Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
-The Statue of Liberty
[My husband, John Power, contributed to this article. John holds a degree in Political Science and a graduate degree in Social Work. I am grateful for the value he brings, both to this article and to my life.]
When Donald Trump was running for president, he ran on a promise to build a massive wall to keep out immigrants.
Once again, I thought this was a joke.
To my surprise and horror, people around our country rose with support for this plan. What has happened to our country? One does not have to look very closely to discover we have not been historically hospitable to those we determine to be others.
How did we treat the Native Americans? We classified them as savages. We then used that designation as legal justification for taking their lands.
How about the people we brought over by force from Africa? We classified them as slaves. We then used that designation as legal justification for tearing apart their families and profiting from their labor.
How about those from the Middle East? We classified them as terrorists. We then used that designation as legal justification for taking away their rights and torturing them.
Why?
Fear and personal gain.
We are so afraid of losing whatever we have (and of not getting what we want) that we are all too glad to harm others in the name of feeling safe and acquiring what we want. We have been so afraid and have sought so much personal gain that we codified our fears and gains into the laws that hold up our nation.
I was almost 18 when 9/11 happened. It was terrifying.
I had hoped to go to a college in Mississippi for a ballet program prior to 9/11, but afterwards I was so afraid of flying, I decided to stay closer to home, eventually opting to attend our local community college.
When, several years later I began flying again, there were times when I saw a person of Middle Eastern descent on the plane and felt fear in my body. Even while knowing Middle Easterners are not terrorists, the propaganda after 9/11 had, against my permission, taught my body to associate Middle Easterners (especially on a plane) with fear. I remember feeling so ashamed when I felt that fear. I did not want to be afraid. I consciously knew I was as safe on that plane as anywhere else, and I felt my body betrayed me when it responded in fear.
Since emotion-fear responses are faster than cognitive functioning, we often feel fear which runs counter to even our own rational thinking, and when this fear is perpetuated by those in power, sound thinking flies far out the window. The people of our country have continued to this day to receive all manner of messaging about why we should fear the “other,” and this has grown worse since Donald Trump became our president.
So here we sit today – a country of people full of fear without the sense to separate action from emotion-based fear responses.
We are so afraid of the other that we have abandoned not only sound reasoning but also (I am speaking here to Christians) the very heart of the Gospel of Christ. Our Gospel has called us to welcome the poor, the outcast, and the marginalized. The Gospel calls us to show hospitality to strangers; to clothe the hungry, care for the sick, and visit those in prison. The Gospel calls us to bless the poor in spirit, those who mourn, those who cry out for justice, and those who seek peace.
Have we forgotten this or just justified it away?
Instead of showing compassionate care for desperate souls fleeing danger and seeking respite in our land, we remove the children from their parents, (one of the most traumatizing things you can do to a child in distress), and subject them to living conditions far worse than our prisons. Then, in the name of defending such behavior, we point fingers and cast blame. We label these desperate souls as criminals and claim they deserve such treatment.
What in the world happened to showing hospitality to strangers?
I understand the country is not the church, and I understand it may not be practically possible to admit entrance to all who wish to find shelter in our land, but surely we can do better than this. Surely, we can do better than building a wall to keep the desperate and oppressed out of our lands. Surely, we can do better than to criminalize such individuals and rip their children from their arms. Surely, we can find a way to balance compassionate care and due process.
If such balance cannot be, should not we who claim to be followers of Christ err on the side of compassionate care?
The Democratic party seeks to expand rights for undocumented immigrants living in the US, and even though this may cause fear for some, for Christians, this fear should not overtake our biblical mandate to care for the outcast, the marginalized, and the oppressed.
The bible is steeped in mandates to care for the foreigner in our lands. In Deuteronomy, YHWH includes foreigners with orphans and widows in a triumvirate of the powerless who are to be treated fairly and given food and clothing. YHWH then singles out specifically the foreigner as He demands they are ones who must be loved.
And what is the rationale of YHWH’s demand? That the people of Israel, the elect, were once foreigners themselves, slaves in the land of Egypt. A rationale that in present-day America serves as a striking reminder we too were once foreigners in the land in which we now claim so fervently is ours and ours alone.
It strikes me as odd that Christians so strongly fall back on obscure verses in scripture to justify oppressive behaviors of others. They throw up their hands and cry originalism when asked to defend their positions. But as soon as the conversation turns to providing justice to all, loving others, caring for the orphans, the widows and the foreigners, then these same Christians become ardent contextualists.
Rules for thee, but not for me?
One of the reasons I will not vote for Donald Trump is the way he has fed the fear of the “other” and allowed those who perhaps held quietly racist thoughts to spew these thoughts out in the open for the whole world to see.
Our thoughts can be strange and fickle. Everyone has irrational thoughts and fears for which we may be ashamed. This is part of being human. It is up to us to determine whether we will live out of these fears or whether we will search for something deeper and more human by which to conduct ourselves.
Donald Trump has played on the irrational fears of our country. He has fanned these fears into a flame which threatens to destroy us. He has pulled people’s fears out of the margins and into center stage. He has allowed selfish fear to be more important than the care of others.
I will not claim Joe Biden is without flaw. It would appear his past is not terribly clean. I never claimed we were dealing here with an issue of straightforward good and evil. When I compare President Trump’s past and present to Joe Biden’s past and present, while simultaneously considering the party platforms of each of these candidates, my vote lands without question on Biden.
"Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares."
"Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh."
"Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you?'"
"You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God."
“[Jesus] stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’”
“Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
"Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me."
“But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
“Jesus replied, ‘Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.'”
"But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?"
"Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you."
"For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me."
"You would shame the plans of the poor, but the Lord is his refuge."
"If anyone is poor among your fellow Israelites in any of the towns of the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward them. Rather, be openhanded and freely lend them whatever they need."
"Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor man. Are not the rich the ones who oppress you, and the ones who drag you into court? Are they not the ones who blaspheme the honorable name by which you were called? If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself,' you are doing well."
"When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue is parched with thirst, I the Lord will answer them; I the God of Israel will not forsake them."
"Do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor, and let none of you devise evil against another in your heart.”
"Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ."
“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money."
"The Lord is a stronghold for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble."
"Better is a poor man who walks in his integrity than a rich man who is crooked in his ways."
"For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, ‘You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.’"
"Whoever oppresses a poor man insults his Maker, but he who is generous to the needy honors him."
You can find my post about the Democratic Party and the LGBTQ+ HERE.
You can find details about taking Trauma-Sensitive Yoga Classes with me HERE.
For further study on what the Bible says about caring for the less-fortunate check out Old Testament Ethics for the People of God by Christopher J.H. Wright and Wrestling with God and World by Robert L. Foster.
Comments