Use the Bible Carefully

The US Attorney General and the White House Press Secretary both recently cited the Bible in defense of a new US policy to tear children from their parents at the southern border, so I can't really help but write something about that, and I encourage everyone reading this to speak out in some way against this as well, wether publicly or privately. (And my apologies for the formatting here; I'm doing this from my phone.)

All I really have to say is that just because something happens in the Bible doesn't mean it's a prescription for how we should act today. You can pick passages that support genocide against neighboring people groups, obeying the law whatever it may be because government is from God, and even dashing the infants of your enemies upon rocks, if you want to take Psalms literally. But you shouldn't.

That's missing the big picture and the overall message of scripture, and it's just blatant picking and choosing the bits and pieces you want.

And I will concede that we all are guilty of this at times. Everyone who takes Christianity seriously will inevitably misuse, misread, and misinterpret the Bible to bolster whatever view they already hold. We're separated by language, culture, and context, after all. It can be tricky to know how to apply the range of sometimes-contradictory teachings within the Bible. In the end, we all have to "pick and choose," and while there are better and worse ways to do that, none are perfect. But there's a serious and significant difference between doing so to help make the world a more inclusive and loving place--in the spirit of what Jesus said was the summation of scripture and the most important commmand--and doing so to justify the separation of families at a border or any other form of injustice and oppression.