Exerre Gaias
An imperative made famous by Euripedes means “Away out of the land!” It was classically employed by nations of antiquity and down through the ages. All nations hold to standards – that define them as nations – and banish those who refuse to meet them. Some standards are better than others according to one’s ethical framework. From the Christian standpoint, all are welcome regardless of race but obliged to maintain a particular standard of behavior, and upon violation of such may be exiled. Such banishment serves the purpose of keeping the citizenry upright and honorable.
Of course, every example of the past is not necessarily to be revered or emulated. But it is good to take heart in knowing that guarding one’s national borders is not unusual to the nations of history. We are not an open-door country just as each family is not open to receive every wandering vagrant on the streets. We may choose discriminatively whom we shall assist and whom we would rather allow to wallow in, perhaps, just deserts. It is often good and right for nations and their émigrés to suffer and learn valuable lessons. Non-citizens may make no demands for citizenship for no reason but their whim for new “place to crash.”
The exiling of illegal immigrants is not the only function of those who govern a nation and guard its border. Those charged with the governance of a nation are also responsible for protecting the people from military invasion by foreign nations. Nationhood is defined not only by the principle of limited population but by the capacity to protect the people from outside invasion or hostilities. Non-citizens may NOT demand to remain in a country which they had no right to invade!
Christianity teaches – with regard to personal relationships and church membership – not to discriminate on the basis of race or nationality, but on the basis of behavior and doctrine. It provides a foundation for excluding or punishing Law-breakers: e.g. Nazis, Communists, Atheists and Racists. It does not exclude people on the basis of race, sex, or physical or mental wellbeing. Regarding the very Church of God, the community of saints, a moral standard it to maintained: unrepentant violators are to be dismissed. The case of the illegal immigrant does not concern itself with the character of the invader, but simply with the fact that he has invaded another nation.
Let the borders be guarded and let immigration be guided by the wisdom of God’s word.
2015 on 20 Jan., 2022
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