But, um, who is my neighbor?

Governments make and enforce cold-hearted laws. They do it all the time. All of them. It is what they do.

But if you call yourself a Christian and you cross your arms and defiantly say, “Well, they broke the law so they have to pay the price,” and you have no compassion for people fleeing to save their lives and especially the lives of their children, then I call bullshit on you and your alleged faith. If you can look at children in detention centers and just casually accept it as the way things are and so, that’s just how it is, then you need to re-examine who you think you are.

Don’t take Bible verses about obeying laws out of their context. The same Bible that says, “Obey your government rulers,” also says, “We ought to obey God rather than men.”

Maybe you need to read the Gospels and see what Jesus did. Because your Jesus is on one side of this issue and I promise you it is the side of the children.

Don’t ask, “Who is my neighbor?” You know good and well who your neighbor. The question is will you love your neighbor?

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” Make sure you’re not being polluted by your Party (and they both pollute).

We will never know what would have happened if German Christians had put Hitler on notice in 1933 that they would not stand for injustice. (And please don’t talk to me about Bonhoeffer. I know all about him but not enough Christians listened, did they?) They were happy to let what they hoped were the ends justify the means and so could peep through the curtains while this neighbors were first dehumanized then carted off to “detention centers.”

I hope it isn’t too late for America. But when people use their Bible to justify evil, ill treatment of the neediest and we don’t defy them, then I’m afraid it is too late.

I'm mad as hell

I’m as angry as I have ever been.  I just balled my eyes walking home for ten blocks.  I’m must have seemed like a lunatic to the early-Puerto Rican day revelers.  I probably just seemed like a morose drunk, which I would be if I were drunk.

I wish I were drunk.

I just talked to my Mexican friend who just this year got his green card. That seems like something to celebrate. But then he told me about the experience.

It wasn’t just the fear of leaving his wife, his five year-old son and two year-old son here in the States while he went back to Mexico so that he could come back with a green card.  That process in itself seems a bit cruel and barbaric. Hearing him tell how his son held to his leg begging him not to go and begging him to take him with him belies the fear that has been created in the process. Even a five year-old can tell that something is not right.

But the thing that made me boil was what he told me about the reentry process as his wife and sons waited for him at the airport. The agents made him wait for 30 minutes while he heard them cruelly talk (as if he couldn’t understand; his English is exceptional) about perhaps not letting him enter. Of course, they didn’t have a legal foot to stand on. His papers were in order. But in the current climate, they could afford to entertain cruelty.

And his experience is mild compared to what is happening on our border to the south.

I’m ashamed of America. Merely kneeling during the national anthem is not enough. I stopped the pledge of allegiance years ago. Yet, a sentimental tear would often find its way out of my eyes during the Star Spangled Banner. No more. Not now. It may sound cliché but if this is what we’ve come to, they let’s tear down the Statue of Liberty and especially the Emma Lazarus poem at her feet. It is, to be blunt, BULLSHIT.

There is no conscience in the White House or Justice Department.  It is trickle-down cruelty.

I have offered some assistance where I can. I think it is time for more. I don’t’ know what yet. I will find out.