Common Accusations From Christians

Update below. 

You will see lists on social media along the lines of "Jesus never said to love people only if they look like you. Jesus never said to love the stranger only if they have the right papers. Jesus never said to feed the poor only if they speak your language."  

I resent it because it is a deceitful political statement masquerading as a command from God.  I have discussed here Reflections on the Second Commandment and there is the much better Meditations on the Third Commandment by CS Lewis.  The short version is that while we are commanded to teach, we are forbidden to put words in God's mouth.  A phrase I use is that we cannot forge God's signature under our ideas. When speaking about public charity, which is related to but different from private charity, people muddy this distinction, I think to their peril.  And to my annoyance, as I said.

Next, there is the implication that we are not doing this already, or that some people want us to do none of it. This is not so. America gives a great deal to its poor, welcomes more strangers by far than anyone else, and protects them much better. The reason we think otherwise is that we have many more strangers than other nations and it is getting difficult to keep everyone safe and avoid stealing jobs and services from our own citizens, especially the poor. So lecturing other Christians that they are not obeying God about feeding the poor or welcoming the stranger ignores the physical reality in favor of an imagined better political reality.

I notice that visiting the sick and imprisoned is not mentioned. Could that be because those are things they would have to do themselves, rather than farm out to the government? You can't kick other people's politics on those.  The self-righteous tone is looking a little thin at the moment. 

Next I would like to look at the "just because they don't have the right papers" part. This makes it sound like it was some technicality, that they just forgot them on the counter when they left for work this morning.  Oh, you wicked other Christians! Can you not see that this makes no difference to Jesus?  How can you be so hard-hearted? If we were talking about a person God had put in front of us in real life - a mother with a baby, a child that is lost, an old person fallen in the street, a neighbor whose house has been flooded - I would pretty much agree with you.  But when you are talking about united political action, you have crossed over into giving other people's things away.  They are not yours to give without consent.

If you "just don't have the right papers" you aren't married. If you have lost them or they have been destroyed, you can get new ones.  It is not the papers that are the issue, but the underlying reality that the papers testify to.  If you don't have the right papers, you don't own your house.  If you don't have the right papers your adoption is a kidnapping. If you don't have the right papers you aren't a graduate.  If you don't have the right papers you are not a doctor, or a policeman, or a union member...or a citizen. Those are paper contracts based on social contracts we have agreed to as a group.  You are not allowed to confer an MD on someone just because you think it would be nice if they got to be a doctor.  Citizenship is conferred by a society. We usually do this through some kind of government, such as tribal elders, but it is ultimately not for a splinter group of tribal elders to confer. 

If someone who wants to be a doctor or a policeman but isn't is hungry or being mistreated, by all means, help them.  But welcoming the stranger, as in Numbers 9:14, has interesting follow-on effects. A foreigner residing among you is also to celebrate the Lord’s Passover in accordance with its rules and regulations. You must have the same regulations for both the foreigner and the native-born. The foreigner is welcome, but is no longer free to be outside the community expectations. If you wish to join, you may join, and God has commanded that we must welcome you.  But you have to join.  You have to enter into the mutual obligations of our society. Different societies have different rules for how this is to be done and this can get complicated.  I hate it when people regard this a simple - so simple that they feel free to speak to other Christians in such condescending tones.

Some of the people I see this from are committed Christians, personally generous, intelligent and often thoughtful. However, they surround themselves with Christians who are like themselves - quite the irony, really - who have agreed on what should be done politically, and so gradually move to believing that this is what Jesus commands. Thus, now I will choose a Scripture verse: "Do not take the name of the Lord in vain." Do not forge his signature under your politics. 

Update from a link by Althouse. A person very critical of Jesus does in fact shed light on the questions that some who oversimplify from the leftist side are accusing.