Strangers in the Land: Ger 35

Deuteronomy 31:9-13

So Moses wrote this law and delivered it to the priests, the sons of Levi, who bore the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and to all the elders of Israel. And Moses commanded them, saying: “At the end of every seven years, at the appointed time in the year of release, at the Feast of Tabernacles, when all Israel comes to appear before the Lord your God in the place which He chooses, you shall read this law before all Israel in their hearing. Gather the people together, men and women and little ones, and the ger who is within your gates, that they may hear and that they may learn to fear the Lord your God and carefully observe all the words of this law, and that their children, who have not known it, may hear and learn to fear the Lord your God as long as you live in the land which you cross the Jordan to possess.”

What Does It Say?

I don't have much to say about this passage, since it is more or less a retread of the last passage. However, it does answer one possible petty objection to my interpretation of the previous passage in Deuteronomy 29.

The possible petty objection (which is both petty and possible) is that the obligation on ger to worship the God of Israel and not the gods of the nations was only binding on the ger of that generation. In other words, that the ger who tagged along with the congregation through the wilderness were obligated to swear their fealty to the Covenant, but not any who wandered in the land afterwards.

And while that objection would be possible in the context of chapter 29, the content of chapter 31 destroys it. The Covenant was to be renewed every seven years, with all of the men, women, and children of Israel as well as the ger within their gates.

The ger were not simply protected by the law, they were expected to " learn to fear the Lord your God and carefully observe all the words of this law."

In short, while we cannot use the Bible to argue against the presence of any and all ger in our land, we can use it to argue for the expulsion of all who will not observe the law of God.

Of course, this is all somewhat complicated by the relationship between Law and Faith in the New Testament. However, in a world where Old Testament verses about loving the stranger are shoved in the face of the Church, it is appropriate to shove these verses right back. We are to love the stranger - the stranger who fears the Lord and observes the words of His Law.

Now, we should no more expect the ger to observe the words of God's Law perfectly than we ourselves can follow it perfectly, we must expect them to treat the Law with the same respect and reverence that we should. A foreigner who openly worships foreign gods or attempts to sway us away from the worship of the True God should be expelled.

One may argue that the above policy would only be possible in a truly Christian government. And while the culture and history of America are unarguably Christian, its government and constitution are more secular than one would like.

At the same time, we can also take an inverse argument: that America will never truly be a Christian nation (or at least, have a Christian government) until we forcibly expel the haters of the True God and stop suffering them to dwell in our midst.

But it is not all so simple. The unfortunate truth is that while the Old Testament does preach a system of government, the New Testament teaches how to have a government within a government. Paul is fine with expelling, say, the unrepentantly sexually immoral out of the Christian community and into the World. Indeed, that is what we must do. He does not, however, say if we should kick them out of the Christian state. The New Testament was written in a time when Christians conquering Rome was less of a pressing thought of the writers and readers than the certainty of Christ razing it at the end of history.

And so we reach a strange historical impasse. We know how we should run a Christian Church, but not a Christian State - or at least, an independent Christian State. Paul admonishes those who drag quarrels between Christians into pagan courts, for the Christians shall one day judge angels. The Christian community is the Christian state.

But what shall we do when the judges and laws are Christians but the defendant is a Jew? The only Christian answer is to expel the non-Christian into a non-Christian community. What about when the judges are Christians but the court is officially secular? Is it fit to be judged by Christians who cannot rule according to the laws of the Church? What about when the nation's laws are based on a mish-mash of Christianity and globo-homo and the judges are atheists, Hindus, and everything else under the sun?

Running the circle back to where it started, we come to an inevitable truth. No nation can be Christian if it is not a nation of Christians. In the same way that a nation of Nigerians cannot be be Laplandish nation, allowing non-Christians to be citizens (let alone judges) turns a Christian nation into a secular nation.

To put it another way, Christians can be citizens within any nation, but a Christian nation can never tolerate non-Christian citizens. Christians are to obey (in secular matters) and pray for the lawful authorities even when their official policy is our extermination. But our laws for ourselves cannot be applied to non-Christians.

I have rambled on, but the Christian nation can only be one of three things. First, it can be a farce, as in a nation that claims to be Christian and yet refers to the unnatural sexual union of two men or two women a marriage. Second, it can be a polite lie describing a nation that was once Christian and takes influence from Christianity, but is filled with non-Christians. Third, it can be a nation of Christians ruled by Christians.

Next: Joshua 8:33