Legal and Moral Are Not The Same

Jesus represents the ultimate level of moral development.

Much of the national debate on immigration seems to be about what is legal and what is illegal, and therefore can never be tolerated. Our president has said his hands are tied regarding any changes in refugee policies unless or until Congress acts to change existing immigration laws he is sworn to uphold. To his credit, he later determined he could accomplish this impossibility and mandated more humane policies by executive order.

A couple of questions: 

1. Is everyone who crosses a border without a passport (i.e., an actual asylum seeker) thereby committing an illegal act? Fortunately, our nation actually has legal and constitutional provisions for providing refuge for people whose lives are in danger in their country of origin.

2. If accepting endangered refugees were in fact illegal, should it be? Again, America has historically seen itself as a place of welcome for oppressed people and for "huddled masses yearning to breathe free."  

3. Should "legal" be the primary basis for judging what is moral and right? Looking back, we agree that slave laws and Jim Crow policies, for example, while legal, were anything but moral. And all martyrs, with the exception of victims of mob lynchings, have suffered and died at the hands of authorities who were carrying out some fully legal mandate. They defended their acts of torturing and killing believers because they were judged, by law, as bad people committing criminal offenses.

4. Are there precedents in the Bible for doing things that are illegal but which are just, moral and even mandated by our faith? There are of course many such examples, such as the midwives who refused to dispose of male babies, Moses' parents who hid their male child, young Babylonian captives like Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, and Jesus himself as he appealed to a higher law in his observance of Sabbath and other well established rules of his time.

5. At what level of  Kohlberg's stages of moral reasoning do most of us operate as churches and as individuals? This could be a fruitful conversation to have, as to whether we make our decisions largely from a human "law and order" perspective or from the perspective of a people governed by the heaven-headquartered Kingdom of God. See  https://www.acpeds.org/kohlbergs-theory-of-moral-development