Mr. Sessions Flunked Sunday School

photo by Joshua Owmen / flickr

I first thought I would entitle this piece: "Mr. Sessions Flunked Bible 1-A." But I was wrong.  He flunked Sunday School. He has tried to defend the racist immigration policy of the White House and the Republican Party by dragging in poor Paul. In defense of ripping children from the arms of their poor parents this is what he quoted. "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instructed from God."(Romans 13.1)

So keep your mouth shut and do whatever the government says. Ok. Remember Mormons and polygamy years ago. They footnoted male behavior by the Holy Bible. Remember slavery--you'll find some verses that punctuate the right to hold slaves. Remember all the stonings in the Bible--read Exodus or Joshua or Kings. God's people were bloodthirsty. And God-fearing. Just one example lest I bore you. "And all Israel stoned him to death; they burned them with fire, cast stones on them, and raised over him a heap of stones that remain to this day." (Joshua 7.25-26) Women were stoned in ways that can still be found in parts of the Middle East. Remember the culture's attitude toward women. Men were in charge. If women wanted to know anything they were to ask their husbands. They were to be silent. God knows what they might say. Remember our child labor laws. And Scriptures that proved that women had no right to vote. Remember the Civil rights movement and all those who hauled out all those Scriptures about Ham being cursed by his brother which translated we must put our heels on the blacks. Especially at the church-house door. Remember how we used the Bible to make sure homosexuals would never get full rights--and some places even advocated imprisonment or stoning. Remember how women could not hold offices in the church--not teach men (or male children) and for God's sake could not stand in the pulpit. Remember how the pathetic and frightened Evangelicals have sold their soul to a leader whose values are threadbare.

Mr. Sessions you can dig out all kinds of mean-spiritedness and hate in the Bible. And we must remember that there is a while lot of culture that seeped into the Bible. And then writers, like today, were good at propping up whatever cause they would defend or hate. Evangelicals take note.

Let your finger move from those terrible stoning passages and look at that other stream which is larger and long and healing. Words about loving your neighbor. Words about taking in the immigrant and embracing the stranger. Words about how we are to treat little children and big children too. Words about Jesus wept over the city that did not know.

We cannot hide behind the government's wrong-headed policies to affirm the cruelty of tearing up the families of the poor. Most of them fled from danger and thought this place called America would be a place of freedom and promise and hope.

Mr. Sessions should have read the whole chapter in  Romans. Maybe Paul even thought he had gone too far. In Romans 13--the same chapter--Paul also said: "Owe no one anything except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law." Then he quoted the 10 Commandments and added: This commandment sums up them all: "Love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law." (Romans 13. 8, 9b-10)

photo by  coasttocoastmove / flickr

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com