When I took family vacations as a child—long before GPS—I always volunteered to serve as the navigator, guided by our gas station maps.

Most markings on the maps indicated something visible: roads, railroads, rivers, lakes and towns. But one thing very prominent on the maps was invisible to the eye: the borders that indicated city limits, county lines, state boundaries and national borders. A sign might say that we had moved into new territory, but there was no dashed or colored line on the ground as was on the map.

An old proverb says, “When the map and the terrain differ, the terrain is always right.”

The map says there’s a boundary in certain places, but the terrain recognizes no such thing. God did not create the world with boundary lines. They are something we humans superimposed on it all in an effort to protect and organize ourselves. God’s world has no borders.

Yes, I know about Deuteronomy 32:8. “When the High God gave the nations their stake, gave them their place on Earth, he put each of the peoples within boundaries under the care of divine guardians. But God himself took charge of his people, took Jacob on as his personal concern.” But this verse is not saying that all national boundaries are divinely given and can never be changed. And of course, that hasn’t happened. Rather, it declares that when God assigned supernatural powers to oversee various people groups, the Lord gladly assigned himself to watch over Israel. 

Later God promised Abraham a land with borders from the river of Egypt to the Euphrates (Genesis 15:18-21). God also gave detailed boundaries for the twelve tribes of Israel in the books of Joshua and Ezekiel. Initially God commanded Israel to rid the land within these borders of certain Canaanite groups. That, however, is not a general command for other times or places. For a more lasting and general command, check out Leviticus 19:34, “You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself.” 

Now that Jesus has come, the people of God have no need themselves to maintain national borders. The nations may still think we need them, and will kill a lot of people, spend a lot of money, and cause a lot of misery to maintain or expand those borders. But the people of God live and move everywhere and are called to love everyone–even those who cross borders. 

So why are so many Christians today are so riled up about undocumented aliens? Maintaining boundaries to keep others out is human rule, not a God-ordained command. Unlike stealing and killing (which are inherently evil), moving from one area of the world to another is not inherently evil. Jacob moved his family to Egypt in order to find food during a famine. Joseph and Mary brought baby Jesus to Egypt to escape a hostile king. I’m sure these people of faith were glad that there was no Egyptian ICE to return them to Canaan. 

So many Christians in the US speak as if violating immigration laws is one of the worst of all possible sins. Of course, God gives us a general rule to obey the government, but human laws about procedures are not nearly as important as God-given commands about morality. I know that there are those who claim”when these undocumented people cross the border, they steal our goods, take away our jobs, rape and kill our family members, and drain our government of resources.” But studies I’ve seen indicate that undocumented people as a whole make good neighbors, obey the law, often work at jobs other Americans don’t want, reduce crime rates and make positive contributions to society. 

Moreover, many of these same outraged Christians are just as guilty of violating other human laws. We speed on the roads causing far more deaths in the US than murders committed by undocumented aliens. But we keep speeding anyway. We fudge numbers in order to save on taxes. We set off fireworks illegally that cause fires, and maim, even kill people. 

And why do we break human rules? Undocumented people usually do it out of a desperate need to escape oppression and persecution and to provide for their vulnerable children. But documented people do it to save a few minutes driving, to have some extra money or, ironically enough, to go “ooh-aah” in celebrating a nation of laws. Compared to what motivates undocumented people, our reasons for breaking human rules are pretty paltry. If there’s to be moral outrage, it should be directed at us. Imagine if the government cracked down on speeders in the same way that it cracks down on undocumented people—perhaps confiscating our cars if we drove two miles over the limit? 

Jesus criticized the Pharisees with these words, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness” (Matthew 23:24). American Christians are doing the same thing. We get irate over people breaking human rules (even deporting undocumented people because a headlight was burned out), but we ignore basic moral issues like justice for the oppressed, mercy for desperate people who come to our land, and faithful compassion for those in need, even those who don’t or can’t follow governmental procedures.

I realize that having totally open borders is a formula for chaos. Legislators need to make difficult choices with limited resources. I’m sure it’s hard to know what to do. But we Christians can certainly do a better job of remembering God’s call to love strangers as ourselves. Why then such enthusiasm for blocking or deporting desperate people?

We serve a God without borders in a world created without borders.

Header photo by Ioann-Mark Kuznietsov on Unsplash
Arid hills photo by David Dvořáček on Unsplash