Compassion and justice aren’t enemies: Responding to Minneapolis biblically

Minneapolis feels like a city stuck on repeat.

If you’ve lived here, watched the news, or even followed it from a distance over the last few years, you’ve seen the cycle. Lawlessness is tolerated, sometimes openly excused, until it spills over into real chaos. Businesses are destroyed. People are hurt or killed. Then, finally, authorities step in to restore order. And the moment they do, activists flood the streets, obstruct law enforcement, and insist that the reassertion of law itself is “violence.”

That’s where Christians are told they have to choose.

Not between justice and injustice, but between biblical compassion and a counterfeit version that borrows Christian language while quietly rejecting Christian moral order.

Most believers I talk to aren’t trying to be naïve. They’re genuinely confused. They hear “love the immigrant,” “stand with the oppressed,” “Jesus would oppose the law,” and they don’t want to be hard-hearted or cruel. That instinct can be right (sometimes, when the desire to not be cruel isn’t a cloak for the fear of man). Scripture really does command love for the stranger. The question isn’t whether we love. It’s how Scripture defines love, and who is responsible for what.

The current unrest in Minneapolis didn’t come out of nowhere. It followed years of political decisions that created a permissive environment for mass fraud, corruption, and crime. Millions of taxpayer dollars were siphoned off through sham nonprofits and fraudulent schemes (Somali “daycares,” for one example). Local conservative churches were harassed. Laws were selectively enforced. Criminal activity was excused (if not encouraged by state government) in the name of empathy. Now federal investigations are catching up. And federal authorities are doing precisely what the federal government exists to do: enforce immigration law and remove criminals who have no legal right to remain in the country.

That was always going to trigger resistance.

And right on cue, the same far-left coalition appears: ideological activists, professionalagitators, and organizations that thrive on disruption, aided by the mainstream media. They obstruct law enforcement, provoke confrontation, and then frame the inevitable response as oppression. The result is death, destruction, and a destabilized city… again.

Into that chaos comes the familiar progressive Christian refrain: “Stand with the immigrant.” “Lead with empathy.” “Jesus would oppose this.” The implication is unmistakable. If you support immigration enforcement, you’re unloving. If you oppose riots or obstruction, you’re complicit in injustice.

But that framing only works if you detach biblical language from biblical context.

Yes, Scripture commands love for the sojourner. Over and over. God’s people are told to show kindness, hospitality, and mercy to the stranger (Leviticus 19:34). When immigrants cross our paths personally, we are obligated to treat them as image-bearers of God: feed the hungry, clothe the naked, preach the Gospel, defend the innocent.

But here’s the loud part that gets quietly dropped: those commands are given to individuals and the Church — not to the civil magistrate.

The Bible never tells the state to abandon law in the name of “sentiment.” In fact, it says the opposite.

Romans 13 could not be clearer, and progressive Christianity has spent years trying to soften or sidestep it. Paul writes:

“Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God … For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad… if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.” 

That line alone should stop the conversation in its tracks.

Paul does not describe the governing authority as a therapeutic presence, a feelings-based mediator, or a symbolic ally of the marginalized. He calls the state God’s servant, and not in a sentimental sense. The government is meant to be, in Paul’s words, “a terror to bad conduct.” That’s uncomfortable language for modern ears, but Scripture does not apologize for it. The fear of lawful punishment is not evil. It is one of the ways God restrains evil in a fallen world.

And notice something else. Paul does not say the government is God’s servant when it agrees with you politically, or only when it behaves perfectly. He grounds its authority in God’s ordering of society itself. That doesn’t excuse corruption or brutality (Scripture condemns unjust rulers repeatedly), but it does mean Christians are not free to redefine law enforcement as inherently unloving simply because enforcement feels harsh.

Justice and love are not opposites in the Bible. They are married.

This is where a basic Christian moral principle helps untangle the confusion: love must be ordered. The tradition calls it the ordo amoris — the order of loves. Scripture assumes this everywhere. A man who neglects his own household is condemned (1 Timothy 5:8). Elders are accountable first for the flock entrusted to them (1 Peter 5:2). Kings are judged by how they protect their people and restrain violence within their borders (Jeremiah 22:3).

That doesn’t eliminate concern for outsiders. It structures it.

When political movements demand that Christians ignore crime, excuse fraud, and accept the collapse of their own communities in the name of abstract empathy, they are not appealing to biblical love. They are inverting it. Love that refuses to prioritize responsibility becomes cruelty dressed up as virtue.

This inversion is not accidental. It has a history.

Marxist movements in the 20th century were explicit about using moral language as a revolutionary tool. Lenin wrote that morality was not an objective good but a weapon, something defined entirely by what advanced the revolution. Mao spoke openly about “protracted struggle” and the necessity of chaos to weaken existing structures. Herbert Marcuse later argued that “liberating tolerance” required suppressing certain voices and empowering others, not based on truth, but on political usefulness.

The strategy was always the same: identify real grievances, amplify them, detach them from moral limits, and weaponize compassion to destabilize institutions.

We saw this clearly in 2020.

Black Lives Matter did not simply protest police misconduct. It deliberately put law enforcement into no-win situations. Officers were baited, surrounded, obstructed, and filmed, hoping for a reaction that could be broadcast as proof of systemic evil. Riots were justified as “the language of the unheard.” Cities burned. Businesses, often, ironically, minority-owned, were destroyed. And Christians were told that condemning the chaos meant siding with oppression.

Minneapolis lived that reality.

What we’re seeing now follows the same playbook. Obstruct law enforcement. Provoke confrontation. Frame any response as brutality. Flood social media with moral outrage. Pressure churches to bless the narrative or be branded unfaithful. The goal is not reform. It’s destabilization.

And Scripture gives Christians no permission to baptize that.

John the Baptist is instructive here. When soldiers asked him what repentance looked like, he didn’t tell them to quit enforcing the law. He said, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be content with your wages” (Luke 3:14). In other words: act justly within your role. Jesus himself acknowledged the legitimacy of civil authority even under pagan Rome. He condemned hypocrisy and corruption, not the existence of law.

A state that refuses to enforce its own laws does not become compassionate. It becomes cruel.

When law collapses, the vulnerable suffer first. The poor cannot flee chaos. Families lose safety. Trust evaporates. Criminals thrive. Scripture consistently condemns rulers who tolerate violence and corruption, not for lacking empathy, but for failing justice.

Paul tells Christians to pray for rulers “that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way” (1 Timothy 2:2). That peace does not come from permissiveness. It comes from order.

Minneapolis is not suffering because the law is being enforced. It is suffering because the law was abandoned for years and is now being reasserted amid ideological resistance. That resistance is not righteous anger. It is defiance rooted in a political theology that sees chaos as a tool.

Christians do not have to choose between mercy and order.

We can love immigrants personally while insisting on lawful borders nationally. We can oppose abuse of power without opposing the existence of authority. We can reject racial scapegoating while acknowledging real corruption. We can refuse revolutionary chaos without becoming hard-hearted.

That is not compromise. It is biblical clarity.

The Bible never pits compassion against justice. It orders them. And when that order is restored, the Church can preach repentance and grace, the state can punish evil and reward good, and Christians can stop being manipulated by moral language designed to pull them into someone else’s revolution.

That discernment is not optional anymore. It’s the moment we’re in.