Do no wrong or violence to the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place” (Jer. 22:3b). Are these commands given without qualification? Should some people groups receive unlimited favor? Scriptural truth says, no. If we read those same passages above in context, they include commands to “Speak up and judge fairly” (Prov. 31:9) and “Do what is just and right” (Jer. 22:3a). In other words...

We cannot speak up for the rights of the destitute without doing so in a way that is fair, and we cannot avoid harming the foreigner and shedding innocent blood if we do not do it in a way that is just and right.

Let me explain.

Some people claim that the arrests and deportations of those here illegally are unjust. To such claims I raise the Scriptural commands above calling us to consider what is truly unjust and inconsistent. What is more unjust than treating people who have broken the law with more leniency than those who haven’t? Who is more oppressed than those poor women and children trafficked thousands of miles through Central America, many raped and abused all along the way, lured by coyotes and liberal politicians with false promises of freedom and bounty in the U.S., no strings attached? What is more unjust than the suffering of the victims of the crimes perpetrated by illegal aliens who are often released back on the streets by Leftist DAs and judges only to then commit more crimes? What about the ICE officers cursed, assaulted, abused, and slandered by street mobs? What about their families who watch the toll such abuse takes on them? What about the millions of legal immigrants displaced in the legal system, the medical system, the job and housing markets, in overwhelmed public schools? What about those immigrants who are going through the legal process, but have been delayed due to a system overwhelmed by massive illegal immigration? Where’s their justice? Where’s their compassion?

You see, when compassion is pursued without truth, we’re left with deception, chaos, and evil: judges who release violent criminals to victimize again, politicians who virtue signal and lie, pastors who twist the Bible to defend lawlessness to the detriment of the lawful and the desecration of Scripture, church worship services invaded by profane mobs and political grifters.

So how does truth help us in these challenging times?  

Embracing truth aligns us rightly with reality—both materially and spiritually. The fact is, our current laws were examined and passed decades ago in a bipartisan congress and enforced by presidents long before President Trump. Current enforcement, including deportations, is not something recently created to single out people of a particular race or nationality. Current laws, if they had been enforced during president Biden’s administration (and before), would have prevented much of the conflagration we see today. Those are true statements and align us with reality. Truth takes it a step further. Truth accurately aligns with God’s word, and Jesus says that the source of truth is His word (John 17:17).  Real truth is not sifting isolated biblical passages through a lens of “compassion” and then manipulating them to favor one group all the while ignoring actions that are unjust and horrific as well as the people and policies that created such conditions.  

Is the U.S. immigration system perfect? Of course not. Show me one that is. Certainly we should continue to seek to improve it through the structures and legal processes our legislative and judicials systems provide for us. Are there cases where an innocent person inadvertently gets caught in an enforcement dragnet? Undoubtedly. It happens from time to time in all law enforcement, and when it does, we should seek to redress it and try to ensure it does not happen again, if that is possible. Are both sides guilty of being selective with details and the truth? Absolutely, and we should be quick to point it out and seek correction.  

Finally, all of us would do well to press our internal pause button until we have more details and a fuller picture before we react, to be “quick to listen and slow to speak.” Most of all...

We must be sure to carefully interpret and fairly apply Scripture avoiding the unjust favor that masks itself as compassion.

I like what Chuck Swindoll once said, and I think it applies to the chaotic moment we find ourselves in, “We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.” These may seem like impossible times, but by seeking what is true and holding fast to the truth, we will find that they are great opportunities to honor God and bless others with that truth.