Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, recently used the Bible to uphold the administration’s position on immigration enforcement (Link to his post is below).

What is most troubling about his defense of the administration’s immigration enforcement is not simply his conclusions, but the way the argument itself is framed. Again and again, opposition to current immigration policy and enforcement is caricatured as a desire for “open borders,” lawlessness, or disregard for public safety. That framing is false and it is becoming more false with each repetition.

Those of us raising objections are not arguing against law, order, or immigration enforcement. We are protesting the manner in which power is being exercised: the racist demonizing of immigrants and people of color, the blatant inhumane practices, the disregard for due process, the ignoring of court orders, the revoking of legal status of entire people groups, the use of dehumanizing detention facilities, the erosion of basic human rights, and the repeated use of excessive against immigrants and voices of dissent and in some cases lethal force, as seen in the deaths of Renée Goode and Alex Pretti. Not to mention all those who have died in ICE custody.

To collapse these concerns into a binary of “law and order versus chaos” is not honest argumentation. It is narrative control. And when the state persistently frames reality only in ways that justify its own authority, that is not truthfulness, it is propaganda.

From this mischaracterization, Mr. Johnson then appeal to Scripture, particularly Romans 13, to sanctify a vision of government authority that demands submission while refusing accountability. That is not a faithful reading of the text.

Romans 13 does not describe power as self-justifying. Paul’s language assumes order, God’s order, not merely authority. The governing authorities are said to be “instituted by God” only insofar as they serve the good, restrain evil, and act justly (Romans 12). To invoke Romans 13 while excusing the misuse and abuse of power is to sever authority from the very order that gives authority legitimacy. If God is a God of order, then those who write, interpret, and enforce laws are no less accountable to God than those who break them.

It is worth remembering that Paul himself, the author of Romans 13, was repeatedly arrested, imprisoned, and ultimately executed by governing authorities because he refused to comply when their commands violated God’s justice. Paul did not preach blind submission to power; he lived a life of costly resistance to unjust authority.

Scripture is filled with such examples. The Hebrew midwives defied Pharaoh and were blessed by God for it. Daniel refused the king’s decree and was thrown to the lions. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego rejected the authority of the empire and were cast into the fire. Rahab lied to protect the spies against decree of the king and was honored in the lineage of Christ. The prophets consistently stood against kings, priests, and empires, calling them to account for their violence against the poor, the foreigner, and the vulnerable. In every one of these cases, faithfulness to God required disobedience to unjust power.

Mr. Johnson is correct that Scripture demands both justice and mercy. But justice in the Bible is never reduced to enforcement alone. Justice names how power is exercised, who is protected, and who is crushed in the process. A government that indiscriminately detains people in inhumane ways and conditions, ignores judicial oversight, strips people of due process, and treats human lives as expendable and without dignity is not “bearing the sword” faithfully, it is abusing it.

Finally, we must reckon honestly with who the Bible belongs to. Scripture was written by people who knew slavery, forced migration, exile, and occupation. It is the testimony of a people liberated from empire, wandering as refugees, and living under foreign domination. To read the Bible primarily as a defense of modern empire without centering the cries of the least among us is to read it against its own grain.

Those with power in our nation today have far more in common with Rome than with first-century Palestinians living under Roman occupation. And when Scripture is used to shield power from critique rather than to call it to repentance, it is not being honored, it is being weaponized.

This is not even to mention how we live in a constitutional republic and our democracy should be directed by the constitution and not the interpretation of the Bible from a single Christian sect.

The Bible does not ask us to choose between order and compassion, law and humanity. It demands that those who wield power do so justly, humbly, with integrity, and with the knowledge of the gravity of their responsibility. Anything less is not biblical faithfulness. It is a distortion and it comes at the expense of the very people Scripture most consistently defends.

Mr. Johnson’s post: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1CHwyw8qMj/?mibextid=wwXIfr​

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