Immigration - Clash of Worldviews - Dr. Moore, ERLC vs Wolf Blitzer, CNN

Romans 13, Rule of Law, and the CNN Exchange on Immigration

All right, today we're going to look at Dr. Russell Moore's appearance on CNN's Wolf Blitzer show. He was brought on to talk about immigration and Romans 13 and Jeff Sessions, and he is an expert at Christian ethics and religious liberty, so this should be really good.

A comparison of worldviews of worlds colliding secularism, globalism versus Christianity and Christian culture. This is going to be epic. Let's check it out.

And that includes my next guest, Russell Moore. He's the president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. Dr. Moore, thanks so much for joining us as someone who knows the Bible as well as you do.

I wonder what goes through your mind when you hear the attorney general use it to defend this specific policy.

All right, here's what we're going to do. We're going to try to guess what goes through his mind. We're going to say, well, you know, Romans 13, it's obviously an important passage in the Bible, but because I know Russell Moore, he's against theocracy.

He's against theonomy. So he's going to say it doesn't really apply to this area, and so these are separate issues. What the Bible says about politics and government and how you should organize government, it doesn't really apply.

So that's what I think he's going to say. Let's see if I'm right.

Romans 13 and the Standard of God's Law

Well, we all have moments when we could use a little more time in Sunday school, and this is one of those moments for the Department of Justice. Romans 13 does not mean...

That was a good one, man. He made it funny. That was a good one. I like it.

That any law that the government passes or carries out is a good law or a just law.

Maybe he is a theonomist now. Romans 13 does not mean that every law a government passes is a good law or a just law. I completely agree with that, and the standard is God's law. So what we do is we go to the law of God and we determine what the general equity of that law is because it's not a one-to-one transition.

We understand that. There's a different cultural time, there's a different covenant and all that thing. So it's not a one-to-one thing, but we determine what the general equity that we can apply today is, the moral principles, if you will, and that's how we determine whether it's good or bad.

And so this is interesting. This is getting good.

This is getting real good. Romans 13 simply means that the governing authorities are put in place for a reason, and the reason, the apostle Paul says there in Romans 13, is to commend that which is good and to punish that which is evil.

It's also good. I mean, I'm getting pretty interested.

Here because what we do is the government is supposed to... Christians should be advocating for a government that approves and promotes what's good and restrains and punishes what is evil, and God is the standard.

You know, God tells us what is good and evil and what the government should and should not do against that good and evil in the scriptures. And that's what the general equity principle is all about. But, you know, I'm getting confused though, because, you know, a few years ago there was that woman who, she was like the county clerk or something, and she refused to approve same-sex marriages.

And I think if I'm not mistaken, Russell Moore said that he, she should resign if she couldn't do that law. Sorry, my brother is messaging me. But that's weird though, right? Because, like, if that's what Romans 13 means, then shouldn't that woman have done her job and not approved of what is evil as a government official?

Because God set her up there to do that. This is kind of confusing though, right? Like, Dr. Russell Moore is a little bit inconsistent here, I think. I wasn't sure if I was remembering this correctly.

Kim Davis, Jeff Sessions, and the Rule of Law

In fact, I was remembering this correctly. This is an article that Dr. Russell Moore wrote in 2015 regarding the Kim Davis situation. And here's what he says. He says, This is very typical of Russell Moore.

He's not saying it, but he is saying it. He's saying that because she can't uphold the duties of her position. So likewise, if Jeff Sessions can't uphold the duties that he's required to do, according to law, he's required to enforce this law at the border.

Should he resign and just let somebody else do it? There's obviously a imbalanced scale here. There's obviously an agenda here, and it has nothing to do with the biblical basis for the rule of law and doing your duties.

It's hard for me to imagine that children, uh, clinging to their parents in a very, very difficult time, uh, could be classified as evil. I think I understand what the attorney.

Attorney. Dr. Russell Moore saying that the reason that we're holding these children is because we think that they're evil or they they've committed a crime or they've done something evil noticing that there's two options here, because the one option is that Russell Moore doesn't know what he's talking about.

He's ignorant. He's just not intelligent about this. And I don't think that's true because he's got a PhD and, and he always struck me as a highly intelligent person. But the other option is that he's misrepresenting the truth on purpose to accomplish a different goal because nobody's arguing that the children have done evil.

And so we need to restrain the children. That's not the argument. So why would he say that?

Let's see. Maybe he explains himself. Attorney General is trying to say, uh, which is that we have, uh, we have a rule of law and we ought to observe that rule of law. I agree with that. I agree with that.

I agree with that. But I think surely, uh, as Americans, we can, but you don't agree with that because.

You're saying that sessions shouldn't enforce the law. So you, what you'd have to do is show how it's an unjust law and how Christians should not support it. But you don't believe in the rule of law in this case, unless you've established that.

But I think Dr. Russell Moore just thinks it's obvious. And it's not all that obvious to me.

Do better than this when it comes to vulnerable children who need their, need their parents. If we're pro family, we ought to recognize how important that is.

So he misrepresented the problem. He makes it seem like we're saying that the children are evil. He doesn't offer any biblical insight at all as to why this is an unjust law. He just kind of says that it is, or at least questions whether or not it is.

Was he, I mean, yeah, I think Dr. Russell Moore just got used or maybe not. Maybe he wanted to be used. If you want to be used and then you're used for the pagan, secular, you know, evil people in the United States, if you want to be used by them, are you really being used?

I don't know, but here's the problem. There was no collide of worldviews there. Their worldviews were exactly in line when it comes to this issue. And that's a problem, especially for the director of the ERLC of the Southern Baptist convention.

Immigration, Assimilation, and Biblical Law

In all seriousness, though, I think that this, this issue is not as crystal clear as a lot of people on the Christian left. And let's just call it what it is. I'm just going to call them the Christian left going forward.

But the Christian left is trying to make this seem like it's so obvious and so simplistic and all of that. And if you don't agree, then you're some kind of evil, racist, bigot monster. And that's just not the case at all.

This is, this is a much more complex issue than this. Now I tend to agree with an immigration policy that makes it quite easy to come here. So long as you're willing to assimilate to our culture, our rules and live by those rules as well.

In ancient Israel, the stranger that is so often referenced is somebody who was willing to live under Yahweh's because Israel was ruled by Yahweh himself. It was God's rule. It was a theocracy. And so those strangers, those foreigners, whether it was a Philistine or an Egyptian or whatever, they were allowed to be there and allowed to, to, you know, engage in, in, in trade and all these things within Israel, if they were going to follow Israel's law, God's law, the theocracy.

So they were going to be essentially assimilated into Israeli culture. It would be like a convert. Um, and so that's very different than what's being talked about now, because we're, we're being asked to take in as many of these refugees.

And we, you know, some of them are Christians. I would assume some of them have a Christian background, um, but also, uh, you know, Muslims that have no intention of, uh, of, of following God's law or anything like that.

In fact, they want us to follow their own pagan law. And so it's a very different thing that this kind of globalism, this kind of, uh, multiculturalism, that's not what the Bible had in mind, that Israel had one culture, one culture, they had multi ethnicities, but one culture.

Um, and so, um, that's a very different thing. And so this is a much more nuanced conversation than a lot of people like to make it seem, you know, frankly, Dr. Russell Moore thinks that we as Americans can do better.

Maybe he's right. He, I would probably tend to agree with that. Like I say, us Christians having these kinds of conversations, we can definitely do better. You don't just get to quote, love your neighbor as yourself and assume that everyone's on the same page.

That has a specific meaning and it has a contextual meaning. And that meaning has to do with the law of God. So if you're going to dismiss the law of God out of hand for the nation, the way that Russell Moore does, I mean, I've seen him write articles about how God's law it's would be terrible for the United States.

Well, if that's your position, then you're going to have to explain yourself when you start using God's law to defend certain things. Anyway, I hope this is helpful. God bless.