By Deborah Lindberg
Tonight a case worker will drop off a baby, and for the next four days and nights my family will change her diapers, divert her from the kitchen cupboards, and breathe a sigh of relief when she naps. Her mother, Alice*, and disabled older sister are alternately living at the hospital or a women’s shelter, and with no family in town, they needed an “auntie” to help with the baby. Thanks to the organization Safe Families for Children, my family became honorary relatives.
As you might imagine, I’ve become pretty sensitive to comments about “freeloaders” who live off our tax dollars and whose problems would be solved if they just got a job. And I don’t love hearing how impractical it is to offer health care to everyone who can’t afford it. That’s an immediate death sentence to a well-loved four-year-old I know.
Another friend, Sebastian*, leaves in the darkness of early morning to install drywall in new homes. A few years ago, his own government decided that protest organizers are enemies of the state. After he was threatened and hunted, and his business was burned to the ground, Sebastian crossed multiple borders to seek asylum in the U.S. He was lucky enough to eventually get it, though Trump’s Department of Homeland Security immediately appealed the judge’s decision. That appeal is still pending, but for now Sebastian’s American life has inched forward thanks to a team of volunteers that provided a spare bedroom and helped him complete paperwork, get work authorization, and learn English.
If you want to argue—and many do—that Sebastian stole a job from an American, that he should have stayed and worked to stabilize his own country while fleeing a murderous regime, or that he should have followed the (nonexistent) immigration laws to come here with a visa, I’ll discuss that with you.
Take heed: I’ll be woefully impatient about it. I’m working on that.
Because I know both Alice and Sebastian, and because I’m fairly sure that you, reader of Mark’s blog, are a pretty decent human, I am confident that if you met them you would become their advocate and cheerleader. We are designed to attach our own hearts and stories to those of the humans we encounter. It’s the faceless people with easy labels that we have trouble with.
Here’s an interesting fact from millennia of Jewish culture: Israel’s greatest heroes are the people who put aside their personal interests to plead for others. Consider Abraham who argued with God to spare the wildly violent people of Sodom from destruction. He knew God well enough to tell him, “Wait, this isn’t the kind of God you are!” and then go round after round with the creator of the universe to defend a bunch of strangers with terrible reputations. In fact, Abraham literally “stood in God’s path, blocking his way” until God gave in. The chutzpah!
It’s not so different from the chutzpah of activists who break the law by leaving water in the desert so that immigrants crossing the southern border don’t die. (I know, it’s hard to believe that death by dehydration has been legislated.) Or churches who allow immigrants to have sanctuary from ICE so that they aren’t permanently separated from their families. Regardless of your views on immigration law in the U.S., you’ve got to admit that these activists are solidly Abrahamic, protecting the defenseless and arguing for mercy for people who aren’t even part of their tribe.
Moses is another heroic pleader. After Moses and God had been away from camp for too long, the newly-emancipated Israelites got so nervous that they made their own god—a golden calf, of all things—and then gave that hunk of melted-down bracelets full credit for their elaborate ten-plague rescue! I can’t imagine a better way to insult someone, and indeed, God told Moses he would just incinerate them and start over with Moses’s own family.
In spite of all the ways that plan would benefit Moses and his legacy, he immediately responded with horror: “Why would you lose your temper and destroy your reputation in the world by wiping out your own people?” And God immediately relented. It’s almost as if God wanted someone to argue against hellfire and brimstone all along.
An interesting note: Once Moses hikes down to see the Israelites’ behavior first-hand, he loses his cool and some pretty gruesome punishments follow (see Exodus 32 for the whole story)—a reminder that God doesn’t always show up the way we think He should (more on that in a few weeks). Still, Moses stuck to his guns with God: “If you won’t forgive their enormous sin, erase me out of the book you’ve written.” Moses didn’t want to be a part of any story that didn’t include rescuing these very people.
I’m no Moses. My well-fed judgy nature kicks in when Alice spends her meager income on taxis and Minnie Mouse tutus for her girls, when she complains about the free medical care her daughter receives, or when she explains that she’d move closer to relatives if their states had better welfare programs. My life would be smoother if I could focus on just my own family and the friends I have hand-
picked over the years. But I don’t want to remove myself from Alice’s story.
I know God well enough to know that he wants me to wrangle for abundance and safety for all the Alices.
You know who is not a major hero in Jewish culture? Noah. That guy was told about the imminent destruction of everything he knew, and instead of warning his neighbors or pleading for mercy on their behalf, he put his family onto a boat and sailed away to safety. I’m not saying he’s a bad guy—in fact, I’m just like him. I built my own sturdy boat out of a college degree, a loyal spouse, savings accounts, a charter school for my kids, a big house in a suburban neighborhood, two well-maintained cars, and plenty of stable and pleasant friends.
The boat isn’t really the problem, though. The problem is this: Am I trying to pull swimmers onto this boat? Noah wasn’t a bad guy, but he wasn’t exactly a hero, either. I don’t think he really knew what God was all about, and he missed his chance to be an agent of mercy.
I hope you don’t think I’m comparing Alice and Sebastian to idol worshippers or Sodomites—that’s definitely not the point here. They’re excellent human beings who work hard, are selfless, and who pursue goodness relentlessly. If you knew them, you wouldn’t begrudge them any of your tax dollars or another day without citizenship. But again, that’s not the point. Whether they are tribe members or outsiders, we are called to be an Abraham. Whether or not we approve of their behavior, we are called to be a Moses. We were all meant to be the heroes who offer benevolence and plead the cases of others. If we know God and what he’s about, we’ll put our boats to good use.
*Names have been changed in the interest of privacy.
For more information about organizations referred to in this blog, visit:
- Safe Families for Children at https://safe-families.org/
- Colorado Hosting Asylum Network at https://www.coloradohostingasylum.org/
Many thanks to Deborah Lindberg for her guest post. I asked her to write this week because I know her to be a great example of someone who’s committed to Jesus, but not afraid to think for herself.
