We have a do-unto-others problem. You know, like from the Golden Rule. The one that says we treat each other well. The one that undermines our convictions around immigration. That one.
The Golden Rule is ubiquitous. We all know it or some form of it. The phrasing which jumped into my head first is this:
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
Christians know this as one of the essential teachings of Jesus. You can find it in both the gospels of Matthew and Luke and in both cases, it comes in the context of Jesus offering his greatest teaching.
If you were looking to get a sense of what Jesus cares about the most, you would look here: in Matthew, the Sermon on the Mount. There it includes:
“In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.”
Most of us go “yeah, yeah, yeah” as we read that because we’ve all heard it before, but take another look at the second half before moving on. He just said “this is the law and the prophets.” That’s Jesus’s way of saying connecting with the plight of one’s neighbors is the very summation of all holy scripture.
All that other stuff you care about is the adiaphora, the small, less important junk of the faith. This is the heart of it.
Think of this as Paul wrote to the followers in Corinth:
“And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.”
This is the center upon which all things, all faith, all conviction is entrusted by Christ: love.
Love for God, neighbor, self. That’s the main message. Nothing exists without that at its core. We must remember that.
What’s First?
Like the Golden Rule, Jesus gives the same teaching in another way in the midst of his last week. In Mark’s gospel, Jesus is asked by a scribe what the first commandment is. First. And Jesus gives him two.
The question isn’t asking for a singular response, but an ordering one. It isn’t even, a “which is best” one, offered to the exclusion of the rest. He’s asking for a ranking. It presupposes that everything is important.
This is why Jesus’s response of two is even more interesting because he gets the real intention and still manages to subvert it. He gives a first and a second and offers them as ordered, but as a pair; like a matching set.
“‘The first is, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” The second is this, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these.”
And in Matthew’s version, he makes it even more explicit, saying all that other stuff “hangs” from these two.
This isn’t just a command to love like a parent telling a child to clean her room. Jesus is naming the whole faith paradigm is built on this synergy of love between us and God and between us and all of our neighbors. Nothing works, nothing counts as faith, that isn’t bound up in the embrace of love.
Jesus is asked what’s first among the multitude of important things and Jesus says nothing is more important than these two.
Failing the Test
This is why we have a do-unto-others problem. Most of us are running around with a “do unto others as they’ve already done to me” response or a “how dare you be uncivil toward the people who have done you wrong” response. We aren’t just shaming each other. We’re shaming people for shaming people who shame people.
None of it really embodies this spirit of love and empathy-led action.
What’s proactive, rather than reactive, is naming those places in which love can actually lead the way: how we treat each of the people who aren’t like us.
The horrendous policy of carelessly separating children from the parents and providing no means for reuniting them in any context is immoral. [That’s not enough.] It’s evil. And so is its replacement.
That’s a level of separation from the teachings of Christ so catastrophically obvious it takes Samson strength of conviction to explain away. No human being actually believes that they would wish to be permanently separated from their parents through a callous disregard for a basic paper trail when fleeing for their lives.
This policy clearly and obviously fails Jesus’s do-unto-others test. Which means it is categorically unChristian.
But the separation of children from their parents isn’t the only do-unto-others problem. The entire basis upon which our immigration debate is being argued is far worse.
It’s casual restriction, justified separations of people from their freedoms, decades of labyrinthine processes, legally-restricting a person’s very status and rights as a human being—all these acts fail the do-unto-others test because no one would want any of these things for themselves. Our immigration system itself fails the test.
And our system also fails the explicit scripture test.
Despite the public attempts to stretch the meaning of Romans 13, scripture is far more explicitly supportive of a generous welcome of refugees and justice for the oppressed.
Throughout the Torah, the Jewish Scriptures from which Jesus drew his teachings, and form the first five books of the Bible, God reinforces the specific need for hospitality and welcome to refugees, sojourners, and immigrants. And God does so for a specific reason.
A love and compassion for other people.
What we might call Empathy.
We get it in Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, over and over.
Welcome the stranger to your land because you were strangers once.
In other words, treat them well because you know what its like.
But it isn’t just about the feels; it’s a matter of justice.
Treat them well because you got lucky.
And that land isn’t yours. It’s mine.
Give because that’s what we do here.
Serve because you aren’t better than they are.
Love them because that’s the kin-dom I’m building here.
Let welcome be our very nature.
The question for Christians about immigration should never begin with safety or laws or authority. It starts with love and empathy.
Is this loving my neighbor? And explicitly, is this welcoming the stranger? Are we building the kin-dom right now?
The real question isn’t about our border laws and immigration policies or any of the many varieties of dysfunctional attitudes we’re sharing at the moment. It isn’t about the end results of open or closed borders (though Masha Gessen makes a compelling argument that we ought to think more about it).
It’s where our hearts begin. What comes first?
Jesus gives us a really simple starting place.
We ask ourselves:
How shall I love this neighbor?
Then answer that with the answer to another question:
What would I want people doing to me?
And remembering that to Jesus nothing is more faithful to God than loving each other.
But if we don’t? If we scapegoat and oppress a people, refusing to welcome the stranger and instead, arrest them, abuse them, and throw them to the other side of the wall? Maybe then we’ll find Jesus. Because Jesus always sides with the powerless, and if there’s a window, we might be able to see him from here.