The other day I received one note that made the argument that we need a wall on the southern border for the same reason that we lock our car and our house door. The statement about the locking of the car and the house door made me smile and I wanted
to check the mental and spiritual environment that brought the smile on. Turns out that the smile is still there. It comes from the long dissertation about
theft and personal property in chapter 22 of Exodus. It is there that the first-born male donkey
does not have to be sacrificed, but can be redeemed with another animal. I smiled because our cars might be our
donkeys! Hmmm? I had an interesting presentation about this
chapter when I took the parishioners through a study of the Pentateuch.
There are a couple of
thoughts that I have about keys and walls and human migration.
a.We never really know if the habit
of locking our car is really bringing us the result that we intend. Our car can be a large part of our life, but
it is rarely, if ever the greatest portion of our life. For most of us, we never get to know if there
was an attempt to steal it. So, we
really cannot boast that our habit is effective, protective behavior. Of course, donkeys don’t come with keys, and
that’s what made me smile. The same
could be said of our house.
b.The social teachings of the Law of Moses concerning theft are quite
strict, especially when it comes to livestock.
Since I do not have livestock, no worries there.
c.I have a son who, in 20+ years, has never locked his car, anywhere, any
time. Right here in the heart of one of
the most diverse sections of San Diego … Ethnic and Religious, Legal and
Illegal. Is it luck or is it human
respect for someone else’s property?
Border walls
I was in Jordan for
three days at the beginning of December.
There are no border fences in Jordan. King Abdullah II doesn’t believe in them. Jordan is a small country. The ratio of refugees to citizens is unusually high. Jordan is clean, free of military on the
streets, free education and good health care.
Israel, just across the
river, has a wall. It doesn’t bring peace
to Israel. The streets of Israel are
heavily patrolled by armed forces. They
are prisoners of their own wall. I was
in Bethlehem for three nights, including one night in the city square where
there were some 5,000 people and not a metal detector in sight. There was armed
security on patrol but the surrounding coffee and shawarma shops were doing a
booming business. Catholics, Orthodox,
Muslims and Atheists enjoying a Christian ceremony, lighting of the Christmas
Tree.
Border walls are
useless artifacts. The guy on the link
you sent who said that the existing wall works had to say that because he was
in front of Power. Plus, it seems to be
that no matter what percentage of deterrence is achieved, it never gets to 100%
success. Walls work a bit for a
while…until both sides get used to having them.
The longer they stand, the less deterrence they provide. Those on this side are lulled into
over-confidence. Those on that side
invent ways to circumvent the inconvenience.
Those on this side and on that side grow in the hatred and distrust of
the enemy on the other side. Never has
there been a wall that was never breeched.
The burning of Rome (64 AD) and the destruction of Jerusalem (70 AD) are
only two examples that come to mind as reminders of wall failures.
Finally, walls are the
result of demagoguery. They are erected
as a result of hatred, not of love. The
law of God does not call for walls. The
law of God calls for mutual support and hospitality. The law of God provides for stiff penalties
to the criminals. The penalties are part
of the law because the criminal insults God Himself, not just the offended
human. The law of God does not call for
punishing the foreigner who comes to your land.
God tells His people to treat the foreigner with loving mercy in
remembrance of their captivity in Egypt.
Nowhere in God’s Law will you read that a country without borders is not
a country. We lock our cars and our
homes because they are human artifacts.
We make laws to control entry into our space and the behavior that we
expect in order to keep ourselves safe and mutually supportive, we and those
who come to us.
A short reading of the
Bible will make it clear about where the legal disputations were held … at the
gates of the of the wall. Both, the foreigner
and the citizen had equal access to the process. Without that equal access, the walls came
down over time. Through the centuries
walls have come and gone. They have
proven to be monumental wastes of resources because those who hide behind them
always fall to those with the freedom to roam and to learn and to develop.
It is interesting that
after 235 years of being a constitutional republic we should have arrived at
such a level of hatred. Or maybe, it is
simply a continuing moment of the cruel hatred that Christians visited on the
indigenous people of this land, the imported slaves from Africa, the Chinese and the
Japanese. Let it be a warning that the
average life expectancy of republics is but 300 years. Yes, republics that count on walls for
security do not insure themselves of greater longevity. Believe me, a wall is not a life sustaining ingredient
of Making America Great Again.
Post Script
I have lived, studied
and worked in four countries: Italy, France, Philippines and Mexico. I lived through the Ferdinand Marcos coup in
the Philippines. Donald Trump is
following the Marcos Play book. But that
is not what I want to expose. I want to
talk about the soul of the United States of America.
I arrived in Rome,
Italy in very early October of 1961. I
was to be there for four years in order to earn a Master’s Degree in
Theology. This was three years after the
universally acclaimed book, “The Ugly American.” (15 years after WW II) I was blessed by the
fact that I was a multi-lingual, multi-cultural American. So, I escaped the snide characterizations of
some of my classmates. Some of whom were
indeed “Ugly Americans.”
After some four
months, when I was getting a little proficient in the Italian language, an
Italian classmate told me, “I wondered why some of the older people say that
it’s a good thing to be conquered by the Americans because then they will help
you to reconstruct. You are perhaps one
of those.”
Ever since then, I
think of that a lot. I think of the
Marshall Plan, I think of NATO, I think of Japan… I think of the reconstruction assistance,
both structural and social, and I wonder where the acrimony in our present
situation comes from. I wonder what has
happened to the reverence that we had for Ghandi, for Mandela, for Churchill,
for Nasser, for Gorbachev, for Ben-Gurion?
Thanks
to the respect that we as a nation showed these people the world has been
relatively, mutually respectful across the board.
The United States of
America used to have the most unguarded, friendly borders, north and south, of
all nations in the world. Who’s the
demagogue who will take the prize for putting us in second place? Who’s the demagogue who will wear the
dictatorial crown on the northern side of the wall?
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