Category: Politics

Jesus Was Tear-Gassed This Weekend

I don’t know exactly what the United States’ policy response to the migrant caravan should be, but I’m pretty sure it shouldn’t be this:

The first wave of men, women and children fleeing drug war-induced violence in Central America were met at the border this weekend by Border Patrol agents who proceeded to fire tear gas at them.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says that those who are his disciples would be welcoming to the immigrant and the stranger. He tells us that as we do to the least, we also do to him. He implores us to love our neighbor. He is shown to us early in life as a migrant himself, fleeing with his parents across the border into Egypt.

If we believe Jesus us with us here today, then we almost certainly could find him in the caravan of people fleeing and looking for asylum.

If we really do think Jesus is found in the face of our neighbors, then he surely was subjected to tear gas this weekend at the border.

If we take seriously the Jesus we read of in the Gospels, then we know he is not found in the halls of power. He is not sitting in the Oval Office, and he is not blessing those who give orders to tear gas innocents, and he is not casting blame on those who are looking for a better life.

The Gospels show us that, time and time again, Jesus takes the side of the suffering, the poor, the convicted and the hurting. I have no doubt Jesus is fleeing back south, away from America, with tears streaming down his face, both from the chemical attacks he was subjected to, and because of the sorrow he feels for those who are victimized by the powerful.

Miguel de la Torre writes powerfully of the Jesus who was a border crosser and a migrant in The Politics of Jesus:

And while most border crossers today do so as an act of desperation, Jesus, theologically speaking, chose to be a border crosser as an act of solidarity with the least of these. The biblical text reminds us that, although divine, Jesus became human, assuming the condition of the alienated. Accordingly: “[Jesus], who subsisting in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, in the likeness of humans, and being found in the fashion of a human, he humbled himself, becoming obedient until death, even the death of the cross” (Ph. 2:6-8). The radicalness of the incarnation is not so much that the Creator of the universe became human but rather that God chose to become poor, specifically, a wandering migrant.

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Is it any wonder that the second most common phrase used throughout the Hebrew Bible exhorts the reader to take care of the alien among you, along with the widows and the orphans? For those who claim to be Christians, responsibility toward aliens is paramount; after all God incarnated Godself as an alien – today’s ultra-disenfranchised. Jesus understands what it means to be seen as inferior because he was from a culture different from the dominant one.

Politicians have used fear of immigrants as a tool for countless years to win power in this country, and we are at a point where those words are being translated into violent action against innocent people. Christians have a duty to stand with those who are in need, because that is where we find Christ. All Christians should find what is happening abhorrent, regardless of how we feel about immigration laws in this country. No law is more important than a person.

That is what our faith is all about: love before legalism.

Christians should consider it their duty to welcome the immigrant if America won’t. We must be the hands and feet of Christ, regardless of how hard the powers of the world try to exert control through fear of the other. Let us find the love for our neighbors that America is unwilling and unable to muster.

“The leader who dislikes investigators is a potential tyrant”

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From On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder; presented without comment on a day in which the President of a nation that preserves the freedom of the press in the First Amendment to the Constitution continues his crackdown on and disrespect for any journalist who tries to hold power to account:

“What is truth?” Sometimes people ask this question because they wish to do nothing. Generic cynicism makes us feel hip and alternative even as we slip along with our fellow citizens into a morass of indifference. It is your ability to discern facts that makes you an individual, and our collective trust in common knowledge that makes us a society. The individual who investigates is also the citizen who builds. The leader who dislikes investigators is a potential tyrant.

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The better print journalists allow us to consider the meaning, for ourselves and our country, of what might otherwise seem to be isolated bits of information. But while anyone can repost an article, researching and writing is hard work that requires time and money. Before you deride the “mainstream media,” note that it is no longer the mainstream. It is derision that is mainstream and easy, and actual journalism that is edgy and difficult. So try for yourself to write a proper article, involving work in the real world: traveling, interviewing, maintaining relationships with sources, researching in written records, verifying everything, writing and revising drafts, all on a tight and unforgiving schedule. If you find you like doing this, keep a blog. In the meantime, give credit to those who do all of that for a living. Journalists are not perfect, any more than people in other vocations are perfect. But the work of people who adhere to journalistic ethics is of a different quality than the work of those who do not.

Go Vote

img_1015It’s Election Day in America. You should go vote today.

As I said the other day, I voted early, and in spite of my general pessimism about the good that can be done politically for the needs of the world.

But I still think you should go vote. And when you do, here’s what you should be thinking about.

Think about voting for the person who wants to really help other people, in actual, material ways.

Avoid voting for the person who thinks helping people means hurting them, demonizing them, taking something away from them, or restricting them.

Vote for the person who centers compassion, mercy, justice and love.

Avoid voting for the person who centers economic growth, profit margins, and the building up of worldly treasures.

Vote for the person who speaks positively of our communal life together, as a society and as people dependent on relationship and community for thriving.

Avoid voting for the person who promotes a “go it alone” ethos, who touts rugged individualism and every-man-for-himself type ideas.

Vote for the person who demonstrates sympathy and concern for the hurting, the sick, the immigrant, the stranger, the weak, and the destitute.

Avoid voting for the person who encourages envy and emulation of the powerful, the strong, the rich, and the ruthless.

And most of all, remember that your duty to your fellow human beings doesn’t end when you walk out of the polling place. In fact, it’s just beginning. As John Howard Yoder once wrote, “(Voting) is one way, one of the weaker and vaguer ways, to speak truth to power.” Challenging entrenched power, and building a better world that works for everyone on it, involves so much more than your vote. It involves you building relationships, practicing love, desiring justice, and working in any large or small way you can for the world you want to see.

Go vote today.