theo|digital

Nathan P Brown – former I-Lifer turned genius advertising producer – just finished producing a video short for World Vision about their athletic team program running for 6000 children that are orphaned daily due to AIDS.

Everyone’s reporting this one this morning, but I liked this global take:

Compassion asked for immigration status of missing soldier’s wife
By Yadira Betances , Staff Writer
Eagle-Tribune

LAWRENCE – The potential deportation of the wife of a soldier missing in Iraq has put the spotlight on two of the nation’s most volatile issues – illegal immigration and the war in Iraq.
…

The rest of the article.

Is anyone else confused on where to land on the issue of immigration? Supporting deportation and a fat fence seems so heartless… social compassion is usually my starting place. But as Ron Paul, Republican candidate for President, noted in a CNN debate, “if you subsidize something you get more of it,” speaking of allowing those who enter the US illegally to file for legal status. This makes sense to me… my degree in economics gives me a soft spot for arguments using words like “incentives.” And I was also surprised to find myself agreeing with raging conservative Congresman Tancredo whose hard stance on English-only made more sense when he reminded us how central language is to culture… and how countries with split language issues tend to be unstable.

But the hard part for me isn’t sorting through policy with a pragmatic value system. It’s trying to decide what the moral thing is in the first place.

Years ago I tried to erase the “Christian politics” I had learned growing up, and made an attempt to start over without a mental party affiliation – trying with each issue to wonder at God’s opinion. What does a compassionate and just God think of this? How should we govern if we wanted to match his heart?

This is what makes me both conservative and liberal at the same time (and incidentally what the mainstream press is only just starting to get recently… that the under-25 crowd is not just “moderate politically,” but actually tends to be strongly opinionated simultaneously on both “sides” of the chart. We all know that the polar “liberal” vs. “conservative” feels simply inapplicable).

But illegal immigration? God demanded equal treatment of foreign nationals in the nation of Israel (Numbers 15)… but what else do I have to go on? What would God do? I’m just not sure.

A minister tells of trying to lead home Bible studies among the poor of Northern Mexico. In such studies participation is, of course, always encouraged. He related that, at the beginning, he would read a passage from scripture and ask, “What do you think?”

No response. Just silence.

Over and over this happened. Finally he realized that no one ever asks the poor what they think. That also is part of what it means to be poor “in spirit.” No one imagines you could have any thoughts worth sharing.

~ Dallas Willard in The Divine Conspiracy

There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.

But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable…

The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.

~ CS Lewis from The Four Loves (in my currently reading box ->)

I’ve returned from the I-Life trip to New Orleans. Quite an experience… and I forgot to mention it before, but I’ve been spending the whole trip keeping a seperate blog about it. I also got to be the photographer – and really enjoyed it. check it out at ilifeneworleans.blogspot.com.

We just spontaneously sent a crew of students down to assist with relief efforts in Baton Rouge. I wrote an announcement article for www.illinilife.org – check it out. This is really cool.