Christians are commanded to love their neighbor, but Birmingham pastor Rich Lusk said that Christian kindness is often exploited to guilt American evangelicals into accepting mass immigration to the detriment of their communities.
Lusk, who pastors Trinity Presbyterian Church, joined "1819 News: The Podcast" last week to explain how Christians should react to immigration issues and continue "holding back the dam of progressivism."
"A lot of money has been funneled in, basically to say that, look, if you really are a compassionate Christian person, then of course you should recognize that everybody in the world has the right to be an American," Lusk said. "I mean, that's really what this comes down to. And so, therefore, who are you to turn anybody away or deport someone, you know? So basically, it has to be a borderless society."
Lusk said the Bible had "a lot to say" about immigration and emphasized the difference between addressing the political issue versus individuals.
"How we treat individual immigrants we come across is a separate issue from how we look at it, or a distinct issue from how we look at it politically. Obviously, we love everybody that's made in God's image," he said. "We would show kindness to anybody whose path we come across, all of that. But politically, I think there are very strong and compelling biblical reasons to oppose what is happening right now in our nation."
Lusk said he was suspicious of recent efforts to flood smaller towns with Haitian immigrants, an obvious attempt at altering the political makeup of certain areas, he said.
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"I have to admit, I'm very cynical when I look at, especially in the run-up to an election… [Y]ou talked about the program bringing in certain immigrants and then dropping them off in various towns and cities," he said. "And it's hard to not be a little bit suspicious of this, that this is an attempt to... I don't think that the Democrats who are driving this are doing it in the name of compassion. I certainly don't think that. I do think they're doing it in an effort to remake the electorate, which is, I mean, that's the real threat to democracy in our nation right now, the remaking of the electorate through illegal immigration. I think it's being done as a way of further undermining and subverting what's left of Christian culture and Christian identity in our nation."
Lusk said by allowing mass immigration and sending billions to foreign countries while Americans suffer at home, the federal government has shown a pattern of valuing non-citizens over citizens.
"It's an egregious sin on the part of our rulers to do this. The Bible actually talks about civil rulers as fathers," he said. "They are civil fathers… You've got natural fathers in the home, in the family, familial fathers, we could call them. You've got ecclesiastical fathers with pastors and elders in the church, and you've got civil fathers, civil magistrates in the civil sphere, in the political realm or in the state. And as fathers, they should take care of the citizens in a way that is analogous to the way a father would take care of his children, and that's not happening, obviously. So those are questions to be raised.
He continued, "The money that's being used to basically bribe these local officials in places like Sylacauga or Springfield, the local citizens are going to see very little of that money... What they are going to see is overcrowded schools, overrun hospitals, rents increasing because of greater demand. And basically, now the local citizens of those communities have to compete with government checks coming in for the immigrants to pay for their rent. Obviously, the citizens aren't getting that kind of help, so it's harming them."
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