What’s wrong with a Wall?

This is going to be a very loaded essay on our times. The week before Christmas saw some of the most volatile moments of politics in the history of the United States. A partial government shutdown is in place as President Trump and the Democrat Party leadership in the U.S. Congress and Senate fight over the Budget to fund the government for the next two years. The main issue of contention is the funding of President Trump’s proposed wall on the southern border of the United States with Mexico. What he is asking for in particular is $5 billion to build the wall. Now while that number seems large to the regular guy walking on the street, it is miniscule in comparison to the other items that are proposed funding in the Budget. For example the Defense Department is asking for close to $740 billion to fund the armed forces and other endeavors. The Hudson Tunnel Project in New York City is designated to have close to $30 Billion. These are just a few of the items in the current Budget currently under contention. So money by itself is not the problem in regards to the proposed wall. It is a matter of “hubris”. As a matter of sheer politics, it for all purposes is an attempt by the Democrats and their media allies to embarrass and humiliate President Trump for the simple reason that the Wall is perhaps the foremost of his campaign promises from the last election. But putting the political considerations aside, I will address the frequent mention of “Jesus Christ” and so called “Christian thought” in regards to this issue by many on the liberal left in politics, the media, and from church leaders.

It is hard not to feel sorry about the plight of people who want to come into the United States, a pain felt even more so when one sees the images of children in the caravan who cry from hunger and sickness. But the wider issues are not being addressed by the media. The media’s reporting of the issue has been vastly one sided or played down very serious issues in regards to crime and citizenship. Those issues cannot be taken lightly and yet the demagoguery is unbelievable. As I said, the frequent use of “Jesus Christ” is the main issue here.

I find it appalling that politicians have ever read a Bible-the New Testament in particular. According to one congresswoman, Jesus Christ was “a refugee”. To another he was a “community organizer”. Christianity has been used to club the collective psyche. They do this despite the fact that former President Obama claimed that America is no longer a “Christian nation”. Ironically he did so to point out that the United States, under him, would not recognize the Bible or the Christian religion as the sole moral authority or foundation of this country and its policies. After all, Obama pointed out, this country has good people of Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and many other ideas in it! But without going to deeper into the political issues, the question remains: What is wrong with a wall?

One of the issues that really riles people about the claims of Jesus Christ is the exclusivity of His claims. Jesus said, “I am the way, the Truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me”-John 14:6. The Lord makes it clear, that there is no other way to God, no other way of Salvation, and especially no other conception of Truth outside Himself. That idea flies in the face of the conventional wisdom of the present day.

“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter by the door into the fold of the sheep, but climbs up some other way, he is a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is a shepherd of the sheep. To him the doorkeeper open, and the sheep hears his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he put s forth all his own, he does ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. A stranger they simply will not follow, but will flee from him, because they do not know the voice of strangers…Truly, Truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in an out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly”-John 10:1-10.

No wall in the literal sense-or in any other sense for that matter- is a monolith for the sake of putting up a barrier. There has always been a purpose for its raising and always a door within it to give access from the outside to the inside-or vice versa. In the ancient world, cities were surrounded by walls. It was a matter of security. Whatever commerce, engagements, travel, or anything else for that matter that happened would happen legally, safely, securely at the gate openly. This was true not only in Israel during the times of the Bible, but everywhere from China up Ireland. The idea of a border between states and territories as we know it today came about as greater technology that helped with security issues developed.

The idea of walls always denoted security, exclusivity, one did not cross that barrier without permission. One could not but by entering through a door. Jesus used the imagery of shepherding and the sheepfold. He refers to Himself as the Door and the Good Shepherd, and when one thinks about the Kingdom of God-any idea of it has absolutely nothing about open borders. Only a Door that is opened by Grace for now, but after death, it is forever closed. In eternity, when the New Jerusalem comes down from Heaven with its 12 gates, the idea of the Door still persists. No unpermitted access. Only by the Door, the Good Shepherd.

Why the wall? It is a message to the world-access is restricted. There is a difference between one territory and another. This place is different from that place. What is over there cannot come over here. That’s sort of thinking is not popular. It is not part of the romantic, humanistic ideals of John Lennon’s Imagine.

Like the issue that affects the government right now, there are groups like the Coexist movement and the Unitarian church who push the ideals of the Universal basic goodness, but they avoid looking at the specifics of their claims. Ironically they always make their claims on Christianity and ultimately, the only way to make their claims even plausible, “those fundamentalist, evangelical, Bible thumpers who believe in the literal interpretation of the Bible just need to shut up about their faith! After all they should just turn the other cheek and go the extra mile and be as tolerant as Jesus.” Unbelievable.

In the national issue, no one on the liberal left is going to talk about the security issues at play. One will not see in the media that hideousness of the drug cartels or the street gangs south of the border. They will not talk about the geopolitical situation in central America the near anarchy in El Salvador and the resulting violence in the streets of Los Angeles between Salvadorian and Mexican street gangs. None of this makes it to the press, just the one sided idiocy of CNN and Univision as they claim that President’s position on the matter is “racist”. (Lead anchor on Univision kept saying that “all the people in the caravans were people who were innocent people just looking for a better life in the United States-how could he possibly know?)

The details: if the claims of Jesus Christ is right, then anything else has to be totally wrong. The claims from Islam, the relativistic morality of Hinduism, the nihilism of Buddhism is completely false. And no adherent of any of these ideas or isms will enter the Kingdom of God.

The wall is the Holiness of the Almighty God. The Door: it is the Cross of Calvary.

Regardless of how the budgetary issue place out in Washington, there is not going to be any change of that matter in God’s Kingdom. One will have to accept the sacrifice of and the Savior of the Cross of Calvary, and enter that Door into that Kingdom or they can reject it-both happens on Earth. But there is not going to be any congress, parliament, or court to appeal to after this life is over. Anyone who pushes any divergent or different idea or even alludes about a purgatory or any other gatekeeper or intercessor-they are a liar.

There is only one mediator between God and man-the man Christ Jesus-I Timothy 2:5. “Having this attitude in yourself which was also in Christ Jesus, who although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason, also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on the earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

Either that claim will be accepted on earth, and thereby a person’s passport into eternal life will be stamped in the Blood of Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit-and entrance granted. Or it will be rejected on earth, acknowledged in Heaven before the Great White Throne Judgement before subsequently being denied access into the Kingdom of God and cast out in eternal damnation into the Lake of Fire. There is no middle ground.

Perhaps those liberals and leftist who try to bring Jesus Christ into their social/political issues will have second thoughts before they do so, and especially if they praying “…Thy Kingdom com and Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven!”