Ed FirmageThe Bible Tells Me So…. Sanctuary and the Body of God
I’ve read the Good Book, cover to cover, and I love it. I’ve always had a love affair with holy writ. But I don’t get it.
The Bible says, time after time after time, that we should honor the outcast, grant places of refuge for the refugee, in our hearts, our homes, and in our churches and within our country. We are, in fact, the living sanctuary of the Holy Spirit. Not made with hands. A place where the sun won’t hurt us and the moon not allowing our fear of the night. We are under the wings of the Almighty.
In fact, these biblical passages got the Taliban in trouble with the Bush Christians. The Taliban believe the Bible. They are People of the Book. They follow the Holy Book. The Bible and the Koran are at one here, and with the New Testament, the Christian gloss on the Bible (Old Testament to some, but not by me. Nothing out of date here.) The Bible tells me to allow the refugee, the undocumented person, the family without means or papers, into my home. Even when the law says otherwise. That’s what “refugee” means. Outside the law. But into my family. And my city. And my state. And my nation. And my heart.
Work with the law and within the law. But the refugee has a right. Read Isaiah and St. Paul. In the Bible and Koran and the New Testament. A higher law. They ask for sanctuary and we, as Christians and Jews and Muslims, are at once bound. Salvation is at stake. And millions of lives.
The American Constitution grants rights to the refugee. the Fourteenth Amendment speaks of “persons,” not simply “citizens.” International law grew up as religious law and, with the Enlightenment, things religious were reborn as public international law, right out of the religious law that birthed our secular city.
Bin Ladin, after investing millions of dollars in aid for the poor in Afghanistan, asked for refuge. By Biblical and Koranic Law, the Taliban were bound. Whatever he had done, before or after he asked for refuge, sanctuary.
They granted him sanctuary and America went nuts. When the Taliban, under threat of total destruction by the Bush folk, wouldn’t put Bin Ladin out of their homes, Bush bombed them into the stone age. And then attacked Iraq to boot. Whatever happened to the Bible?
Now, the softer gentler folk, I thought, in the Republican Party have me thoroughly confused. Romney says he’s the Real Christian. The bible tells him so. He attacks the former Mayor of New York, Rudy, for running a “sanctuary city.” A city where the Christian and the Jew, people of the Book, like our Muslim and Mexican folk, will welcome the refugee, the persons without money, papers, shelter, and safety. That, I would think, would be very Christian, or Jewish, or Muslim, or for that matter, Buddhist (another book, same story). ( To me, that is also what the Marlboro Man who thinks all talk of God is at best funny, and at worst….. well, just look at the most depressing show in town: the next Republican debate of presidential misfits.) Where is Dwight Eisenhower when we need him.
