It’s one of those e-mails that just won’t die. They pop up again and again, right alongside the fake virus warnings (no, AOL didn’t say “This is the worst virus ever.”), the promises of money for forwarding a message (don’t hold your breath), and the offers of untold riches from a dear Christian brother in Nigeria (keep that bank account info to yourself). This one shares some of Teddy Roosevelt’s thoughts on immigration. If you haven’t seen it, you can read the e-mail and background information here on Snopes.com.
What’s troubling is that Christians pass this on as something that should be shared with others. They see nothing wrong with a message that proclaims that our sole loyalty should be to a certain earthly government.
Maybe this little exercise will help a bit. Just imagine that the apostle Paul sends this (Roosevelt’s piece, contextualized) to the Philippian church, asking them to share it will all of the other Macedonian churches. Paul writes: “In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes a Roman and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person’s becoming in every facet a Roman, and nothing but a Roman…There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is a Roman, but something else also isn’t a Roman at all. We have room for but one flag, the Roman flag… We have room for but one language here, and that is the Greek language… and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the Roman people.”
Just doesn’t sound like Paul to me. Just doesn’t sound very Christian to me. Not even if you go back and put American in where I inserted Roman. Or if you insert Jew and Jewish. When I think of what Paul would say, I think more along the lines of the following—
Philippians 3:19-21: “Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.”
Their mind is on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven. That sounds more like Paul. That sounds more Christian. (I can see it now: “Their mind is on heavenly things. But our citizenship is in _____.)
Maybe we’d be better off sending around Paul’s words, rather than Teddy’s.
[N.T. Wright has some interesting thoughts on Philippians 3 on this website]
[Edit at 10:45 a.m.—Changed the color of Paul’s imaginary e-mail so that it wouldn’t be the same color as other links]