Dividing Families

It’s not every day that the Bible becomes the top trending topic on Twitter, but it did last Thursday (June 14) from 6-9 p.m. CDT. During that time, a popular Bible site, biblegateway.com, experienced a spike in traffic.

What set off this frenzy of Bible reading? And what part of the Bible were people reading? It was a speech that Attorney General Jeff Sessions gave in the hometown of my alma mater, Fort Wayne, Indiana. He said, “I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the government for his purposes.”

Sessions’ interpretation of Paul is the plain, uncontested meaning of the following passage:

“Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath but also for the sake of conscience” (Rom. 13:1-5 ESV).

Johnnie Moore

Nevertheless, some religious figures attacked Sessions. The Washington Post reported that Johnnie Moore, spokesman of President Trump’s evangelical advisory board, said, “While Sessions may take the Bible seriously, in this situation he has demonstrated he is no theologian.” But neither Moore nor any other critic offered an alternate interpretation of the passage.

If Sessions is judged as a substandard theologian for merely summarizing the words of Holy Scripture, what standard outside of Scripture is being used? The reality is that Sessions’ real “sin” is in using the Scriptures at all.

It’s not that he misinterpreted or misapplied the passage from Romans 13. After all, he didn’t claim that the Scriptures dictate current U.S. policy at the border. Others are doing that, not Sessions. All he claimed from Scripture is that the authority of governments comes from God and therefore merits some respect and deference while we work together to make policy better.

Anarchy is evil. Government is from God. It’s a simple proposition that any decent theologian ought to recognize even while striving against unjust laws. Pro-life people recognize this every day while striving to reinstate protections for human beings that have been stripped by activist courts. 

The Twitter storm was not brought on by a poor interpretation of Scripture. It was, rather, a reaction against the use of Scripture at all. What happened to Sessions is no different from what happened to Russell Vought a year ago when Bernie Sanders took him to task for paraphrasing John 3:18 and believing it to be true.

Franklin Graham

The unfortunate thing, in this case, is that many religious people—both conservative and liberal—jumped on the dogpile. It is worth stepping back to see what unfolded and to learn from it.

In the days before Sessions’ remarks, the Rev. Franklin Graham, the Southern Baptist Convention in Texas and a gathering of Roman Catholic bishops in Florida, all expressed concerns about the separation of families in the process of enforcing immigration laws on our southern border. However, after Sessions’ speech, these same statements were woven into media reports as though they were direct attacks on Sessions’ remarks.

For instance, Bob Smietana wrote in Trends & Facts, “Few religious groups or leaders seemed to agree with Sessions’ use of Romans 13—or with separating children from their parents at the border. ‘It’s disgraceful,’ Franklin Graham, head of Samaritan’s Purse, told CBN. ‘It’s terrible to see families ripped apart and I don’t support that one bit.’”

But Graham had spoken these words on the Tuesday before Sessions spoke, and he had spoken them in rebuke of Congress, not the executive branch. Smietana’s wordsmithing is just one of numerous articles that left many with the confused impression that conservative Christian leaders were piling onto Sessions.

This fake news was mixed with more confusion still. Family separations that happened under previous administrations were re-reported as though they were brand new developments resulting from Sessions’ policy. We saw a photograph strategically cropped to tell a false story, and the cover of Time Magazine airbrushed a child’s mother out of the picture.

All this fake news created a Facebook firestorm that pitted religious people against religious people and friends against friends. Some wanted to be consistent in their compassion for families through an unmitigated denunciation of the Trump administration. Others, desiring to push back against the fake news, vilified previous administrations while giving Trump’s administration a pass. Both were unwise.

Now that the fog of war is clearing, let’s take a moment to reaffirm friendships and learn some lessons.

Lesson No. 1: While every discussion of public policy involves bedrock principles that relate to the very reality of God Himself, we must always be wise enough to see the difference between the unbendable principles themselves, and how other bedrock principles also come into play.

God Himself creates families through a mother and a father. These are the fundamental units of society and, “what … God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matt. 19:6). Neither the government from outside, nor the parents and children from inside, should do anything that breaks up the family. That’s the bedrock principle.

Our responsibility as individuals and as a society is to protect families. As individuals, we should do absolutely everything in our power to hold our own families together. As a society, we should never let government be an incentive for family breakup—whether through immigration policies, welfare policies, unjust divorce and surrogacy laws or abortion policies.

But when a family member threatens other family members with harm (like substance abuse, physical abuse, etc.) governments and neighborhoods must sometimes step in to protect individuals who are put at risk. This requires great wisdom, restraint and reverence. It is never an ideal situation. It should not be seen as the natural state of affairs, but as a terrible and temporary exception.

Lesson No. 2: “Be wise as serpents and gentle as doves” (Matt. 10:16). Wisdom means understanding your real enemy. Your enemy is Satan, not your fellow citizen. When there is a disagreement in understanding, it is never okay to attack others personally. We should treat our neighbors as family—whether it be a stranger commenting on your page, a president making policy or anyone in between.

By dove-like gentleness we can come to understand one another. By screaming harshness, we only break up the human family further. Understand that Satan’s purpose is to use falsehood and distortion of reality to breed hate and distrust. He cares less about public policy than he does about fomenting public strife. If we keep this firmly in mind, we will all be better for it.

Lesson No. 3: Government is indeed established by God. That doesn’t mean that it is always right, but it does mean that every government official must answer to a higher authority. The same is true of every citizen who speaks and votes. This requires humility, not hubris. To be one nation means to be “under God,” because good and evil—the bedrock principles that govern our lives—are divine realities, not human constructions.

As we reason together in the public square, let us all humble ourselves before the One who created all things and all people. In this way we will gain both the wisdom of serpents and the gentleness of doves.