Spirit of Dialogue

My reason for blogging is not to try to convince people into believing what I believe. In fact, I think if we make this blog about that, then we will miss out on the fantastic opportunity we have to learn from one another. The assumption I have is that we will post thoughts from our experience and learning recognizing that others will have different ways of seeing things and thus enriching our dialogue.

Friday, June 11, 2010

Immigration and Arizona

I emailed out to the church I pastor a letter that a pastor wrote to his church regarding the New Arizona law and immigration reform. I invited response from our church was not let down. There is definitely no shortage of opinions and feelings on the matter and so I thought we could talk about it a bit here.

Some of the comments I received were more of a party line answer but many were heartfelt and relayed personal experience and fears. There were no surprises as to what the fears were. There were those who leaned on to the law of the land as being supreme while others favored compassion. Some wrestled with both in their email to me.

Overall I was impressed with the transparency people communicated how they felt and some of the driving fears and concerns they had. It made me wonder if we were to approach this issue with a bit more vulnerability and putting some weight on what truly is our concern rather than on the party line if we might make more progress in our national conversation.

Back to the seeming dichotomy of law vs compassion: How do we take seriously the emphasis the Bible puts on compassion especially for the "foreigner" among us while still being a nation with laws and one that is democratically governed?

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