Start With Love
“When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.”
– Leviticus 19:33-34
They walk. They swim. They come by boat or cargo truck. They sacrifice everything, sometimes even their lives, to seek something better for themselves, their children and their extended families.
We don’t know their stories. We don’t care. We see the illegal crossings, the financial burden, the “threat” to what we erroneously see as ours. Our hardened hearts demand a stop to it all.
We are Christians.
Some conservatives rush to explain the Hebrew words and talk about illegal aliens and what this scripture really means. They are “justifying” hatred and lack of compassion.
Some liberals hurry to use these two verses as a reason to open the border completely and demand that our government provide unlimited money to help them all. Isn’t that what God would want, they ask.
Love. Maybe that’s the key word. Love. God loved us enough to send His Son to die on a cross for our sins. God is love. Jesus told us to love God and to love our neighbors.
But evil has dulled our senses to the point of hatred to all those who aren’t like us. We see it in the racial divide. We see it in the difference in neighborhoods and bank accounts. We “need” to be financially better than others. We “need” for everyone to be like us. We “need” to justify our hatred that we direct toward people we don’t even know.
This is a complicated issue with many, many points of view. Do we need to do something? Absolutely. But do not mock God by claiming faith and then turning away from those created in His image. In all things, show love and kindness and compassion. That is what God requires from us.
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