Keep the Christ in Christian

Not every post wrapped in Scripture is biblical. Christian nationalism isn’t Christianity. Silence isn’t an option for those who know Jesus.

I did not want to write this. I want to write something joyful.

But when Pastor Greg Laurie published a post like this one (first published on June 11, 2025), shared by thousands, read by even more, one of the top hits on Google news when “Christianity and immigration” is searched (as of June 21, ten days later), and claiming the authority of Christ while weaponizing the words of Scripture against those most vulnerable; I feel not just the moral obligation but the spiritual calling to respond. Why? Because, simply put, this is not Christianity.

And when something parades itself as Christ, but offers no cross, no kinship, no mercy; when it elevates order over love, and nation over neighbor; I feel compelled to say something. Not because I enjoy it, but because silence would be complicity.

Pastor Greg’s church, Harvest, is located in my hometown. I remember how it grew. I had many friends start going there when I grew up, all telling me their church was cool. My family stuck with mine. For which I was grateful, as I had always felt God at church growing up. I didn’t need cool, when even at a young age I experienced holy.

Over the years, Harvest has been celebrated as one of the “most successful” churches in America. And like many churches that measure holiness by headcount, it’s offered the kind of Christianity that feels safe and shiny.

They, like many Christian nationalists I’ve observed, love Christmas the most, shouting out about keeping the Christ in Christmas. Maybe because it’s the holiday where the baby makes no cries and the carols ring out soft and nostalgic. But they seem to want nothing to do with the Jesus who grew up and taught us to love our enemies, care for the poor, and welcome the stranger. Baby Jesus is good, quiet, easy to celebrate. Adult Jesus is too loud, too demanding, too unrelenting.

Instead, they offer a sanitized Christ. A Jesus scrubbed free of the dirt of the road, the company of the outcast, the agony of Gethsemane, and the scandal of grace. And so when Pastor Greg posts a piece like this one, claiming biblical clarity while ignoring the entire thrust of Jesus’ ministry and teachings, I have to speak. When a pastor offers a public teaching claiming the authority of Scripture, yet neglects its full weight while proof-texting out of context, I cannot simply pass by. Not out of anger, but out of grief. Not out of partisanship, but out of faith.

This post is not about politics; although it is certainly political. It is about the soul of the faith we claim. Christian nationalism (the belief that America is or should be a Christian nation, ordained by God and protected by a blend of theology and military might) is not only historically false, it is spiritually dangerous. It merges the cross with the flag, the Beatitudes with border patrol, and sanctifies the very systems Jesus came to disrupt.

Ironically, Christian nationalists will often decry the use of politics behind the pulpit. Many find the teachings of Christ too “woke,” too impossible to even try. In doing so they mirror the sentiment that GK Chesterton wrote of, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.” So usually, when they decide that politics is okay to speak from their places of authority it isn’t from the Christian ideal, it is from the nationalistic ideal.

Please know, there is nothing Christian about Christian nationalism.

And this is what we see in Greg Laurie’s post. So let’s look at it, piece by piece.

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Greg Laurie’s first section:

LA Violence in Response to Immigration Raids

We are all alarmed by the rioting, looting, and destruction happening in Los Angeles and other cities across the country. This violence is tearing apart communities, hurting the innocent—and is just flat out wrong.

In the midst of this chaos, some of us Christians might be wondering, what does the Bible say about immigrants? It’s important for us to align our worldview with the Bible, and Scripture has a lot to say about the many issues we’re facing right now in culture. That includes immigration, border policies, and order.

This is where we start.

Pastor Greg opens not with Scripture, but with fear. He begins by condemning violence without nuance, and without any mention of the violence that is often done in the name of law and order. His immediate framing takes the side of the empire. He names the violence he sees as disruptive, but never considers the structural violence done to families torn apart, to those detained, to the trauma of raids, of deportations, of entire lives destabilized by bureaucracy and nationalism.

And yes, violence in the streets is not the way of Jesus. But neither is pretending that laws cannot be violent themselves.

The Bible does not shy away from the cries of the oppressed. Psalm 137 ends with a disturbing, visceral plea for vengeance, “Happy are those who take the babes of the Babylonians and smash them against the rocks.”

Revelation depicts cosmic judgment on imperial power. And since antiquity this enigmatic book has been the elixir of hope to oppressed peoples who knew that Christ was with them in the face of their oppression. Now, in the hands of churches of the empire, Revelation has become fear about end times, when it is still the cosmic and certain hope of the “healing of the nations.”

The daughters of Zelophehad in Numbers cry out to Moses and God for justice. They say the laws are unfair. At a time when women had no authority or recourse, they knew the laws of inheritance were wrong. They, five women, deserved to receive what is their father’s even though their father had no male heirs.

And you know what? Moses doesn’t argue. He doesn’t tell them they should never question God like that. With humility he turns without saying a word, and goes to God. And God agrees. God says, “The daughters are right.”

That’s Scripture. That’s holy. And it shows that there is a voice in our tradition for those who cry out in pain and anger. There is a voice even for those who cry out at the injustice of God’s laws in Scripture. These cries may not always be where the story ends, but it is where it begins.

Pastor Greg doesn’t acknowledge any of this. Instead, he starts with condemnation, not compassion. He does not pause to see another human being; he reacts to maintain a worldview and preserve a narrative. He does not ask why someone is hurting; he simply sees their pain as a threat. He starts with fear.

And that is not the posture of Christ.

Jesus always saw the person. Always started with compassion. Always began with kinship. Always questioned the laws that got in the way of love.

Which is why the times we see Jesus truly angry in the gospels, it is almost always towards religious authorities trying to use the Law to harm others. I suspect Jesus would respond to Pastor Greg with more fury than he would ever expect.

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Greg Laurie’s second of four sections:

What Does the Bible Say About Immigrants?

It’s true we find talk about welcoming a stranger in the Old Testament, but that’s only half of it. It doesn’t mean that our nation cannot have order in the process of doing so.

In fact, the expectation communicated in Scripture is that the stranger abides by the law of the land and assimilates.

There is a right way to come into our nation.

Here too, Pastor Greg never actually quotes the Bible. He references it, vaguely, but does not engage its demands. He admits the Old Testament talks about welcoming the stranger, but waves it off as “only half of it.” As if that somehow nullifies the force and frequency of those commands. But the Hebrew Bible is relentless on this point.

“Love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” “You shall have the same law for the stranger and for the native.” “Do not oppress the foreigner who resides in your land.”

Over and over, the Torah demands compassion, equity, and hospitality. It reminds us that the memory of our own displacement is what should shape our ethics. In fact, the Torah says it at least three times:

Exodus 12:49: “There shall be one law for the native and for the alien who resides among you.”

Leviticus 24:22: “You shall have one law for the alien and for the citizen: for I am the Lord your God.”

Numbers 15:15–16: “As for the assembly, there shall be for you and for the resident alien a single statute, a perpetual statute throughout your generations; you and the alien shall be alike before the Lord. You and the alien who resides with you shall have the same law and the same ordinance.”

And yet Pastor Greg leaps from this acknowledgment straight into nationalism: order, assimilation, legality. He invokes the Bible without its ethic.

And his idea that Scripture demands assimilation? That’s simply not true.

Yes, there were expectations for those who sojourned with Israel, Sabbath being a key one. But the Sabbath wasn’t a mere religious rule. It was economic justice. It applied to land, to animals, to immigrants, to the enslaved, to the powerful. It was God’s rhythm for a just world. And that’s the “law” the sojourner was invited into. A law of liberation, rest, and mutual care.

Laurie doesn’t cite that. He doesn’t mention the prophets who thundered against nations that mistreated the vulnerable. He doesn’t mention Jesus, who was himself a refugee in Egypt.

Nor does he mention the entire arc of the New Testament, which tears down the dividing walls between Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free.

Paul believed this so fiercely he sent a runaway slave (who wronged his master first) back to his master, and tells the “master” to receive him, “no longer as a slave, but as a beloved brother.”

Paul says, “In Christ, there is no longer slave or free,” because he believed it.

And here we are, often using Paul’s words in Romans 13 to justify persecution and dehumanization of people who are overwhelmingly Christians themselves.

That’s the truth: those being detained, deported, and denied refuge are often our own siblings in the faith. And yet we treat them as threats.

If we take to heart Jesus saying that others will know we are his followers by our love for each other; then the love “Christians” in America are showing the Christian immigrant siblings (both documented and not), shows that we are not followers at all.

Where is the kinship?

The very word kindness means kin-ness. It is rooted in the idea of family and how we treat family, our kin. When Micah speaks of God demanding that we do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly; loving kindness demands a widening of the idea of family.

And yet Pastor Greg speaks as though borders are more sacred than people. As though there is only one “right way” to come into our nation, without asking whether that way is just. But it seems he has not walked humbly enough with God to discern that, nor seems to possess the loving kindness necessary to understand the “do justice” part at all.

So we need to be faithful and say: this isn’t biblical faithfulness. It’s selective application of Scripture to sanctify nationalism. And that, too, is a kind of violence.

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Jesus didn’t build walls. He crossed them.

This is the first thing I want to say as we enter Pastor Greg’s third section. Because still, even here where he finally begins quoting Scripture, he never quotes Jesus.

Are Borders Wrong?

The right and necessity of a nation to be secure is something biblically supported.

There is a place for walls in America and other nations. What did Nehemiah go back to Jerusalem for? To rebuild the city walls (see Nehemiah 2:17).

Acts 17:26 says, “From one man he created all the nations throughout the whole earth. He decided beforehand when they should rise and fall, and he determined their boundaries” (NLT). God is in favor of borders.

The irony is glaring. Jesus’ entire life and ministry were spent crossing borders, both literal and cultural. He crossed into Samaria when Jews avoided it. He ate with tax collectors and sinners. He touched the unclean. He healed a Roman centurion’s servant, praised the faith of a Syrophoenician woman, and welcomed Gentiles, and outsiders of all kinds into the kingdom of God.

When he weeps over Jerusalem, it isn’t because it lacks walls. It’s because it has lost its soul. “If only you had recognized the things that make for peace!” he cries. And he tells his disciples that not one stone will be left on another.

Jesus’ posture is never one of stone-cold fortress. It is always one of warm embrace. And this absence of Jesus in Pastor Greg’s piece, even when quoting the Bible, is deeply telling. Because the only walls Jesus cared about were the ones in our hearts. The boundaries he came to break were spiritual, social, and economic. Walls of nations meant nothing to the One who told those who followed him to teach all the nations what he taught.

So what of the verses Pastor Greg cites?

First, Nehemiah. Yes, Nehemiah rebuilds the walls of Jerusalem. But context matters. Jerusalem had been ransacked and destroyed by empire. The wall-building was an act of rebuilding identity and stability after trauma. Even then, the prophets of the Hebrew Bible are not silent about the limits of walls. Zechariah 2 envisions a Jerusalem without walls, a city of open gates, because God will be its protection. Isaiah 60 imagines gates that stay open continually, not to be overrun, but to receive the abundance of the nations.

And then Acts 17:26. Pastor Greg quotes it to argue God supports borders. But he ignores that Paul is speaking to Greek philosophers at the Areopagus, trying to build a bridge between their understanding of the divine and the God revealed in Christ. Paul acknowledges that nations exist, that boundaries have emerged in history. But his next breath is to tear those boundaries down: “So that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For ‘in him we live and move and have our being.’”

In other words, the point of Acts 17:26 is not that God loves borders. It’s that despite them, God is near to all people. That we are all of one blood. That we live and move and have our being in God, who transcends all national lines.

Greg Laurie uses Acts to build fences. Paul used it to tear them down. Greg’s fences mean he can’t see the Christ in the other. Paul’s talk of borders was so that all could see God coming to them.

And again, what’s missing? The prophets. The dreamers of Scripture who envision a world where nations come together not through conquest, but through healing. Isaiah 2 and Micah 4 speak of swords beaten into plowshares, and nations streaming to learn God’s ways. Revelation ends with the gates of the heavenly city never shut, and the tree of life bearing fruit for the healing of the nations.

Yet American Christianity, in its obsession with militarized borders and national strength, has forgotten its Middle Eastern roots seeped in hospitality. Forgotten that it was born in Roman-occupied territory. Forgotten that its Messiah had to flee his homeland for Egypt, seeking refuge.

There is no gospel in gatekeeping. There is no salvation in separation. Only fear dressed up as faith.

The Bible may describe the rise and fall of nations. But it never confuses those nations for the Kingdom of God. Christian nationalism isn’t anything like the Kingdom of God. It’s just another nationalist ideology that rises and falls into the trash heap of idolatry and hate.

But often we confuse nations for the Kingdom of God. We do it more than we know.

And when we do, we don’t just misunderstand the Bible. We betray it and the Christ who crossed every border to reach us.

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Laurie’s final section is:

The Christian Response to LA Unrest

The violence taking place has to stop before lives are lost. I’m praying for a spiritual awakening in America, for hearts to turn to Jesus, and for our nation to find healing through God’s love.

As followers of Christ, we’re called to be peacemakers, not agents of chaos. Our elected officials have a God-given duty to protect their citizens, to stand for justice, and to restore order.

So let’s lift up our brave law enforcement, first responders, and military in prayer—they’re out there risking everything to keep us safe. Let’s stand together, shine His light, and seek peace.

Yes, of course we want peace. But “peace” is a complicated word in Scripture. As Isaiah warned, “Woe to those who cry, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.”

Because peace is not just the absence of chaos. It is not merely calm. True peace—biblical peace, shalom—is the presence of justice, of equity, of right relationship (which is the best way to describe what righteousness means). Peace that silences the oppressed is not peace. It is pacification dressed in religious language.

Greg Laurie’s call to peace ignores the systemic violence that created this unrest. He wants protection of lives, so do I. But which lives? He lifts up law enforcement, first responders, and the military. If that’s “order,” it’s not the order Jesus came to bring.

Jesus did not offer Pax Romana. He did not offer Pax Americana. He offered peace not as the world gives, but a peace that recognizes every person as beloved, every face as a reflection of God, every border crossed as an act of holy love.

The Sermon on the Mount says, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” But peacemaking, in the way of Jesus, means stepping into broken places and loving them whole. It means confronting systems of abuse. It means refusing to return evil for evil. It is costly, wounded, cruciform.

That’s what Jesus did. And when he met his frightened disciples in the upper room, full of scars on the day of resurrection, he didn’t scold or condemn for denying him or running away. He said, “Peace be with you.”

And then he sent them. “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

Sent not to hide in sanctuaries of safety. Nor to prop up empires of fear. But to walk in the world as love with skin on. To go out to the border, to the streets, to the places where people are hurting; and bring wounded peace to the wounded.

We are not called to preach order. We are called to practice love. And that means standing against anything that denies the image of God in another.

There are churches doing this. There are Christians who are truly Christlike. Just today Catholic bishops are ensuring the fair treatment of migrants in court. One priest was told by a weeping woman, “Father we are being treated like animals.” Thank God there was a priest who saw not an animal, but a sheep of the fold of the Good Shepherd.

But what Greg Laurie wrote isn’t Christian. Not in the historic, biblical, Jesus-following sense. He sees the humanity in the ones who hold guns, but not the ones who have guns pointed at them.

This isn’t a Christian nationalist post by a Christian. This is a nationalist post by someone invoking Christ in vain.

These days, people tell you they’re Christian by pointing to their church. But I once heard a story of an Amish man say, when asked if he was a Christian, “I don’t know; you’d have to ask my neighbor.”

That’s how it used to be. “Christian” wasn’t a title you gave yourself. It was a name given by others. Those who watched you and said, “They live like Christ.”

That name meant something.

And it still should.

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If this helped you see something more clearly, consider sharing it, liking it, or commenting what you feel. The church needs voices of clarity right now. We need to remember the Christ we claim.