You know what shook me when I was Muslim?
The story of Hosea. God tells a prophet to marry a woman He knows will betray him.
She does. She runs to other men. She ends up enslaved, sold, used up, worthless to the world.
And God tells Hosea to go BUY HER BACK.
To pay money for his own wife who cheated on him, and love her again. Hosea 3.
I thought it was the most humiliating command in the Bible. Why would any man do that?
Then I realized I was the wife.
I gave my heart to everything but God. I chased other masters. I sold myself cheap. I made myself worthless.
And God looked at me, the betrayer, and didn’t say “you’re not worth it.”
He said, “Name the price. I’m buying her back.”
That’s the Gospel. God doesn’t wait for the unfaithful to come crawling back clean.
He pays to redeem them while they’re still dirty.
Islam told me to make myself worthy of God.
Hosea showed me a God who pays to redeem the unworthy.
The cross was Him naming the price.
Praise the Lord.
Hello Mr. Kristol,
The verse you cite is from Leviticus, right alongside the passages on same-sex relations that you so readily dismiss.
But setting that aside, you're misreading the historical context. Leviticus 19:33–34 was written for Israel while the Hebrews were in the wilderness after the Exodus. There was no modern nation-state with fixed borders or an immigration system. Israel was a covenant community, not a country defined by territorial boundaries.
A "sojourner" wasn't simply someone standing inside an invisible border. A sojourner was a foreigner living among Israel who accepted Israel's civil order and lived under its laws. That's why the same Torah you hijack says there should be "one law for the native and for the sojourner." The defining feature wasn't physical location... it was membership in, and submission to, the covenant community.
Using Leviticus 19:33–34 as an argument against modern immigration enforcement ignores the historical and legal context in which the passage was written.
I bring home a trapped coyote and let it loose in the kitchen.
Hackles up. Teeth bared. Pissing on the floor.
My wife says, "Get it out."
I tell her that is a very unwelcoming and unchristian way to speak about a future house pet.
The children back into the hallway.
I tell them it's a rescue.
I tell them fences are fear.
I tell them cages are barbaric.
I tell them the old rules were cruel.
I tell them it will domesticate in time.
Then I grab my lunchbox and leave them to live with my principles.
When I get home, there is blood on the floor, and the experts who sold me on compassion are already explaining why nobody could have seen this coming.
Anyway, that's Western migration policy.
I gave her every opportunity to say Americans don’t need Coca-Cola to survive. She wouldn’t do it.
This is who Democrats brought to defend food stamps.
I’m fighting for a western civilization where none of them had to die.
We’re not fighting red vs. blue.
We’re fighting good vs. evil.
Darkness vs. light.
We must win.