by Beth Snodderly
First John 3:8: The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. Ralph Winter quoted this verse frequently in his last years. In my doctoral studies I explored this verse in great detail to discern what the original audience might have thought was included in the phrase, "the works of the devil." I used a Social Science model called a "Status Degradation Ritual" to understand some of the dynamics in the First Epistle of John. The author’s community is having to distinguish between “the children of God,” and those who are having their status degraded to “children of the devil.” In this article I ask if this model also applies to the way some politicians talk about asylum seekers at America's southern border who are fleeing violence and intolerable conditions. Do the degrading comments by top leaders put those people in a position of being non-persons in the eyes of many people? How should believers respond?
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