O America, Where Art Thou?

I am feeling disturbingly alone right now. I know there are people of like mind, but they seem oh so distant at every occurrence. I am watching the undocumented workers of America, and the child refugees from Central America villainized by the right, who demand that these are criminals, not children, and that they should be shipped back to a land of despair and poverty rather than embraced in the land of opportunity.

If this is the path my country chooses, this is no longer my country. I will not swear allegiance to a land that refuses to shelter the sojourner and gives power to multinational corporations while stealing it from the people. I will not ask God to bless a country that does not bless God; and blessing God has NOTHING to do with legislating the actions of nonbelievers, and EVERYTHING to do with thorough self examination to ensure that our own actions are consistent with the teachings of Scripture. And the teachings of Scripture do not mince words when addressing the plight of the sojourner, or of the poor and needy.

In the last twelve hours, two virulently racist articles have been splashed on my wall; one overplaying the gang connection of the immigrants (while gang members DO exist, it bears mentioning they are hardly exclusive to the Latino population), the other claiming that AlQaeda is coming across in droves in the midst of the children.

And I'm tired of it.

If you subscribe to such racism, keep it off my wall. Unfriend me, block me, do what you must, but it is getting more than a little frustrating to find that even my fellow Christians are ready and willing to show up with pitchforks at the border and usher these people out of America. It sickens me to a degree that's beginning to compromise my health.

Deitrich Bonhoeffer made the impossibly hard decision to stand against a growing racist culture, and I will do the same. But I know that in doing so, I may end up very much alone, at least in my real life encounters. But as Joshua boldly declared in his line in the sand moment: "As for me and MY house, we will serve the LORD". And serving the LORD, as Jesus makes poignantly clear in several instances, notably the story of the Prodigal Son and the passage in Matthew 25:31-46, includes serving "the least of these".