Aylesbury LIFE because Learning Is For Everyone

It is sometimes seen as old fashioned to use the bible to support moral views and matters of politics. However this has not always been so. The slaves who changed the system criticised by William Wilberforce are a case in point. The present Archbishop of Canterbury is another. It is not always popular to see and to seek a better way of doing things. But women and men of courage know there is no better way to follow.

In this case I am arguing for a person whose actions meet the criteria for mercy established over thousands of years for the life of the people of God. I am standing against a policy that has its foundations in the relatively recent humanist traditions of some hundreds of years.

The person who provides the focus here is Mr Guy Njike who is currently set to be deported from England. The reasons why he should stay are set out quite clearly elsewhere. Please tell the Home Secretary to stop the deportation of Guy. You might also want to sign the online petition to stop the deportation of Guy Njike directly.

In this case Guy is paying his way. He paid taxes on what he earned. And yet in the paradoxical world of English immigration policy you are apparently critised equally whether or not you bring economic benefit to the country.

For those who like to think themselves good upright citizens and yet agree wholeheartedly with current immigration policy, I offer a couple of thoughts that may help you to change your mind. Several thousand years ago the people of God were instructed by him to be generous to the foreigners in their midst. For example, in the bible we read:

"When you harvest the crops of your land, do not harvest the grain along the edges of your fields, and do not pick up what the harvesters drop. Leave it for the poor and the foreigners living among you. I am the Lord your God."

That Godly imperative to have a heart for the least well off among us (and worldwide) never changed. Again God speaks to his people:

"So you, too, must show love to foreigners, for you yourselves were once foreigners in the land of Egypt."

Again one of the great prayers in the Bible declares:

The Lord protects the foreigners among us. He cares for the orphans and widows, but he frustrates the plans of the wicked.

This truth was lived out perfectly and without out fault by only one person, ever. His name is Jesus. He lived and died as a human to make the forgiveness of God available to all. Today, he lives at God's right hand and is praying on our behalf. One of the first people chosen by Jesus to lead the early churches wrote to them and to us:

Now all of us can come to the Father through the same Holy Spirit because of what Christ has done for us.

So now you Gentiles are no longer strangers and foreigners. You are citizens along with all of God’s holy people. You are members of God’s family. Together, we are his house, built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. And the cornerstone is Christ Jesus himself.

It was not difficult to chose these quotations that clearly support the view to offer protection to Guy, although I am not a Bible scholar. This is because the Bible is shot through and through with and reflects the fact that God is on the side of the underdog.

My prayer is in two parts, that the Home Secretary will protect Guy among us, and that our lives, laws and policies will reflect more the desires and purposes of Him who loves us.

We love each other because He loved us first.