Categorical Malformation
Thinking through immigration from a Jesus perspective
Today’s post is a short one. I’m linking to the most recent podcast episode of BICLife which looks at the subject of immigration. We had a fantastic guest named Rebekah Teuscher who is involved in working with refugees and immigration and she had some awesome stuff to teach us during the episode, so check it out!
One cool thought from the episode came when she was talking about how modern immigration categories can affect how we understand or relate to people in the immigrant or refugee population. She said that while modern immigration categories can be helpful for having more precise policy conversations, they can run the risk of malforming us into believing the lie that some people matter more than others.
I thought that was a fantastic insight because when we limit our love (or our help or our service) to only the categories that we approve of, we’re getting the love of Jesus wrong. We’re going against the example, teachings, and desire of Jesus himself.
Check out the whole of the episode on Youtube, the podcast website, or anywhere you get your podcasts. And check out Rebekah Teuscher’s original blog post that got this conversation started for us.