US officials met yesterday with Mexico’s president, seeking measures to limit a surge of migrants reaching the US southwestern border. Meanwhile, a caravan with an estimated 7,500 members is making its way toward the border this morning. While they are drawing international attention, this is actually a smaller number than the daily migrant encounters this month, which have been averaging more than 9,600 a day.

More than two million people were apprehended at the border in this fiscal year. The surge is creating chaos in parts of southern Texas and Arizona and straining resources as far away as New York, Denver, and Chicago.

In the Del Rio sector of the Texas border, which includes Eagle Pass, as many as four thousand migrants have been processed a day. “Illegal border crossings have always happened,” said Eagle Pass fire chief Manuel Mello. “Groups of ten, twelve—that was a large group. But now you see three thousand and four thousand in one day. I never thought something like this could happen.”

What is causing this crisis? How should we think biblically and act redemptively in response?

Explaining the surge

This is a massively complex and emotionally fraught issue. However, the crisis can be framed in terms of “push” and “pull” factors.

“Push” factors include war, famine, or economic challenges that cause people to leave their home countries and seek a new home. For example, leaders of the caravan coming to the US are calling the movement an “exodus from poverty.” Venezuela has descended into disarray in recent years, while Nicaragua’s government has become more repressive. The Congressional Research Service also cites natural disasters fueled by climate change and a general lack of security.

However, the New York Times notes that there have been no recent wars in Latin America and the region’s poverty rate has been flat. Accordingly, the article states that push factors don’t explain the entire surge “and maybe not even most of it.”

“Pull” factors, by contrast, encourage migrants to come in response to an economic boom or a more lax immigration policy. During Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, the Times notes, “he spoke in much more welcoming tones than not only Donald Trump but also Barack Obama.” President Biden in turn blames Congress for failing to respond to his immigration reform proposals and requests for additional funds to address the crisis.

The result of these complex and interrelated factors is that, according to the Times, the number of people apprehended at the border has risen more than fourfold since 2020 compared with the average level in the 2010s.

Reconciling two biblical themes

In my book, The State of Our Nation: 7 Critical Issues, I devoted an entire chapter to the issue of illegal immigration. There I discuss a number of biblical texts relevant to today’s topic. We can summarize them today in two categories.

One: Scripture affirms the importance of borders (Deuteronomy 32:8; Numbers 34:1–15; Ezekiel 47:13–23), the rule of law (Romans 13:1–2; Titus 3:1; 1 Peter 2:13–14; 1 Timothy 1:8–10), and self-defense (Luke 11:21; Exodus 22:2; Proverbs 25:26; Nehemiah 4:17–18).

Two: Immigrants are not to be mistreated (Exodus 22:21) but loved (Leviticus 19:33–34; Deuteronomy 10:18–19) and helped (Deuteronomy 24:19–22; Ezekiel 47:21–23; Zechariah 7:10; Malachi 3:5; Hebrews 13:2). At-risk children are to be especially valued (Matthew 18:10; 19:14) and protected (James 1:27).

Our problem comes in reconciling these two themes. Without secure borders and the rule of law, a nation cannot thrive for the sake of its present and future populations. However, without immigrants, most nations cannot flourish; this is especially true for America, a nation comprised almost entirely of immigrants and their descendants.

Children who enter the US illegally or are born to parents who did are an example of our challenge. On one hand, should they be forced to pay for the illegal actions of their parents (Exodus 18:19–20)? On the other, is it fair for them to benefit from these actions (cf. Matthew 22:21)?

Your hands and your heart

My purpose in this brief Daily Article is obviously not to explore in detail the complexities of this deeply divisive issue. Persistent, unresolved societal challenges are seldom resolved by simple intellectual solutions. Whether the issue is opioid and drug abuse, alcoholism, homelessness, poverty, systemic injustice, crime, or any other ongoing crisis, you and I are likely not going to solve the problem today.

Policy debates are vital, of course. We should pray for our legislators, hold them accountable to their constituents, and vote our conscience. But we should also do what we can do personally to be part of the solution.

As we have discussed this week, you and I are called to continue Jesus’ earthly ministry today. Our spiritual gifts, talents, education, opportunities, and experiences are the uniquely crafted way he is advancing his kingdom through us. This is how we can do “greater” works than he did (John 14:12)—billions of people can fulfill his kingdom mission more fully than he could in a single body.

Will you ask God to help you respond redemptively to the needs you can meet today? Will you offer Jesus your hands and your heart as the “body of Christ” for our hurting world (1 Corinthians 12:27)?

When we do, God’s kingdom comes as his will is done on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10). And our world can never be the same.

Denison Forum

“Wyoming is supposedly a state. Wyoming does not in fact exist. It is a distortion of space-time that only appears to exist.” Or so we are informed by the Urban Dictionary, a crowdsourced English-language online dictionary for slang words and phrases. (Think Wikipedia for urban expressions.)

If you were to prove the article wrong, how would you do so?

You could point to maps delineating the state, but maps, being lines drawn on pages (or digital images) can deceive us. You could remind us that Wyoming has two senators, a member of Congress, and an entire state governance apparatus, but they would obviously profit personally from participating in the scam.

You could meet people like me who claim to have been there, but how would we really know? When you drive past a roadside sign telling you that you’ve entered Wyoming (or any other state), what empirical evidence exists to prove this assertion?

When you think about it, there are few “realities” we can prove beyond all doubt. For example, mathematical axioms—such as the sum of a triangle being two right angles—are unprovable “statements taken to be true.” To prove that parallel lines never intersect, you’d have to draw them forever.

I had two great-aunts who were convinced that astronauts never went to the moon. The entire thing was filmed in the Arizona desert, they claimed. When I asked about moon rocks I’d seen in a museum, they replied, “How do you know they’re from the moon?” It was a good question.

Reasons for “post-Christmas depression”

On this day after the day after Christmas, we have entered the season of the “post-holiday” blues. In one survey, 64 percent of participants responded that they were affected by “post-Christmas depression.” A clinical study discovered “a decrease in the overall utilization of psychiatric emergency services and admissions, self-harm behavior, and suicide attempts/completions during the holiday. But they found an increase, or a rebound, following the Christmas holiday.”

Contributing factors include returning to work or school, financial challenges from gift-giving, parting ways with relatives and loved ones, grief or loss, and conflicts among family and friends that emerged during the holidays.

Loneliness is especially a problem for many.

US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy explains that loneliness occurs when the connections a person needs in life are greater than the connections they have. When people return from holiday gatherings to their “normal” lives, many lose or lack such connections.

Dr. Murthy warns that loneliness increases the risk of premature death by 26 percent. In terms of your lifespan, living in loneliness is equivalent to smoking up to fifteen cigarettes a day.

Harvard professor Dr. Jeremy Nobel identifies three types of loneliness:

1. Psychological: feeling that we don’t have anyone to confide in or trust.
2. Societal: feeling systematically excluded because of characteristics such as gender, race, or disability.
3. Existential: loneliness from feeling disconnected from oneself.

All three are invitations to the reality and abiding relevance of Christmas.

When Christmas comes to Wyoming

Yesterday we discussed the fact that the Christ of Christmas now lives in every Christian as fully as he lived in his earthly body (1 Corinthians 3:16). As a result, you and I exist to continue his earthly ministry as the hands and feet of Jesus at work in our world (1 Corinthians 12:27).

Here’s the problem: many in our secularized culture are as skeptical of Jesus’ present-tense reality as the Urban Dictionary seems to be of Wyoming. They will believe that Christ is relevant to their loneliness and other challenges to the degree that Christians are. But we cannot give what we don’t have. If the person of Jesus is not working in us, he cannot work through us.

So, let’s return to Dr. Nobel’s three types of loneliness:

• Are you confiding and trusting in the living Lord Jesus? When last did you spend time talking with him and listening to him? When last did you trust him with your challenges and needs? When last did reading his word encourage and redirect your life?
• Do you feel excluded from his miraculous grace today? Are there sins you need to confess? Guilt and failures you need to entrust to his compassion? When last did you feel yourself to be his “beloved”? Do you deeply believe that Jesus would be born and die all over again just for you? If not, why not?
• Do you feel estranged from yourself? Are you disappointed with your life or discouraged by your challenges? Do you love yourself as unconditionally as your Father loves you? If not, why not?

As you experience the transforming grace of your living Lord today, will you share his compassion with someone who needs to see the reality of his love in yours? Every day you do, Christmas comes again.

And our world can never be the same.

Denison Forum