ICE targets the Good Samaritan

A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he saw two women by the side of the road. Disaster had befallen them and, though many people had passed by, they clearly still needed help. The man had been told that to inherit eternal life he should love God and love his neighbour. And he knew that his neighbour was anyone he encountered on the road of life who was in need.

The man stopped to help the women.

Just when he stopped to help, a band of robbers, violent men with no reverence for the Lord or love for their neighbours, fell upon him. The women joined the robbers, for they had been working with them all along.

And among the righteous and those called by the name of the Lord, cheering was heard. Because people are fucking stupid. And every religion is always in danger of being co-opted by the powerful and turned into a golden calf.

This isn’t just an updated parable. This is based on a video I watched this morning of two female ICE agents posing as human beings with car trouble, who ensnared a good Samaritan who stopped to help them, delaying him long enough for their thug colleagues to pull up and attempt to detain him.

I haven’t seen a news article about this, partly because, I guess, the zone is so flooded with events like this, and our media has little inclination and less time to cover every shitty thing the American Gestapo is doing.

This isn’t about ICE being awful. They are, inherently, and every decent person with a brain knows that. They were under the Democrats who still enthusiastically support and fund them, and they are under the fascist Donald Trump.

This is about Christians defending them. When they shoot people (on video or in private), when they torture and starve those in their custody, when they bully, intimidate and attack protesters and those who speak out against them online (and sometimes shoot those people too), and when attention is drawn to this, there are always Christians who defend them. Make excuses. Vilify the victims.

These Christians can be split into a few different groups.

Some like what ICE is doing because they are racists and white supremacists. They are possessed by a satanic ideology that holds the white “race” above others and that ideology always, eventually or immediately, leads them to see black and brown people as less than human. They enjoy seeing Latinx people chased, subjugated and scared. They have forgotten that every human being was made in God’s image, that in Christ there is no Jew nor gentile because ethnicity is pathetically unimportant compared to the kingdom of God and God’s love for all humanity. They are in deep sin and without deep repentance I believe they are incapable of hearing clearly the voice of the Lord. They are certainly no kind of witness.

Others approve of what ICE is doing because they have made an idol of nation. Just as the Israelites asked for the golden calf and claimed it had been their salvation, so Christians who have fallen into the heresy of Christian nationalism believe that God favours their nation above others, as if “God bless America” were not a plea for mercy on a nation built on slavery and genocide, but an expectant and favoured child waiting for a lavish gift. America has earned no such gift. In fact, it’s odd to think any nation has or could. In the book of Joshua, the Israelites, who could be forgiven for thinking they were God’s favourites, asked the commander of the army of the Lord, an angel, if he was on their side or the side of their enemies. He said: “neither.” God doesn’t think your country is better than others. And he certainly doesn’t ascribe worth or righteousness to you based on where you were born. The Bible is full of instructions to take care of the foreigners among you, and only a heretic blinded by chauvinism and pride could ever think cruelty might be deserved on the basis of a passport.

That brings us to the other Christians who approve of ICE: the law-worshipers. They speak of “illegals” in America and smile through their lying teeth while speaking of “immigrants who come here the right way” in the UK. They willfully ignore the fact that Christ was tortured and murdered by the legal authorities of his day, that in life he showed little admiration or respect for them, and that the blood of the martyrs was spilled not by brigands or anarchists but by legal authorities, and in so doing they disgrace the Church. Their desire to feel safe in a stable and predictable world has led them to side with the powerful, because it is so often the powerful who make our laws, usually on behalf of the rich. But God is not interested in legality. That’s why God has prompted so many saints to have laws changed, and, in the process, disobey them. Sometimes weakness (of character, of the part of us that should be selfless) is a sin, and it is in this case. These strainers of gnats ignore the camels of grace and mercy, and they do it not even for the Law of God, which was bad enough by Jesus’ standards. But they forgo softness of heart for the sake of human laws which pass away quicker than we or the grass of the field do. It’s a funny sort of side to pick when you claim to worship the king of radical mercy.

But hey ho. Each to their own god.

I myself ain’t so pure or righteous my own damn self. And right here I am making pronouncements on other people’s faith and relationship with God. Forgive me. I am trying to drive home how wrong this is, how appalling to attach the name of Jesus to regimented and programmatic cruelty — however often it may have been done in the past.

Obviously none of us should serve in ICE. And none of us should be found in comment sections or around coffee points equivocating about what is happening. But we can also not be silent when friends and family, colleagues and co-congregants make any of these dismal and heretical arguments. WE have a duty to rebuke, in love if we can. So let’s get to that. Because these folks do not exist in a vaccuum, and discomfort is no excuse for cowardice.

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I hope you’re well, I’m sorry it’s been so long and to come back with something so angry, but you know how it is.

Much love,

Jonty