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.