I’m expressing concerns about three U.S. policies right now. Feel free to skip ahead to #1 if you wish, but I need to introduce this post with my caveat to what follows. I usually stay out of politics, even in the U.S. (my home country); government policies are changing so quickly that this post may be out of date before I post it. I try to stay nonpartisan—indeed, I’m registered as an Independent (which makes me part of the polarization problem, since I can’t vote in primaries). Despite diehard supporters in either party, many voted for what they considered the lesser of two evils, and some others abstained from voting for either candidate. Had Democrats won the presidency, I might be posting now about how, with extremely rare exceptions, we’re born with either xx or xy chromosomes.
But Donald Trump is president, and I respond to what seem to me to be serious concerns, without trying to name all of them but also without meaning to condemn every initiative. (Obviously his administration is correct that we must address the $36 trillion national debt.) Despite the current administration making radical changes, they sometimes appear to then allow for needed adjustments, so I am raising these concerns in hopeful prayer that these crises can be adjusted favorably.
(1) If the government is really expelling half a million Haitians and Venezuelans who are in the US legally, I hope they will ensure that where they are being sent is safe. Six hundred Kenyan police belong to an international force trying to enforce some stability in Haiti’s capital; they lack sufficient equipment and some have been killed. The U.S. had pledged financial support for the mission. But 85 percent of Haiti’s capital remains under control of gangs.
(2) I wonder if defunding the majority of global aid is really in the U.S.’s “best interests”? Mitch McConnell, until recently the Republican leader in the Senate, recognizes that USAID was not always accountable with its funds. But he also recognizes that “that appropriate levels of American foreign assistance, when properly administered, can help promote stability, prosperity, and freedom and advance America’s interests throughout the world.”
Here I note some disconcerting news from Christianity Today. The last time I posted material from CT, some responded that CT was taking money from USAID; that was false. In Romans 1, Paul calls slander a sin worthy of death. I cannot personally verify all these reports, but I have enough God-fearing friends on the ground in enough places to lament much that is happening. In CT on March 28, 2025, Emily Belz posted (“The Yo-Yo Between Life and Death in Global Health”): “After the freeze and review of almost all USAID contracts, Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently announced the termination of about 80 percent of those contracts, including those for many faith-based groups providing lifesaving aid.”
“Based on CT’s review of the spreadsheet USAID sent to Congress, the many faith-based organizations that saw contracts terminated included groups providing HIV/AIDS treatment through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), tuberculosis treatment, malaria treatment, and other general health care.” (I digress from CT for my own comment on malaria: An estimated one thousand children under the age of five die from malaria daily. Most of these deaths occur in Africa, with its strong concentration of our fellow believers, but also of malarial mosquitoes.)
Belz continues: “All of USAID’s grants for American Schools and Hospitals Abroad were canceled, some of which went to Christian hospitals like Cure International.” “Ukraine, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo experienced the largest cuts in aid, according to CGD.” “Two months into the aid freeze, with ongoing uncertainty, clinicians told CT they see this month as critical for global health nonprofits whose funding has been cut. Staffs are gone, supplies are dwindling, and money from emergency fundraising appeals might be fading.”
For some reason, some Christians are selective about which lives we must save. I agree that abortion is a human rights issue and that defending the vulnerable includes defending live human beings not yet born. But what if, hypothetically, cuts in humanitarian aid risk even more lives? Failing to do good where we can do it is tantamount to doing evil (cf. Mark 3:4; Jms 4:17; Prov 24:17). If many Christians want the government to enforce virtue regarding abortion, why not also regarding international food aid? Why make one a public matter and the other only a private one? Christian sharing (e.g., Luke 12:33; 14:33; Acts 2:44-45) does not just mean those in closest geographic proximity (see Acts 11:29; 2 Cor 8—9; Gal 2:10), especially if our family in Christ matters most (Gal 6:10).
Millions of our brothers and sisters are displaced and often hungry in Africa right now. If you don’t believe God cares about desperate hunger, please read more of the Bible (I survey just a few of the verses in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWT6XATUYUQ). If God gives us favor with those who want God’s favor (Ezra 6:8-10; 7:14-26), let’s use that favor to help those in need. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, where over 5 million are displaced, jihadists are killing Christians and some displacement camps lack food and medicine. 95 percent of the DRC today claim to be Christian, compared to 62 percent in the US.
Granted, corruption often hinders delivery to the neediest people when local distribution networks are corrupt. (My wife Médine, who was a refugee, witnessed this, although the aid that did eventually reach them did much good.) Certainly money channeled through terrorist organizations such as Hamas was not just wasted but abused. But what about the essential humanitarian projects, both for emergency relief (for the sake of survival) and long-term development? Deployed properly, development aid does not foster dependence, and some of it goes to minorities that their own governments would not help.
One might argue that eliminating federal funding may give donors more financial flexibility to choose where to donate. If so, global Christian leaders will need to coordinate far more effectively and fairly to let potential donors know where global Christian needs are the greatest (since genocides, famines, etc. are occurring without being much reported in general media).
3. I’ll stop with one more. Political instability, wars, persecution, forced recruitment of young men for drug cartel gangs, impacts of climate change and other factors (often economic deprivation) drive much migration. But the U.S. is now deporting noncriminal immigrants in the name of deporting criminals. Christianity Today reports the following (Andy Olsen (“Hispanic Churches Groan Under Florida’s Double Immigration Crackdown,” CT March 20, 2025): An Assemblies of God pastor in Orlando explains, “We agree with the deportation of violent criminals and securing the border. What we’re concerned about is that, although that’s the rhetoric, that’s actually not what’s happening.”
Olsen’s article notes, “ICE scores violations as minor as driving with a broken taillight as criminal convictions; current data offer few clues about how many of those arrested actually committed violent crimes.” “The numbers are clear about one trend, however: Arrests of noncriminals are soaring. In the middle two weeks of February, ICE swept up 3,721 immigrants with no criminal record—a 334 percent increase over the first two weeks of January.”
The article mentions many immigrant Christians afraid to come to church, since it is now legal to arrest them there. Presumably the main targets are noncitizens who entered the U.S. without government approval. Part of the motive presumably is to give the U.S. a reputation for being a less hospitable place and so stemming the flow of migrants. Much as I would like to give my opinion, I can speak authoritatively only as a NT scholar and not a public policy expert. Translating from ancient Near Eastern understandings of boundaries to modern ones is too complex for me to try to engage and nuance in a brief post (though I have friends who have written entire books on the topic).
So here I will speak only to what Scripture makes clear to us on as Christians personally: even in Leviticus, loving one’s neighbor (Lev 19:18) explicitly includes loving the foreigner among you (19:34). Jesus, who finds loving one’s neighbor at the heart of the law (Mark 12:31; Luke 10:27) applies that even to Judeans loving Samaritans (see Luke 10:29-37). Loving others as oneself remains the heart of the law for Jesus’s followers (Rom 13:8-10; Gal 5:14; Jms 2:8).
I’ll stop with that one. (Although protecting Arctic access matters, I don’t think President Trump really wants to make Canada the 51st state. From that point on, Democrats would control the US House of Representatives!)
