Christmas approaches. The season of nativity scenes, candlelight services, and carefully curated reminders that Jesus was born humbly, lovingly, and, inconveniently for modern politics… a refugee, which makes this an odd time for the United States to double down on pushing foreigners out.

I keep hearing Christians speak passionately about mass deportations, closed borders, and the moral necessity of “protecting our own.” These arguments are often delivered with a cross in the bio and a Bible verse in the comments, which raises an unavoidable question: What version of Jesus are we talking about here? Because it’s not the one in the “good book” I read.

Let’s start with the Christmas story itself. According to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus didn’t just arrive in a stable and call it a day. Shortly after his birth, his family fled violence and persecution.

When Herod was about to search for the child, to destroy him, Joseph rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt.

(Matthew 2:13)

Egypt. Not Bethlehem. Not Nazareth. A foreign land. Jesus survived infancy because another country took his family in.

By today’s standards, the Holy Family would’ve been crossing a border without proper documentation, relying on the mercy of people who did not share their language, customs, or political identity. If modern immigration rhetoric had applied then, Christianity might have ended before it began.

And yet here we are.

A significant portion of Trump’s most loyal base identifies as Christian; often, loudly so, while simultaneously supporting policies that would have turned Mary, Joseph, and Jesus away at the gate. This isn’t a subtle tension. It’s a full-blown theological contradiction.

Jesus was remarkably clear about how to treat outsiders. In fact, he talked about it a lot… almost as if he anticipated we’d struggle with this. In Matthew 25, Jesus describes the criteria by which people will be judged, and it’s not party affiliation or national loyalty:

I was a stranger and you welcomed me.

(Matthew 25:35)

Not “screened.”

Not “vetted.”

Not “sent back where you came from.”

Welcomed.

And lest anyone argue this was just poetic metaphor, the Old Testament (often cited selectively when convenient) says the same thing, repeatedly:

The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself.

(Leviticus 19:34)

Love them. As yourself.

Not tolerate. Not fear. Not dehumanize.

Now, at this point, someone usually says, “But borders matter.” Of course they do. Governments exist. Policies exist. Order exists. Jesus never said nations shouldn’t have laws.

But here’s the uncomfortable part: Jesus consistently prioritized people over systems. Especially systems that caused suffering in the name of order.

He healed on the Sabbath. He touched the untouchable. He ate with the wrong crowd. He showed a persistent lack of interest in whether compassion was politically convenient.

When Christians argue that cruelty is necessary for stability, they aren’t making a biblical argument. They’re making a utilitarian one and then retrofitting Jesus into it like a bumper sticker.

What’s happening now isn’t about immigration alone. It’s about fear dressed up as righteousness. It’s about protecting an identity rather than practicing a faith. It’s about confusing “Christian values” with cultural dominance.

And Jesus had very little patience for that. He warned repeatedly about public displays of religiosity unmoored from actual moral behavior.

These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.

(Matthew 15:8)

You can quote Scripture all day long. You can decorate your house for Christmas and sweat like a sinner in church every Sunday. But if your faith leads you to cheer the suffering of strangers… people made in the same image of God… you haven’t misunderstood immigration policy. You’ve misunderstood Christianity.

Faith that never costs you comfort isn’t faith. It’s branding. If your version of Jesus only affirms your politics, your fear, and your sense of superiority, you’re not following him. You’re using him. And that’s not devotion; it’s idolatry with better marketing.

All over my socials, the irony is thick enough to slice: celebrating the birth of a refugee while advocating for policies that would have rejected him. Singing “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” while telling others to go back where they came from. South Park has never had their material come to them so easily.

Jesus didn’t ask people where they were from. He asked how they loved, and love, in his framework, was never abstract. It was practical, disruptive, and wildly inconvenient.

So as Christmas approaches, maybe the question isn’t whether America is a Christian nation; maybe the question is whether Christians still want to be Christlike. Because if Jesus showed up today… at the border, at the detention center, at the airport arrivals gate… he’d be subject to the same rules as everyone else. And that, more than any argument, reveals how far we’ve drifted from what his life actually asked of us.