Vacation Photos

Well, vacation was three weeks ago, but I finally have up some photos. Here's Matthew's first trek across the beach:

Here are a couple of cool dudes named Jacob and Drew ready to surf some waves:

And these are a couple of James Oglethorpe's men we ran into at Ft. Frederica:

NT Wright on Da Vinci Code's Myth of Christian Origins

NT Wright, one of the world's preeminent New Testament scholars, offers here a good summary of the tired version of "history" recounted in Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code:

The myth that I am about to describe and critique is well known and widespread. I have met it at Harvard; I have met it in Baptist churches in the South; I have seen bits of it all over the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature, which is the more ironic since those societies used to be devoted, in theory at least, to the supposedly scientific historical study of religions and ancient texts, and this myth is anything but scientific or historical. There are five elements in the myth, and The Da Vinci Code offers a sketchy but clear enough account of all of them.

This is the myth: First, there were dozens if not hundreds of other documents about Jesus. Some of these have now come to light, not least in the books discovered at Nag Hammadi in Egypt 60 years ago. These focus on Jesus more as a human being, a great religious teacher, than as a divine being. And it is these books which give us the real truth about Jesus.

Second, the four Gospels in the New Testament were later products aimed at divinizing Jesus and claiming power and prestige for the church. They were selected, for these reasons, at the time of Constantine in the fourth century, and the multiple alternative voices were ruthlessly suppressed.

Third, therefore, Jesus himself wasn’t at all like the four canonical Gospels describe him. He didn’t think he was God’s son, or that he would die for the sins of the world; he didn’t come to found a new religion. He was a human being pure and simple, who gave some wonderful moral and spiritual teaching, that’s all. Oh, and he may well have been married, perhaps even with a child on the way, when his career was cut short by death.

Fourth, therefore: Christianity as we know it is based on a mistake. Mainstream Christianity is sexist, especially anti-women and anti-sex itself. It has aimed at, and in some places achieved, considerable social power and prestige, enabling it to be politically quietist and conformist. This, I find, goes down especially well with those who are escaping from either fundamentalism or certain types of Roman Catholicism.

Fifth, the real pay-off: It is time to give up, as historically unwarranted, theologically unjustified, and spiritually and socially damaging, the picture of Jesus and Christian origins which the church has put about for so long, and to return to the supposedly original vision of Jesus himself, not least in terms of getting in touch with a different form of spirituality based on metaphor rather than literal truth, of feeling rather than structure, of discovering whatever faith you find you can believe in. This will revive the truth for which Jesus lived, and perhaps for which he died.

Dan Brown adds his own touches to this fivefold myth; for instance, in line with some other recent writers, the suggestion that this genuine spirituality, which Jesus would have taught us had his message not been hushed up, may well involve reconnecting with the sacred feminine. (How that actually works out in terms of his own plot isn’t clear, and the ending of the book is a major anticlimax. Is the Holy Grail itself after all just another metaphor for boy-meets-girl romantic love?)

As I say, I had met this myth in various forms all over the place, long before Dan Brown wrote his book. Brown has, however, given it wings, and I fear that it is now flying all over the place and confusing many people as to what they can and can’t believe. The deepest irony about it is that it portrays itself as historically rooted, when it is a tissue of fantasy; as going back to Jesus himself, when he would not have recognized anything like it; as embodying the really creative new voice of Jesus, when it is simply offering a variation on a well-known pattern of postmodern spirituality.

The lecture can be read in its entirety here.

Apocalypse Not

Movie star Al Gore's new film, An Inconvenient Truth, is upon us. As the movie's website says: "Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb. If the vast majority of the world's scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe [see the countdown in the right column] that could send our entire planet into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced."


The evidence, however, does not indicate the "apocalypse now" that big Al wants you to think is happening. For starters, the following are from the Pacific Research Institute's Index of Leading Environmental Indicators 2006:

• The number of exceedences of the 8-hour ozone standard in Los Angeles over the last 30 years has dropped significantly, from 201 in 1975 to 75 in 2005. In fact, there are large scale areas of the LA air basin where there have been no exceedences of the ozone standard for the last several years, meaning millions of residents have no exposure to high levels of ozone.

• In the Washington, D.C. area, not a single Code Red day for poor air quality was declared over the summer of 2005, despite the hot temperatures. Ozone levels are falling in 19 Eastern states where smog was a recurring problem in the summer.

• Automobile tailpipe emissions from carbon monoxide has been reduced by 96 percent since the 1950s. These emissions rates per mile are not an average for the whole auto fleet, but apply to all makes and models uniformly. In other words, the frequently-heard claim that large SUVs “pollute more” is a myth.

• In 2005, the Center for Disease Control reports declining amounts of chemicals in human blood and urine almost across the board.

• The Catalogue of Life Program, begun in 2001, has passed the half-million mark in the number of species listed in its database.

• Grizzly bears may be coming off the endangered species list. The largest population in the continental U.S. outside of Alaska lives in and near Yellowstone National Park, where the grizzly population has grown from about 200 in the early 1980s to about 600 today.

• The EPA found significant declines in high acidity in every region except New England, where there was no change from 1990 levels.

• The biggest back-from-extinction story of the year was the reappearance of the ivory-billed woodpecker, thought to have gone extinct in the 1940s. Several independent observer teams confirmed the return of the bird to the Big Woods region of Arkansas.

• U.S. forests expanded by 9.5 million acres between 1990 and 2000.

• While wetlands were declining at the rate of 500,000 acres a year at mid-century, they have shown a net gain of about 26,000 acres per year in the past five years.

And here are a few things from the National Center for Policy:

• The polar icecaps, while diminishing in certain areas, are expanding in others (this is because temperatures in the polar interiors are falling, not rising). NASA's 2005 data for overall melting of the polar icecaps indicates a .05 millimeter increase in sea levels per year. Assuming no change in climatological factors, that equals 5 centimeters in 1,000 years, or 1 meter in 20,000 years!

• Polar bear populations have risen from 9,000 to 22,000 in the last 100 years. Of the 20 distinct polar bear populations in the world, 2 are declining in numbers, 2 are increasing, and the remaining 16 populations are stable. Incidentally, the places where polar bear populations are decreasing are places where tempuratures are falling, not rising! Likewise, they are thriving in the moderating polar regions!

If you'd like to read more, try Pete Du Pont's piece at opinionjournal.com. My bottom line? It's apocalypse not!

Anybody out there remember Larry Norman?

I ended up listening to some Larry Norman stuff this evening. It was amazing how relevant the song "Six O'Clock News" still seems to be. Some of the particulars have changed, but the media's pretentiousness and detachment from reality hasn't! And I really liked "Reader's Digest." It kind of reads like a top notch blog post! Clicking on the song title above will open an mp3 of the song. Clicking here will take you to a page of mp3s for 1972's Only Visiting This Planet (the album I am most familiar with, though I didn't hear it until 1990) and two others that form a sort of "triology" (that's "trilogy" if you're not from the mountains!). I've included the lyrics below for the above two songs if you'd like to follow along.

Six O'Clock News

I've got a ticket for southeast Asia,
I packed my camera and press card badge.
They only pay me to stay the weekend;
What if I never come back?

The flight was pretty rough
I got a room, took a sauna,
The bellboy gook put my bags on the bed,
He left without his tip.

Then I loaded up my Hasselblad full of film
And I stepped outside, I stepped outside.

I'm taking pictures of burning houses
Color movies of misery.
I see the flash of guns, how red the mud becomes,
I've got a close-up view.

I'm the six o'clock news - what can I do?
All those kids without shoes - what can I do?
Military coups - what can I do?
I'm just the six o'clock news.

I got a suite at the Saigon Hilton
Cocktail parties with Premiere Ky
We talk about how the war is going
And watch his color TV.

I'm the six o'clock news - what can I do?
Drinkin' black market booze - what can I do?
I'm red, white and true blue - what can I do?
I am, I am, I am, I am, I am... the six o'clock news.

Catch my plane flight back to the mainland,
I fall asleep to the engines' drone.
I see the flash of guns, how red the mud becomes,
I've got a close-up view. I am, I am, I am, I am, I am

The six o'clock news - what can I do?
Guerilla Rendezvous - what can I do?
All those kids without shoes - what can I do?
Napalm tattoos - what can I do?

I'm just the six o'clock news - what can I do?
I am, I am, I am, I am, I am
CBS, ABC, NBC....



Reader's Digest

Alice is a drag queen, Bowie's somewhere in between
Other bands are looking mean, me?, I'm trying to stay clean.
I don't dig the radio, I hate what the charts pick
Rock and roll may not be dead, but it's getting sick.
All over the world disc jockeys talk the same
And every town I play is like the one from where I came.

The Rolling Stones are millionaires, flower children pallbearers,
Beatles said "All you need is love," and then they broke up.
Jimi took an overdose, Janis followed so close,
The whole music scene and all the bands are pretty comatose.
This time last year, people didn't wanna hear.
They looked at Jesus from afar, this year he's a Superstar.

Dear John, who's more popular now?
I've been listening to Paul's records.
I think he really is dead.

It's 1973, I wonder who we're gonna see
Who's in power now? Think I'll turn on the TV,
The man on the news said China's gonna beat us,
We shot all our dreamers, there's no one left to lead us.
We need a solution, we need salvation,
Let's send some people to the moon and gather information.

They brought back a big bag of rocks.
Only cost thirteen billion. Must be nice rocks.

You think it's such a sad thing when you see a fallen king
Then you find out they're only princes to begin with.
And everybody has to choose whether they will win or lose
Follow God or sing the blues, and who they're gonna sin with.
What a mess the world is in, I wonder who began it?
Don't ask me, I'm only visiting this planet.

This world is not my home; I'm just passing through.

Caption Contest

WINNER: lech walesa..."polish tornado drill"

Late Week in Review

• News ticker: Added above. Tell me what you think.
• Caption winner: Larry the cable guy.
  
• Commencement addresses of note, Part 1: The controversy over Condoleeza Rice's speaking at Boston College (hated ACC rival) was interesting. I have to say, I have some sympathy for the protest as long as it is sincerely rooted in what the following indicates: ''On the levels of both moral principle and practical moral judgment, Secretary Rice's approach to international affairs is in fundamental conflict with Boston College's commitment to the values of the Catholic and Jesuit traditions and is inconsistent with the humanistic values that inspire the university's work," the letter said. It pointed out Pope John Paul II's opposition to the war in Iraq. The response? "This is the only time these people have cited Pope John Paul II on anything," said the Rev. Paul McNellis, who is an adjunct professor in the philosophy department. Hmmmm. A matter of conscience, or politics?
• Commencement addresses of note, Part 2: General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, addressed the graduating class of The Citadel. It is worth a read or listen.
  

Lettuce get married!

Concerning the proposed federal marriage amendment that has floated around congress for awhile now, the New York Daily News reported this on Monday:

• Arizona Sen. John McCain said Sunday the controversial proposal to amend the Constitution would step on states' rights."The states regulate the conditions of marriage, and unless there's some decisive overruling by the federal courts, then I will continue to believe that the states should decide," McCain said on Fox News Sunday. "We in Arizona should make our decisions about the status of marriage in our state just as the people in Massachusetts and other states should make their decisions," he said.

The naivete with which Sen. McCain has spoken of late is amazing. If the citizens of the states were making decisions about marriage that were not subject to policy assaults from the judiciary at the state and federal levels, McCain would be right. But it is exactly the case that, through the wonder of judicial review, the people of Massachusettes can end up deciding for the people of Arizona what the "conditions of marriage" ought to be!
The purpose of a federal constitutional amendment is to prevent the obvious and growing judicial encroachment on a state legislative function. Indeed, McCain and his colleagues are simply being asked to vote for an amendment to really allow the states to determine if they need federal protection to make these decisions by either a) defining marriage outright or b) excluding judicial review. McCain knows this (I think--unless he really did believe people wouldn't pick lettuce for $50/hr!), but he apparently thinks we are stupid. If his position prevails, then perhaps we are!

DaVinci Interview

I'll post more on this soon, but here is a good place to start. This is an interview with RC Sproul about the DaVinci Code stuff. A good introduction if you're interested.

Think you know Alice Cooper?

This is from the Alice Cooper interview in Doug Van Pelt's "Rock Stars On God."

QUESTION: Doug asks, "Well, you have seemingly avoided the Christian celebrity, "Let's get him on the 700 Club mentality." And my question is: Where did you acquire the wisdom to make that astute decision?"

ANSWER: "I have been surrounded by guys that are strong Christian guys. A youth pastor, my pastor, and all of them have protected me. They've all said, 'You know, it's great who you are. Be careful of celebrity Christianity.' because it's really easy to use somebody. It's really easy to focus on Alice Cooper and not on Christ. It's so embarrassing in the very beginning, when somebody would say, 'We want you to speak at our youth thing.' And you get there and it says, 'ALICE COOPER' in huge letters, 'speaking about Christ' in small letters. And I'm sitting there going. 'That is blasphemy’ That tells me something right there that something’s wrong. I'm a rock singer. I'm nothing more than that. I'm not a politician; I'm not a philosopher. What I really am is a follower of Christ. My job is rock n roll; my life is dedicated to following Christ. When I go to speak to people, they think I’m going to have some answers. I go, 'I don't have any answers. Please, give me some answers. I can give you what I think. I think that the most important thing that I know is dependence on Christ. That's all I know, is that I have absolutely no answers, and I have no power. I can entertain you, but when it comes to being subject to Christ, I consider myself low on the totem pole of knowledgeable Christians."
I knew Alice Cooper was a Christian, but did not know that he's good friends and golfs with RC Sproul! Now that's as wild as anything he's ever done!

Practical God?

I was told this week by someone (names are undisclosed to protect the guilty, but you know who you are!) that "God is a practical God." I thought Yes--It seems I remember a few verses about God being practical:

• What about in Genesis when God called the 75 year old, childless Abram--"Now the LORD said to Abram, "I am a practical God. Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. " Nope, couldn't find it.
• Or maybe it was in Numbers--"And the LORD's practicality was kindled against Israel, and he made them wander in the wilderness forty years." No. I was mistaken.
  
• Well, He was practical with Jesus at least. Remember "For God was so practical, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life?" Nope. I kept running into dead ends.

So I did what anyone sitting on front of a computer would do next: I googled "practical God." This led me to an interesting book--Practical God by Ronny Hatchwell and Tsachi Sivan. The description began, "Practical God is a documented conversation between Tsachi Sivan, a young lawyer and business man, and SOL, a pure energy communicating from the highest level of intelligence, who can also be referred to as God." HMMMM. I was sure that this is not what the undisclosed person above meant by practical!
Now, the definition of practical that this person did seem to be using was "capable of being put into effect; feasible" which begs the question, "Practical from whose point of view--ours or God's?" None of the above is practical from a human perspective--Old men having sons, nations miraculously sustained for forty years in the wilderness, the Son of God coming as a man to die. But from God's perspective all of these things were certainly practical, i.e., "capable of being put into effect; feasible."
So, if you mean to say that God is practical from the human perspective, I must disagree. But, if by practical you mean something like "nothing is impossible with God," then yes--God is very practical!

Here's someone else's unusual pet . . .

"Kitty," once a 5-pound lion cub, is now a 400+ pound male lion in Melvin, Kentucky. My favorite line from the article is, "The Collins' also have a dozen dogs and a lizard." Read about Kitty here.

Hermie Henry Rainwater--R.I.P.

For those who do not yet know, the hermit crab who returned from vacation with us did not last long. Though not picky about their diets, hermit crabs are picky about their living conditions, and I guess Hermie's weren't up to hermit crab standards. He was out of his shell and dead in his water bowl when we returned from our Mother's Day festivities. He was buried on Monday at the edge of our backyard.

Iraq--"Ancient, Historic, Beautiful, Exotic" . . . and safer than you thought?

How 'bout those numbers?!?! Those are the figures for pre-Katrina New Orleans, and YES the Iraq numbers include war/terror related deaths. Pretty amazing, huh? Even dear ol' Atlanta is more dangerous than Iraq! Read the first part of the article at the New York Sun.

Our Mother

I have appreciated the strong response to "Some Thoughts on Mother's Day." (Though I would like to see some of it here on the blog. You don't have to wait until you see me to yell at me. There are exclamation points on your keyboards!!!!!!!!!!!!) Anyway, this is a link to a short essay by Ralph Allan Smith about mothers and our Mother--the Church--as manifested in the local body of believers. Good stuff.

Caption Contest

(Notice that this guy has tears running down his cheeks!)

WINNER: Well, I liked jeffro's reference, and weebs and dave h. were funny, but darn it--larry the cable guy really made me laugh with his"That's nothing. . . . You should see his cure for constipation!"

Some Thoughts on Mother's Day

I'm sorry if you are expecting a sentimental post about how wonderful Mother's Day is--and how we should all really honor and remember our mothers every second Sunday in May. (Do we need a special holiday in order to keep the fifth commandment?) I guess I have a problem with these especially artificial holidays like Mother's Day, Father's Day, Grandparent's Day, Secretary's Day, etc. You can read a history of Mother's Day here and find out (if you didn't already know) that Mother's Day was first recognized as a national holiday after being signed into law in 1914 by Woodrow Wilson. Anna Jarvis, the woman whose lobbying led to Mother's Day, was disgusted by the commercialism that in short order sprung up around the holiday. In 1923 she even filed a lawsuit to stop a Mother's Day festival, and further she was arrested for disturbing the peace at a convention selling carnations for a war mother's group. Before her death in 1948, Jarvis is said to have confessed that she regretted ever starting the Mother's Day tradition.
Another reason I don't care for Mother's Day (and other such Sunday observances) is that it so easily distracts the Church from what the day is really about. Every Sunday is a holiday--a holy day--the Lord's Day, and the Church ought to be focused on the worship of Him, not the honoring of mothers. Additionally (though it is not the case this year) the second Sunday of May often coincides with the Church's celebration of Pentecost. So instead of scripture readings, songs, and sermons about the coming of the promised Spirit, we get the obligatory "Proverbs 31 Woman" message and a sappy song about how great mothers are.
I want to end this by quoting the concluding two paragraphs of Peter Leithart's article from Premise some years ago, "Against Christianity: For the Church." He has since expanded the article into a book. His conclusion comments on Mother's Day and Pentecost:

The pervasiveness of our worldliness, our failure to be a distinct people, is perhaps best illustrated from fairly trivial incidents. Several years ago, I spent Pentecost weekend with my wife in Savannah, Georgia. We switched on the television early Sunday morning, hoping to hear a Pentecost sermon. Instead, the television preacher was delivering a Mother's Day message, one that contained only a handful of moralistic allusions to the Bible while celebrating at length the mothers of famous Americans. I was most annoyed, however, at the preacher's apparent indifference to what is one of the chief days of the Christian year. At least, I thought, he could have combined Pentecost and Mother's Day by mentioning that the Spirit-filled church is the mother of believers.
Given the tremendous scandals that have rocked televangelism in the recent past, failure to preach about the Spirit on Pentecost Sunday hardly qualifies even as a venial sin. On reflection, however, I have come to see this incident as a crystallizing illustration of the profound accommodation that even the best American churches have made to the world. The church no longer functions as a distinct culture, with her own heroes and villains, her own memories and stories, her own ceremonies and symbols, her own rules and government. As I noted above, the church will always manifest much of the paraphernalia of the surrounding culture but American churches are too often simply extensions of the surrounding culture: Which is more prominently displayed in American evangelical churches, the American flag or the communion cup? What holiday is likely to receive the most attention, Ash Wednesday or the Fourth of July? Who is more a hero to American Christians, George Washington or St. Patrick? It will surely be a sign of the renewal of the church as Christian culture when the behavior of Christians improves, when Christians stop seeking abortions and stop sleeping around, when heresy and unbelief are rooted from the church. But I keep coming back to that Mother's Day sermon and I cannot shake the sense that the church's identity crisis will continue until she begins to pay more attention to her own calendar than to Hallmark's.

Vacation . . . and another unusual pet!

Sorry for the lack of stuff around here. We've been at Jekyll Island this week. (I'll add pictures to this post when I have them available.) The weather cooperated for the most part. The only really bad weather was a thunderstorm late Wednesday night. Everything was gloriously uncrowded; we had the beach practically to ourselves for our morning walks and afternoons in the water. We played mini-golf, bicycled around the Historic District and the beach, saw dolphins, played in the ocean and pool, ate a nice meal at "Seajays," and unintentionally brought back a hermit crab from "Driftwood Beach." We didn't discover the crab until today. His name is Hermie. So, last week it was a garter snake (who is now called "Junior" instead of the confusing "Mac"); this week a hermit crab! I can't wait to see what animal next week brings!

Week in Review

• Feel good story of the week--Keith Richards, who fell out of a palm tree in Fiji, apparently won't have to have surgery to relieve pressure on his brain. There is apparently no need to explain why the 62 year old pickled rocker was in a palm tree in the first place; speculation is that he was trying to pick coconuts, but the Rolling Stones are mum about what exactly happened. I just think it sounds like something that would have happened to Bernie.
  

• Line of the Week--These guys would make a great comedy duo: Kucinich playing the straight man to set up Bolton's one-liners. What a great zinger at the end:
  

KUCINICH: Have you ever heard of that report?

BOLTON: I’d never heard of the report, I never read the article, nor do I intend to.

KUCINICH: Do you have any interest as to whether or not—as the U.S. Ambassador, you don’t have any interest as to whether or not U.S. Marines are actually operating in Iran right now?

BOLTON: I said I had not heard of the report and I didn’t intend to read the article in “The New Yorker.”

KUCINICH: If I gave you this article right now, walked it over, would you look at it?

BOLTON: I don’t think so, honestly, Congressman, because I don’t have time to read much fiction.

• New Poll Is Up!--This one is about pet snakes.
• Blotter--Nothing about my people in the blotter this week. Too bad I lost Harvest Grove!
• Caption Contestants--This from Lord Shackelton is for you until the long awaited caption contest prizes are ready--"MEN WANTED FOR HAZARDOUS JOURNEY. SMALL WAGES, BITTER COLD, LONG MONTHS OF COMPLETE DARKNESS, CONSTANT DANGER, SAFE RETURN DOUBTFUL. HONOUR AND RECOGNITION IN CASE OF SUCCESS." Now that is what the caption contest is all about!
• And speaking of the caption contest--You can view last week's winner here.
  

Where I've Been

Sorry to be so delinquent with posting the last few days, but I've been busy with a creature very much like the one you see above. Here's how Drew tells it:

I opened the door and was going over to play with Brandon, and before I took a step I saw a snake curled up and yelled, "Snake!" I asked, "Is this a harmless snake, or not?" Then I went over to Brandon's house to ask if Josh and Brandon could come see a surprise. I brought them over to our house to see the snake. Josh said it was a Garter snake baby, and was harmless. When it bit Brandon, it didn't hurt! Josh got a glass cage that Brandon brought over. Josh put it in the cage. Then we let it out and Brandon and I were touching it. Then Jacob was scared to hold it, and Brandon said, "Drew's not scared." Then he put it on my shoulder, and it crawled around and tickled my neck with it's tongue! Then Mommy said we couldn't play anymore until school is over. Then Josh was going to let it go, and I asked if we could keep it. Mommy said we could keep it until Daddy got home. So we got the bug habitat and put it in there and set it on the table. When Daddy got home he said we would have to take care of it, and Mommy said we could keep it.

So, I have been researching that "take care of it" part for the last couple of days. Tentatively, his name is "Mac," but that sounds an awful lot like "Matt," so that name might not last. Marian just keeps asking, "How did this happen?"--especially in response to questions like, "Honey, where do you want to keep the snake supplies?" He's about 14 to 16 inches long (I say "He," but I have no idea if it's He or She) and he seems to really like his new habitat. (Perhaps there is symbolism in having a caged serpent.) I guess now I will have snake reports from time to time . . .

Immigration and the Bible

The Family Research Council recently hosted a panel in Washington called "Faith, Culture, and Law in the Immigration Debate." Rev. Samuel Rodriguez of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference participated. Speaking as a "Hispanic-American evangelical," he called for both the "rule of law" and the application of "our Judeo-Christian value system" to the immigration debate. He said:

"There is a biblical mandate on how to treat the immigrant and the alien--Deuteronomy chapter 10 (Love the alien, therefore, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. [Deuteronomy 10:19]); the Leviticus 19 principle (When an alien sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the alien who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God. [Leviticus 19:33-34]). Also the Good Samaritan passage in Luke. Who is your neighbor? . . . To us in the Hispanic evangelical church it is a matter of family values. We are Hispanic. We are Hispanic American evangelicals. And because of that we are concerned about the families, the possible disenfranchisement of 12 million families."

He went on to conclude that if the Sensenbrenner (R-WI) bill is passed, it will lead to a choice for these families in which most will likely be split up so that American-born children can stay and enjoy the prosperity of America, while foreign-born parents are forced to return to the drugs and squalor of Mexico. The force of the appeal was that Christians can't possibly want to break up these families. (No. We don't at all want to break up these families, and we aren't. They are breaking themselves up!)
The application of these "alien and stranger" passages to the immigration debate is a classic example of equivocation. It takes a term, alien, that is referring to a vastly different political reality in the ancient Near East and applies it directly to today's situation simply because the same word is being used. (By this logic one can argue that we should all buy Hondas because the disciples were "all in one accord." [Luke:1:14] That's an extreme example, but it makes the point.) Today's reality of autonomous nation-states with various immigration laws which are internationally recognized and (ideally) honored by other nations is itself completely alien to the biblical context. In the ancient Near East the wandering alien was at the mercy of whomever's land he found himself upon, but he had not violated the borders or sovereignty of any nation by his "immigration." People were free to travel from place to place and there were no Motel 6's to leave the light on for them. The biblical laws were designed to account for this reality and called God's people to deal kindly and fairly with those who came through the land, for they too had been aliens in Egypt.
To apply these passages directly to the problem of illegal immigration is quite a stretch. I think the situation would be different if those coming to this country were fleeing political tyranny. But at most today's illegal immigrants might claim they are fleeing "economic tyranny" (caused by their pathetic political system), but they are not under imminent threat to their lives or freedom. And so, they can follow our laws to come here. "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath but also for the sake of conscience" [Romans 13:1-5]. That is the "rule of law" to which Rev. Rodriguez paid lip service above. The only biblical exception to this is if the laws of the governing authorities are in violation of God's law. So the argument must be made that our immigration laws are somehow immoral. You can see an attempt at that here, and in the picture below from the Maoist Internationalist Movement, but I'm not buying it.

My kind of strip joint . . .