Hello.
I was raised Christian. When I was young, I was taught radical ideals like… love your neighbor as yourself.
It’s crazy. I know.
Here’s a fun story from the gospels…
25 An expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 26 He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” 27 He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.” 28 And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.”
29 But wanting to vindicate himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” – Luke 10: 25-29
It’s such a great question. Any Christian knows that loving your neighbor is critical to being successful at pleasing God.
So, for anyone out there that’s holding to Christian ideals, let’s take a moment to ask ourselves… who is my neighbor?
Is it other Christians? Others of our same race? Literal next door neighbors? Only people we like?
No.
For anyone who isn’t familiar with the gospels or the stories of the bible, Jesus actually defines who our neighbors are for us with the infamous story of the good Samaritan. It’s a good read if you’re interested.
Jesus doesn’t define being a good neighbor as some social construct. It’s not ethnic, it’s not religious, or socio-economic. It’s not getting to pick and choose who you love or accept as your neighbor. It’s everyone. It’s neighbors all the way down. It’s Americans. It’s non-Americans. It’s every single human on this planet. Yeah, even the ones you don’t like.
American Immigration
Right now there’s a lot of unrest in the United States of America over immigation laws. One side, often the side that proclaims to be supported by God and Christianity, claims that our country is filled to the brim with bad people. The other side, often the side labeled as “evil liberals”, supports the idea that we should have a level of compassion and kindness toward anyone, even strangers from another land, who come to this country to seek refuge (legal and illegal).
All too often the argument turns to some kind of belief that we’re only going after bad people.
But then, we see teenage girls being thrown to the ground. It creates confusion. When we hear about children being deported to countries that our own government warns U.S. citizens to “reconsider travel” if planning to visit, it makes us feel like we are being a bad neighbor. These aren’t wild criminals and murderers. These are people, good or bad, they’re our neighbors. They are strangers who came here to find a better life, or at least escape the oppresion of others. Our answer to them, to our neighbors in these recent days is clear. We will not accept our neighbors. We will not feed them and care for them. We will not love them.
We reject Christ’s teachings. We make laws and then hide behind them.
So now the Christian audience must pivot. People point to the riots in Los Angeles and show crime and violence and justify our own cruelty. We pretend we have some kind of justification for our own rejection of Christ’s teachings. It’s okay that we’re being bad neighbors. They’re bad to us! We act like we’re the good people. Don’t look at the kids and accidental crimes we’ve committed in our crusade. Look at that bad guy in LA! We’re justified!
We aren’t.
This isn’t being a good Christian. This is being a nationalist. An isolationist. This is putting ourselves above everyone else and pretending we have some kind of moral or social superiority while trying to justify it by highlighting the worst parts of civil unrest.
No one thinks burning cars in California is a good thing. There are people who make bad choices, who use civil unrest to accomplish their own desires, and they are wrong.
But to toss out the protests because of the individuals without asking the question of… how… how did these protests begin?
It is cruelty in the name of self-promotion. Nothing else.
It’s not new!
No. It’s not.
We’ve had immigation problems under both major parties of our government, and we’ve had Christians on both sides of the aisle that have pretended this isn’t a problem.
The current administration has taken off the mask. They have, as they often do, revealed an ugly truth about our great country. We proclaim to be a nation under God, but we shrug aside the teachings of Christ in order to preserve our own “traditional values”.
Jesus understood this behavior, just as he understood the argument about how we treat our neighbors. He saw people who mocked and picked at their own internalized self-preservation and ideology and ignored the teachings of the religion they claimed to follow.
9 Then he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition! –Mark 7: 9
The men he said this to would have said they were just following the law! They were just punishing those who didn’t follow the LAW.
Christ called them hypocrites.
Christ’s Suffering Manifest
When I still attended church, I began to struggle with what I consider to be the greatest weapon utilized against Christ and Christian teaching today.
Hypocrisy.
Not a good man making mistakes. Everyone does that. No one faults someone who strives to do their best and falls short.
No.
I mean genuine hypocrisy.
A preacher telling a congregation that we must love our neighbors at the pulpit, and then openly shaming and celebrating the destruction of innocent lives because they choose nationalist ideals over their own God’s commandments.
Not a misunderstood believer.
A studied and learned individual. The one who knows the verses I listed above. They’ve read them, understand them, and they know the truth that Christ shared with them. These are the ones who corrupt their followers. They choose wealth and power and greed over their beliefs. They use the bible as a weapon against the very people Christ told them to love.
It is not just wrong. It’s evil.
We see the hypocrisy and we see that evil, and you know what?
When you act evil, Christians and non-Christians stop showing up to church.
TechicoolDad 
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