Woman at the Well: The Higher Law - Thou Shalt Not Cage Children (and Do Other Awful Stuff)

I like to have my Sunday posts be a little more spiritually uplifting. So when I got the challenge to write about a specific person in politics, my immediate response was rejection. I didn't want to ruin a spiritual post with that! And then I got to thinking how the Christian right has tied itself somehow into this so deeply that non-Christians use it as a weapon against Christianity.

Jesus said: And now I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. (John 13:34) Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. These two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. He said two commandments but I see three there. The point is to love. Jesus didn't put exceptions on this. He didn't say "Love thy neighbor except if they come from a different country or have a different colored skin or a different culture or make less money." No conditions. Just love one another. When Jesus said "Let the little children come unto me" he didn't put conditions on that either. He didn't say "Unless their parents are bad people, or they have brown skin, or they are poor." Jesus put no conditions on love. He simply said, "Love one another." Jesus also said, "It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones." So it would seem to me that caging children, denying them food, bathrooms and water would not be very loving. And I don't think falsely saying "well he did it first" is going to hold up with Jesus when he asks why it was done.

"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

Let's think about that one for a moment. Just stop and think about it. Is this what you would do to Jesus?

Love one another doesn't mean that you get to grab women by their private parts. That's not love. Nor is it love to go into women's dressing rooms to ogle them naked because you believe you own them. That's sexual assault, and I'm pretty sure Jesus frowns on that. Like big time. He's not crazy about the whole adultery thing either. Lying is another thing that Jesus doesn't like. So is stealing. That's not loving one another. "Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's." This is often used to justify following an inhumane law. I'm pretty sure that people don't belong to Caesar. There are two laws. Man's law and God's law. And as long as both laws are in agreement then it's not a problem. You know, like not murdering, stealing, etc. But occasionally these laws will oppose each other. So our responsibility is to follow the Higher Law. God's law. It's why those people in Nazi Germany who went against the laws of the land and hid the Jews were the good guys. If the law of the land is telling you to break the laws of God - which is to love one another, to treat other's kindly, to watch out of each other, then you break the laws of the land. In other words, you don't put people in cages and deny them basic human needs. You don't sexually assault them. You don't treat them like vermin. You don't call them names like "infestations", "illegals" and "aliens" so that you can dehumanize them. And you don't support governments who do that and call it good, or worse, righteous, or worse "of God." Nor do you call God's children nasty names just because you don't like the color of the skin God gave them. Or the sex they happen to be. I'm pretty sure God does not approve of the torture of people nor of people attributing it to Him. "But God uses imperfect men" is often the rallying cry. Well, of course God does. That's all He's got to work with! But that doesn't mean He's going to place an unchanged, unrepentant man at the head of a godly force. Sure before Paul was Paul, he was Saul who was intent on murdering Christians, but He became changed, and repentant, and spent his life imperfectly trying to make up for it. He was not kind or progressive about women. But at least he tried. This is not what's happened here. There is no changed man leading a godly force for good. And this man is certainly not the Second Coming of Christ (someone did write a book claiming that and yes there are Christians who believe it - I am not making this up). Jesus had the answer for the great majority of the problems in the world. "Love one another. Love thy neighbor as thyself." Imagine a world where we all did that. It's so simple, yet we somehow can't manage it. Instead we excuse our evil behaviors by justifying them, by saying "well he did it first", by claiming "that's just not the way it's done." If your leader is not following God, then you can't claim that it is God's will that you follow your leader. Love one another. Love one another. Love one another.

#womanatthewell #politics