Sessions’ comments unbiblical, contradictory to Christian faith

Attorney General Jeff Sessions attempted to use the Bible on June 14 to support the United States’ decision to separate the children of illegal immigrants from their parents. Sessions cited Romans 13 while speaking on immigration in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

“To obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order,” Sessions said. “Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves and protect the weak and lawful.”

I am not a Christian, but a childhood in the church and a pastor as an adoptive father has afforded me an arguably strong knowledge of what the Bible says.

Firstly, in the same passage Sessions quoted, the Apostle Paul, who wrote Romans to the budding church in Rome, is talking about taxes, not about tearing children from their parents. Secondly, Paul later commands readers to do what is right. He defines right as, “Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law.”

And, let us not forget the context of this particular gospel. Paul was writing to the Roman church, who were under constant persecution. Christianity was illegal, because worshiping Christ as the only god went in direct contradiction to the Roman pagan religion, and the emperor’s own sovereignty. So, Attorney General Sessions, if the early church applied this verse as literally as you would have the American people believe it, they would give up Christ and follow the law of the Roman Empire.

While in jail in Birmingham, Alabama, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, “One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws... An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.”

Sessions’ justification for tearing families apart is contradictory to the Christian faith, whose greatest two commandments, according to Jesus himself, are to love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength; and to love your neighbor. The Bible also commands us to welcome sojourners and wanderers, “for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.”

The United States’ decision to continue this behavior is immoral, cold-hearted and shows how our government sees no humanity in these families’ desperateness for a better life. Even in keeping them in holding cells like animals, the U.S. government has the audacity to take children away from their parents.

So, Attorney General Sessions, I leave you with this verse from Matthew 25. “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For 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.”