I ran away from home once. I couldn’t technically be called a “runaway” since I was only five and really just walked down the street and got lost. It was my parents’ first clue that I didn’t come from the manufacture with a built-in GPS. A cop found me wandering around the neighborhood and brought me home. It was pretty exciting for my first- and only-time riding in a police car. My parents didn’t punish me except for making me wear an ankle bracelet till I was eighteen.
I’ve been reading the story of Sojourner Truth, the 19th century runaway slave who became a well-known preacher, abolitionist, and suffragette. She once said, “I’m against slavery because I want to keep the white folks who hold slaves from getting sent to hell.”
According to the US Constitution (Article IV, Section 2) and federal and state statutes at the time, runaways broke the law, and had to be returned to their master. Not to mention that anyone who helped them escape would be prosecuted. In fact, the “Fugitive Slave Act of 1850” denied runaways a jury trial and forced citizens to assist in their capture. Since slaves were considered property and not human beings, they were denied due process. And don’t forget that because of the 1850 law, many free Black individuals were also illegally seized and forced into slavery. Sound familiar?
I’m assuming everyone reading this would agree that runaway slaves, though technically breakers of the law of the land, would be within their rights as human beings before a higher law of God and conscience to escape their masters and live free. And that whites would be required by that same higher law to aid the runaway in any way they could.
Could we not apply that the same moral principle to another kind of “runaway,” whose only “crime” is to escape to America running away from war, famine, persecution, or bone-crushing poverty? How are they any different from those who escaped body-and-soul-crushing chattel slavery? Can you see that based on this higher law of God and conscience, it is morally inconsistent to consider people who have committed no other crimes but to crossed our borders “illegally,” lawbreakers and criminals?
PS I’ll say it for the thousandth time for those who haven’t heard me say it before: I’m NOT for “open borders,” and AM for prosecuting actual criminals, especially those guilty of violent crimes!
“I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.” (Matthew 25)
“If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing right. But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers.” (James 2:8-9)
barney wiget 