Introduction: The Presence of Undocumented Immigrants in the Asian American Community

According to the U.S. Census Bureau in 2000, about 69% of Asian Americans were foreign-born in the U.S.[1] This implies that many Asian immigrants in America are the leaders of cross-cultural exchange because they often experience their home and their chosen culture at once and bring their old cultural heritages to their new living place. For example, according to the Center for Migration Studies (CMS) estimates, about 65 percent of this population has been living in the United States for less than 10 years.[2] This also means that the stories of Asian Americans often get combined with the relatively new and fresh experiences of (im)migration, cultural exchanges, and cultural transformations. As a result, the group of Asian Americans is often the pioneer group for distinct cultural and social transformations in American society.

The cultural and social transformations in the lives of Asian Americans also come from the lives of undocumented Asian Americans. According to the CMS in 2015, there were about 1,734,600 undocumented immigrants from Asia and the Pacific Islands. This comprises 17 percent of the total undocumented population living in the United States.[3] This implies that many in the Asian American churches are classed as illegal immigrants today. The CMS’s report also shows that undocumented Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States are highly educated; approximately 74 percent of them have some college or higher education.[4] This means that a large portion of undocumented Asian Americans are potentially high-skilled workers who can bring positive transformations to American society and faith communities. Unfortunately, however, many Asian American churches are reluctant to talk about illegal immigration due to the distinctive Asian cultural attitude around honor and shame—what in this article will be called, for brevity, shame culture. As a result, illegal immigration is something to hide rather than something to bring for pastoral care in many Asian American churches.

If the Asian American communities have not talked and cared about the topic of undocumented immigration, how can we bring the topic to the Asian American church communities? The purpose of this paper is to examine the ethics of Asian American communities about illegal immigration. To overcome shame culture and to bring illegal immigration as a matter of pastoral care in the Asian American church, this paper turns to the Christian Scripture and theology as a guide for what deep healing looks like when individuals are ashamed to bring their issues before the church community. To do so, the paper will first examine shame culture in Asian communities and how shame culture makes Asian faith communities reluctant to talk about illegal immigration. Secondly, the paper will examine the story of Jesus healing the bleeding woman (Mark 5:25-34). Here, the paper will talk about how Jesus heals shame culture in the context of ancient Jewish culture. Lastly, the paper will offer Christian ethics on illegal immigration and national borders based on the theology of Karl Barth. Here, the paper will highlight the new distinction point from God that blurs the distinctions between peoples, borders, or nations. This will lead Christians to build a more just and humane care for illegal immigrants from the reconciled reality of Jesus Christ. In doing so, the paper will suggest a new way to understand illegal immigration as God’s gift that brings positive transformations to our faith and world.

1. Asian Shame Culture and Illegal Immigration

Current research understands the concept of shame as an important element in human development, psychology, and even social ethics.[5] Many times in our lives, shame is related to the ethical values or moral standards of a given culture. For example, a young woman in East Asian culture can be ashamed of offending moral standards if he loses her virginity. However, in another culture, the young woman may feel ashamed if she is still a virgin. In a similar way, being an undocumented immigrant can be received in different ways according to different cultures and social structures. In some cultures, the presence of undocumented immigrants can be a little bit more natural of a thing to speak about and ask for help with, while it might be a thing that people avoid talking about in some other cultures. In this respect, it is easy to figure out that shame culture has a huge influence on the overall culture and attitude of a certain community. When there is a strong shame culture, people may not want to talk about certain things such as one’s financial, legal, or job status because they do not want to be ashamed or shame someone in their cultural setting.

Speaking very broadly about Asian culture, shame has been an important factor in shaping one’s character and social ethics. Especially in Eastern Asia, the concept of shame (恥) is widespread due to Confucian teachings. For example, Confucius once explicitly said, “Guide them with policies and align them with punishments and the people will evade them and have no shame. Guide them with virtue and align them with li and the people will have a sense of shame and fulfill their roles.”[6] In this teaching of Confucius, a sense of shame plays an important role in accomplishing one’s self-realization, which is the ultimate goal of Confucian philosophy. As a result, a sense of shame is connected to social ethics in Eastern Asian culture. In Confucian culture, feelings of shame do not merely come from the conscience of the individual. Instead, it originates from the moral pressure of society.[7] In this respect, a sense of honor and shame is deeply connected to the way of self-actualization and further social ethics in Eastern Asian society.

In Confucian teaching, human relations are often summarized in the principles of Three Fundamental Bonds and Five Constant Virtues.[8] These Confucian principles highlight the three traditional Confucian relations between king and subject, father and son, and husband and wife. Then the principles describe five virtues among family, marriage, sibling, friend, and infeudation. These principles not only summarize the basic human relations in one’s life but also bring ethical visions to Confucian culture. One thing interesting here is that the major forms of shame in Confucian culture arose from breaking those Confucian ethical principles such as disloyalty to the king, the children’s lack of filial devotion to their parents, the wife’s disobedience to her husband, and the junior’s disrespect to the elderly.

Historically, Confucian culture imposed those Confucian principles on people, and people felt ashamed when they failed to fulfill the Confucian virtues. This is why it is a very common story in Eastern history that surviving soldiers commit suicide, so as not to be ashamed and keep their family’s honor when they lose in an important battle. For example, in the age of Shinmiyangyo (1871), the lost soldiers threw themselves into the ocean in Korea not to be ashamed of their loss.[9] Likewise, in Japan, samurais developed the honor code, called seppuku (切腹) during the Shōwa era.[10] In this tradition, samurais would cut their own bellies voluntarily rather than falling into the hands of their enemies, to restore honor for their families. In these historical traditions, we can see how much Confucian society considered a sense of shame important. In Eastern society, it would be better to die rather than dishonor one’s name or family. Similarly, whenever they had a virtuous person in a town, they erected an honor memorial stone at their town’s gate to show their great virtue. When one’s family was involved in dishonor or conspiracy, all the family members had to be ashamed and run away. As a result, many historical accounts and cultural behaviors in Eastern Asia show us that a sense of shame was one of the most essential ethical codes for Eastern Confucian society for a long time.

Because people under the influence of Confucian teaching understand one’s self-realization and the family as the basic units to start one’s salvation, one’s own success becomes very important in Confucian culture to raise the fame of oneself and one’s family.[11] In Confucian culture, the honor or dishonor of a family had a direct connection to the success or failure of one’s life. When a family member was successful, it held a good portent for the success of the entire family and for the success of the descendants. This is why education is extremely important in Asian cultures because it is connected to shame culture and further social ethics. In other words, the success of individual life was often viewed as the highest honor not only for one’s life but also for one’s family in Eastern society. Consequently, Confucian value has also frequently had a huge impact on the success of family business and high education among Asian Americans.[12]

Although the influence of Confucian culture has been weaker in modern society, a sense of shame is still deeply connected to the ethos of Asian Americans. In modern days, a person still needs to be successful in an arena of competition in order not to be shamed in Asian communities. Culturally, a passion for higher education was originally meant to promote the honor of one’s life and one’s family. Historically, education was involved as a way to get into the ruling class because Eastern Asians had to pass the government exam to get an office, to be part of the ruling class, or to gain the fame of one’s family. As a result, Eastern Asian people often developed a sense of shame when they failed to educate their children, while showing their children’s success in education became an important way to gain honor for their family in their culture. Because the similar cultural code continues until today, many Eastern Asian countries and Asian Americans still have much higher educational fervor compared to other countries or peoples.[13] In the Asian culture, the failure of education puts a huge shame on the family, while the success of education is one of the fastest ways to gain honor for one’s family. This cultural code often makes Asian parents predisposed to be tiger parents to raise one’s family’s honor and avoid shame.

Because the grammar of shame culture still functions in the diasporic Asian communities, it also gives a different approach and culture regarding illegal immigration for Asian communities. Because a person can be ashamed if the person fails to have legal status or be successful in Asian communities, Asian people would be reluctant to talk about their legal or financial status with others in their church community. In turn, even though undocumented Asian Americans are the fastest-growing racial group, researchers, policymakers, and theologians pay less attention to their unique experiences compared to undocumented Latinos.[14] For example, although the number of churches in the United States expressing willingness to offer sanctuary for undocumented immigrants has recently doubled and now reaches eight hundred, it is hard to find Asian American immigrants or Asian American churches getting involved with this sanctuary ministry for undocumented immigrants.[15] Because the feeling of shame is still directly linked with many Asian Americans, talking about one’s own legal or financial status is still not a common thing in Asian American churches. This is also why many Asian American churches believe that talking about one’s immigration status is taboo due to its strong shame culture. In this respect, Asian shame culture makes Asian faith communities more difficult environments to talk about immigration. But from a Christian perspective, any social issue affecting this many members of a community would easily qualify as a pastoral care concern.

2. Jesus and Shame Culture

Although many Asian American church communities share their Asian cultural heritages, they also have their own distinctive culture and grammar as a Christian community. This is because the members of church communities are essentially Christians who gathered to follow Jesus, and thus the culture of church communities is based on Jesus. Christians basically form their ways of life and ethics based on their theological and religious belief. So, when we think about Asian American churches specifically, we must ask, how does Jesus react to shame culture? One can find how Jesus treats shame culture from the story of Jesus healing the bleeding woman. This is one of the miracles of Jesus and appears in all synoptic gospels (Mark 5:25-34, Matthew 9:20-22, and Luke 8:43-48).

In the passage, a woman had been suffering from continuous menstrual bleeding for twelve years. Although she had visited many doctors, none of them had been able to help her. In this story, the bleeding woman had a huge sense of shame. According to ancient Jewish law, the woman would have been continually regarded as unclean. This was because the woman was zabbah, referring to an abnormal discharge of uterine blood. In ancient Jewish culture, her status was related to ceremonial impurity and uncleanness because whatever she touches renders people and objects ritually impure.[16] In ancient Jewish culture, blood represented life. As a result, the constant loss of blood represented a loss of life.[17] Because the woman had been bleeding for twelve years, she might have missed her window of opportunity to have children. Being barren was a deeply unlucky situation for ancient women because children were their insurance against old age. In that way, her personal shame might impact her entire family—implying that someone would be forced to take her in when she is old, which is shameful. Therefore, in her culture, she was regarded as the one who constantly brought a loss of life and a sense of shame to her family.

To be specific, in the book of Leviticus, the written religious law explicitly says that bleeding women should be isolated for seven days. As a result, whoever touches the bleeding woman would be unclean according to the law. (Lev 15:25-30) This indicates that her life was shameful in her culture because the constant bleeding was regarded as a continual state of uncleanness that would have brought her social and religious isolation. Because her bleeding was regarded as taboo in her community, the problem she faced became not just physical but also social and spiritual.[18] Consequently, the theme of the bleeding woman resonates with the theme of illegal immigration today because the presence of both illegal immigrants and the bleeding woman is often unprecedented and unanticipated in their societies.

Because the ancient shame culture of Judaism made the woman have a huge sense of shame, she was not even able to ask or come out in public in the story. Unlike many other people who were healed by Jesus, she hid behind people due to her huge sense of shame. Instead of asking in person or in public, she simply came up behind Jesus and touched the fringe of his cloak because she thought, “If I but touch his cloak, I will be made well (Mark 5:28).” This behavior implies how much the woman was shamed and how much she was treated poorly in her culture. Eventually, however, when the woman touched the cloak of Jesus, her bleeding was stopped, and her disease was healed immediately.

In the narrative, both Jesus and the woman were aware of the social and cultural problems they had. In the ancient Jewish culture, women touching Jesus was the wrong thing to do, furthermore, her bleeding limited her social interaction in public.[19] As a result, both Jesus and the woman were aware of the social and cultural code that the woman violated. This was why, when she was healed, Jesus was “immediately aware that power had gone forth from him (Mark 5:30).” And he asked who touched him. When this happened, the healed woman “came in fear and trembling (Mark 5:33).” Here, the woman was trembling in fear because she knew what she had done was deeply wrong according to her social culture and religious law.

However, in the story, Jesus did not claim that her touching him was a problem with the law. Although the bleeding woman was regarded as harmful and disgraceful in her society, Jesus proclaimed that she was part of his community by calling her daughter: “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease (Mark 5:33).” Here, although the religious law and shame culture clearly isolated the woman from her community, Jesus restored her social status to be part of the community. In addition, Jesus claimed that her faith had made her well. In the story, Jesus is not the active agent of her healing. Instead, the woman participates in the fellowship of God by herself. What Jesus does here is to call her out of her hiddenness and bring her back to the new community of Jesus in peace. As a result, the story gives us a great example of “the divine-human partnership where God and humanity act in harmony.”[20]

Throughout the story of Jesus healing the bleeding woman, Jesus dismantles the shame culture of ancient Jewish culture. Although the presence of the bleeding woman was illegal in the place, Jesus solved her problem and further made her to be part of the community. This shows that the teaching of Jesus should be different from the secular or religious laws. Notably, what matters in the way of Jesus is acceptance, healing, and pastoral care. This suggests that Christians also need to understand many social values not from shame culture but from the pastoral perspective that Jesus offers. In the story, what Jesus asks is to bring our shame and unlawful presence to the new fellowship of love with acceptance, healing, and pastoral care.

3. Theological Vision for National Borders

If the teaching of Jesus is distinctive from the natural, cultural, or religious laws, how can Christians apply the teaching of Jesus in our real lives today? The concepts of modern border control and immigration law are relatively new concepts when we think of Jesus’ era. In the times of Jesus, there were no border controls or immigration laws between nations like today. This was why many biblical characters including, Abraham, Joseph, and even Jesus (im)migrated from different countries to another without border control or law enforcement.[21] To reflect the new concepts of modern nation, people, and immigration law, Karl Barth, a renowned Christian thinker, suggests a theological vision with the concept of nationhood theologically. It is noteworthy that he developed his theology of the Word of God during WW2 and the national movement in Germany. In facing border controls and genocides based on ethnicism, racism, and nationalism in his time, he particularly argues that Christians should blur the distinction between close neighbor and distanced neighbor before God.

In his theological works, Barth suggests that Christians should understand others as fellow human beings. This is because he starts his theology before God the Creator. According to Barth, everybody is God’s creature, and everybody is a fellow in front of God.[22] He believes that the concepts of nationhood, race, or people are in a secondary sphere of obedience in Christian ethics. For him, the Triune God rules over the entire history, while some gifts of God only have a limited time frame. As a result, he claims that “the confrontation between the near and the distant is not fixed or permanent.”[23] In this theological belief, although the concepts of people and nations are the gift of God, they are not the original or permanent distinctions from the perspective of God.[24] Rather, the more important distinction before God is the distinction between God and humanity, and thus other humans should be seen as fellow humanity.[25]

Interestingly, Barth finds the origin of the separations of races, peoples, and languages in the stories of Noah and the towel of Babel in Genesis 10 and 11.[26] In the first appearance of the separation into peoples, lands, and races, human beings were spread and separated to fulfill God’s commandment. And the main purpose of this first separation was to fill the earth after God’s judgment with water. However, in the second account in Genesis 11, God scattered and separated human beings out of the city to protect them from self-destruction; human beings began to have different languages and lands by God’s judgment. In this account, human beings could not be bound up to the Noahic covenant and its blessing because of God’s judgment. As a result, in the story, there comes a new distinction between “near and distant neighbors.”[27] In this account, human beings began to have people separated from other people by God’s judgment and human sins. Consequently, for Barth, the separation and distinction between peoples, races, and languages essentially come from our sins and God’s judgment.

Right after introducing the origin of the separations of peoples, lands, and languages, however, Barth finds a remarkable contrast story from the event of Pentecost (Acts 2).[28] In the event of Pentecost, God sent the Holy Spirit to the apostles with “a sound like the rush of a violent wind” and “divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them (Act 2:2-3).” In this event, the apostles of Jesus were able to speak in different languages through the power of the Holy Spirit. He interprets this event as the moment that the Holy Spirit breaks Israel out of its old confines to make “a new way which can be understood by all nations.”[29]

According to Barth, God chooses Israel people, to fix God’s judgment in Genesis 11. In this understanding, the people of Israel are the only people who remember that God brought all of us together for a while in history. In the biblical narratives, the Israelites remember God as the Lord who rescued Israel from Egypt. Also, the biblical narratives account that God is not the God of the Pharaoh or of all, but the God of Israel. In the account of Barth, although God divided people into many groups, God still wants to bring us reconciliation through the people of Israel.

Consequently, Barth understands the event of Pentecost as the story that tells us how the disposition of Genesis 11 can be understood “as a teleological divine purpose” and “how it is recognized in the form of the corresponding orientation from the near to the distant, the narrower sphere to the wider.”[30] For him, the event of Pentecost is God’s work within Israel. In the event, the followers of Jesus who were Jews were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different languages to tell “the mighty works of God (Acts 2:11).” Through this event of Pentecost, Israel became the pre-eminent witness to the grace and judgment of God within the Christocentric reality of God.[31]

As a result, Barth argues that the distinctions between peoples and nations become secondary, and they are not natural distinctions in the reality of Jesus Christ. Rather, in the reality of Christ, the true distinction comes from the Creator God who reconciles all of us through divine mercy. This is why apostle Paul also says, “Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came (Gal 3:24),” and “there is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus (Gal 3:28).” According to Barth, God has built the bridge from people to people through Jesus Christ because human beings can have a new distinction point in their lives through Jesus and through the event of Pentecost. In the reconciled reality of Jesus, everybody becomes a fellow who can serve together before God.

In this new distinction point of Christ, human beings do not distinguish other different people by their own nationality, gender, or race. Instead, they distinct others from the point of God. In this new distinction, other different people also become fellow human beings regardless of ethnicity, gender, or distance. Barth writes, “if we encounter foreigners in our own land and among our own people, we must measure them as we do natives by the question whether we can be at one with them in obedience to the divine commandment. […] One’s own people in its location cannot and must not be a wall but a door.”[32] In this theological argument, the commandment of God urges those who hear the Word of God to use different human languages to seek fellowship with others. And further, God commands human beings to understand different people as fellows before God whether they are near or far from oneself. Therefore, in Barth’s theology, the presence of different others becomes “not a wall but a door” to bring God’s new possibilities in love.

Conclusion: From Shame Culture to Pastoral Care of Christ

Noticeably, because of their strong shame culture, Asian American churches often have a hard time talking about illegal immigration. This means that among many types of migrants, undocumented Asian Americans are particularly troubled because they have been isolated not only by civil authorities and social cultures for breaking the law but also by their own faith communities for being regarded as shameful. As they continue to live in their new home, Asian illegal immigrants must face difficult questions about where they stand in relation to the social law, cultural code, and ethics. However, because of the strong shame culture they have, it has been hard for them to think about their own situation and raise questions about their situation even in their faith communities.

On this problem of undocumented Asian Americans, the paper has argued that Christians should have different social ethics from the natural, cultural, and religious law because the Christian way of life should be based on Jesus. To overcome shame culture with biblical vision, the paper dealt with the story of Jesus’ healing the bleeding woman. In the story, Jesus accepted the illegal status of the woman to be part of the new community. In the story, what matters is not the social code or the natural law, but acceptance and love.

To offer a theological language overcoming Asian American Christians’ shame culture, the paper also introduced the theology of Karl Barth. In his theology, Barth situated relationships with those from other countries from the perspective of God’s love. In this theological vision, the natural distinctions between nations, ethnicities, and languages become secondary before God. Instead, the true primary distinction comes from God and creatureliness, and thus Christians should understand foreigners as a fellow in the reconciled community of love. In this theological vision, God commands Christians to love and help our neighbors both near and far without natural distinctions.

Based on the biblical and theological vision that the paper suggests, it becomes clear that Asian American churches should understand illegal immigration from the perspective of God rather than the perspective of natural or cultural laws. Although the presence of illegal immigrants in the church community can bring controversies, the primary distinction in the church community should come from God’s love. Today, the distinction between lawful and unlawful people divides people between those within one allegiance and those outside of that allegiance in our culture. However, this way of life clearly does not reflect the reality of Christ and how God’s church works. In the reconciled reality of Christ, Asian American churches should understand one’s legal status not from shame culture. Rather, they should understand it as a pastoral matter that opens a new door for the possibilities of God’s creative love.

To offer pastoral care for undocumented immigrants, this paper suggests that Asian American churches should understand illegal immigration as God’s gift that can bring actions of charity, prayer, and spiritual growth before God. For example, whenever parishioners have an illness in church communities, they are supposed to bring their problems to their community or clergy. This gives them an opportunity to bring pastoral care for the entire faith community and the parishioners themselves. When Christians talk about their medical problem to the church community, someone’s illness or death is not regarded as shameful. Instead, the community tries to understand it as a pastoral matter that can grow their faith with a lot of prayers and behaviors of charity.[33] In the case of the hospital chaplain setting, what matters is not death or illness, or whether they are shameful or serious. What matters in the setting is how they can bring spiritual comfort, peace, and encouragement in front of their life-threatening problems. Likewise, Asian American churches can have spiritual benefits when they understand the presence of illegal immigration as a matter of pastoral care.

In this respect, Asian American churches need to think about illegal immigration from the pastoral care perspective. When Christians understand the unexpected presence of illegal immigrants as God’s gift, they can bring positive transformations of God within transcendental love. This is because they can see the presence of illegal immigration from the perspective of the transcendental God of love, not from the perspective of human laws or cultures. When they do so, they can bring positive transformations such as acts of prayer and service to the world. Therefore, it is necessary for Asian American churches to overcome their shame culture and to understand illegal immigration as God’s gift that brings spiritual growth and positive transformation before God.

Heejun Yang

Greesboro College

[1] Nita Tewari and Alvin N. Alvarez ed., Asian American Psychology (NY: Psychology Press, 2009), 3.

[2] Evin Millet, “A Demographic Profile of Undocumented Immigrants from Asia and the Pacific Islands, ” The Center for Migration Studies (June 14, 2022): https://cmsny.org/undocumented-aapi-millet-061322/#_ftn1.

[3] Evin Millet, “A Demographic Profile of Undocumented Immigrants from Asia and the Pacific Islands, ” The Center for Migration Studies (June 14, 2022): https://cmsny.org/undocumented-aapi-millet-061322/#_ftn1.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Jessica Yakeley, “Shame, culture and mental health,” Nord J Psychiatry 72 (Sep 2018): 20-22; Heras Las and Victor Chu, Scham und Leidenschaft (Zürich: Kreuz Verlag AG 1994); Donald Nathanson eds., The Many Faces of Shame (New York: Guilford Press, 1987).

[6] Eno Robert, The Analects of Confucius: A Teaching Translation (Open Access Resource, 2015), 2:3. “子曰：道之以政，齊之以刑，民免而無恥；道之以德，齊之以禮，有恥且格.”

[7] Lee Zuknae, “Korean Culture and Sense of Shame,” Transcultural Psychiatry 36(2) (June, 1999), 187-188.

[8] 三綱五倫.

[9] Douglas Sterner, Shinmiyangyo–The Other Korean War (Washigton D.C: PLLC, 2018), 29.

[10] Mark Ravina, “The Apocryphal Suicide of Saigō Takamori: Samurai, ‘Seppuku’, and the Politics of Legend.” The Journal of Asian Studies 69, no. 3 (2010): 691-721.

[11] It is noteworthy that the Confucian way of virtue starts from self-cultivating to harmonizing family, governing the country, and then bringing peace throughout the world. Look at one of the Confucian canons, Great Learning (Daxue). “身脩而后家齊 家齊而后國治 國治而后天下平.”

[12] Jun Yan and Sorenson Ritch, “The Effect of Confucian Values on Succession in Family Business,” Family Business Review, vol. 19 no. 3 (Sep 2006): 235-250.

[13] Cf. Johnston Marc and Fanny Yeung, “Asian Americans and Campus Climate: Investigating Group Differences Around a Racial Incident,” Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice 51 (2) (May, 2014): 143-56.

[14] Soo Mee Kim and Aggie Yellow Horse, “Undocumented Asians, Left in the Shadows,” Contexts 17(4) (Fall 2018): 70–71.

[15] Jason Hanna, “Can churches provide legal sanctuary to undocumented immigrants?” CNN (February 17, 2017).

[16] Charlotte Fonrobert, Menstrual Purity: Rabbinic and Christian Reconstruction of Biblical  Gender (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 17.

[17] Joel Marcus, Mark 1-8 (The Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries) (New Heaven: Yale University Press, 2008), 360-7.

[18] Sarah Harris, “The Bleeding Woman: A Journey From the Fringes,” Feminist Theology 29(2) (January, 2022): 113–129, 117.

[19] Ibid., 123.

[20] Ibid., 128.

[21] To learn more about the contemporary thoughts on the concept of border and illegal immigration, see, Robert Heimburger, God and the Illegal Alien: United States Immigration Law and a Theology of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 1-23.

[22] More accounts of humanity as fellow humanity can be found in Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (C.D.) III/2, ed., trans., G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1960), 45, 247, 285.

[23] Robert Heimburger, God and the Illegal Alien, 49.

[24] Karl Barth, CD III/4, ed., trans., G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1961), 324.

[25] Cf. Ingolf Dalferth, Transcendence and the Secular World (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018).

[26] Karl Barth, CD III/4, 312-315.

[27] Ibid., 317.

[28] Ibid., 320.

[29] Ibid., 322.

[30] Ibid., 323.

[31] For Barth, God invites us to God’s reality: “Knowledge of God in the sense of Holy Scripture and the Confession is knowledge of His existence, His action, His revelation in His work. And so the Bible is not a philosophical book, but a history book, the book of God’s mighty acts in which God becomes knowable by us. […] This work of creation, of the covenant, and of redemption I the reality in which God exists, lives, and acts and makes Himself known. From this work we must make no abstractions if we would know God’s nature and existence. Herem in this work, God is […] thus the subject of this work. It is the work of God’s free love.” Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline, Trans. G. T. Thompson (NY: Harper Collins, 1959), 44-45.

[32] Karl Barth, CD III/4, 294.

[33] It is noteworthy that church fathers understood illness as God’s gift as well. Jean-Claude Larchet, The Theology of Illness, trans. John and Michael Breck (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002).

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