Politics & Poetry

by David Alan Hjelle

  • Calling my Representatives about Refugees and Immigration

    I called my representatives recently—for the first time in over 20 years! Here’s (roughly) what I said:

    My name is David Hjelle, and I live in Fargo, North Dakota.

    I’m calling today because of I have deep concerns about recent executive orders regarding refugees and immigrants. I don’t have all the answers! However, I would like to hold our country to a high standard, the same standard that I try hold myself and my family to: treat others like you would like to be treated. 

    First, for refugees who have already been carefully vetted and approved: we should continue to support them as they transition to a new life. We should continue to accept as many new refugees as possible.

    Second, Americans pride ourselves on legal due process and being innocent until proven guilty. Mass deportations of any sort and detaining people on military bases such as Guantanamo do not correspond to those values in any way, and must end immediately. There must be better ways to enforce the law. 

    I hope you can help find a way to make American a great neighbor to those who need her the most.

    References for the curious:

  • Politics and the Jesus-Follower

    I’ve been reading The Faithful Spy to my son recently, the story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Nazi Germany. Hindsight lends a lot of clarity on his moral decision-making. Bonhoeffer had a difficult lesson to learn: was his allegiance to Jesus one and the same as his allegiance to Germany? It seems so obvious in hindsight—but it is not obvious to a fish that they live in water, when it is all they have ever known.

    The tension is all over the Bible. Moses, Daniel, Joseph, the prophets, the Apostles, Jesus Himself: would they submit to the government or the religious leaders, or would they pay whatever price had to be paid, and submit to God alone? (For that matter, often the question was whether they would choose to submit to their own desires or submit to the King?)

    Tim Keller said (the poor paraphrase is mine) that Jesus’ proclamations did not fit neatly in a right or left political ideology. Jesus doesn’t fit in a box. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life: how can we imagine that any of our systems contain Him? Often, the way of the Kingdom is just plain different from any of the boxes people try put us in. It is the straight and narrow way that can be fallen off, either to the right or the left. (I don’t imagine Jesus had our political stripes in mind when He said that, but it is still surprisingly appropriate.) And, as Russell Moore has often observed: Jesus’ way is always the way of the cross.

    Have there ever been a time in which a Jesus follower could, in good conscience, be content with the culture and government around them? I don’t know—though I sincerely doubt it. Whether or no, the necessary direction of a Christian’s life is clear: whatever the cost, holding nothing back, give everything for the sake of following Jesus.

  • An Introduction

    I’ve been struggling with how to process the world around me lately. I’m a Christian, a Jesus-follower, first and foremost—and yet I find a frustrating amount of disagreement about the world around me, even with fellow believers.

    I often find I don’t understand.

    I’ve been tempted to write lately. For a moment, I thought it might be a way of helping others or even having some influence. In such an opinion-saturated world, that’s pretty ridiculous. I came to realize that perhaps writing would be just for me: how do I know what I am thinking unless I can put it into coherent prose? I don’t mind sharing—perhaps I will, perhaps I won’t—but I’m hoping that it will be a sort of processing that helps me live my life faithfully as a servant to my King Jesus and as someone who wants to do the next right thing.