Sarah giving Hagar to Abraham

Slavery was common…..accepted in both the old and the new testament. Many, if not most of the patriarchs owned slaves. Many leaders of the early Christian faith owned slaves. Paul’s letter to Philemon is a plea to Philemon to show mercy to his slave Onesimus. Some slaves were field hands, some were household servants, and some were sexual slaves. Abraham, the patriarch of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity had a slave named Hagar……she was a household servant……but she was also a sexual slave. Hagar wasn’t found, she didn’t volunteer……she was sold to Abraham’s family……by a human trafficker. She was owned……and when she was no longer useful…….she was discarded. If you had asked Abraham why he owned slaves, why he didn’t free his slaves, you would hear a long list of justifications. The most common would have been, “I can’t afford to free my slaves”. What this really means is that Abraham’s standard of living would deteriorate if he didn’t have his slaves.

Let me be clear……..slavery is evil. Slavery violates rule number 2: “love your neighbor”. Abraham was wrong…..and his justification was and is a sham.

So where am I going with this?

I am a Christian by faith and a conservative in my politics. Christian conservatives generally defend the idea of a wall……the idea of limiting immigration……the idea of keeping the millions of refugees in Mexico.

I want to examine our motivation, as Christians, for supporting “the wall”. If you want to keep the cartels and the drugs out, I am sympathetic. But; the most common reason that I hear is “we can’t afford it”. No wall means millions of poor people, many of them families, inundating our social services. They need food, shelter, medical care, and jobs. They will need this for decades and neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have a clue how we will pay for it.

The simple truth is that we can’t afford to take care of these people. Letting them in will increase the federal deficit which will inevitably lead to higher taxes and lower spending on existing entitlements……like social security, medicare, and medicaid.

An open southern border will cause a deterioration in the standard of living for Americans for decades. This is a reality.

And yet……..”Love your neighbor” demands that we be hospitable to refugees…….to soujourners.

“We can’t afford it” is the same cop out that Abraham would have used. For me to sit down at Jersey Mike’s and eat a $15 sub while saying that I can’t afford to help a hungry, homeless family from Honduras waiting at the border…….is dishonest.

To enjoy one of the highest standards of living in the world……..and say that we can’t afford to help the people piling up on our southern border is disingenuous.

Yes, accepting millions of refugees into the country will lower my standard of living.

But, letting them into America and caring for them is the right thing to do.

What iced this for me is an epiphany that I had a year ago.

If Jesus was standing on the southern border today…….would he be building a wall…….or passing out bottled water?

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.

Leviticus, 19:34, ESV

Do justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor him who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the resident alien, the fatherless, and the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place.

Jeremiah, 22:3, ESV

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,

Matthew, 25:35, ESV

I spend some time each morning with the Bible. Needless to say, it is a big and complicated book. Sometimes it seems to be going in two directions at the same time. Recently I have come to understand the different parts of the Bible better by looking not only at what they say but why they say it. I spend some time considering what God was accomplishing.

It’s like peeling off the layers of an onion. Each layer of the Bible has a different purpose. Taken together, they are a cohesive whole with a profound message.

The first layer is the old testament. This begins with a history that begins with broad strokes and becomes more specific as it goes along. It transitions to a series of prophets who tell us what is coming…….what to expect. The old testament is foundational. It establishes basic rules. It sets the groundwork for a revolutionary change in how God runs the world.

The next deeper layer is the Gospels, and the letters of the new testament. These are supporting documents that establish the character of Jesus. They support his divinity. They tell us who Jesus is.

The final, and deepest layer is the teachings of Jesus……the “words in red”. This is the very heart of the Bible. The words of Jesus……his teaching……tell us why he is here. They tell us why we are here. And they tell us where we are going. The teaching of Jesus show us our destiny. As such the teachings of Jesus are the most important ideas in human literature.

So……..every human being needs to read these teachings. Even if you think that the Bible is nothing but a collection of outdated myths……..you need to read the words of Jesus. It only takes a few hours.

The words…..the teachings……of Jesus are the bedrock of Christianity. Your decision to accept or reject Christianity must be based on these words. Don’t get hung up on details from the old testament or some controversy in the gospels or the letters.

Judge Christianity based on what the man said……himself.

If, at the end, you accept his teaching…….say a prayer of thanks and begin preparing for your eternity……in paradise……with Jesus.

If, at the end, you reject his teaching…….if you conclude that Jesus was a madman (because that is the only other conclusion)……..I ask you to consider this.

What was it that Jesus said that offended you?

What did he tell you to do that was a bad thing?

What did he prohibit that was a good thing?

Not much. The teaching of Jesus is sound. It is a great blueprint to build your life on.

So, we come to the final question.

If the teaching of Jesus is sound……..and there is no doubt that it is………why do you reject it?

The answer to that question will be the explanation for the popularity of secular humanism. It will define for you the logic behind most of the choices that you will make today.

“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.”

Jesus….Mark 12:30-31, ESV

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Jesus……Mathew 11:28-30, ESV

There is an old saying: “if you tell the truth….. you don’t have to remember anything”.

This works……because the truth doesn’t change. Situations can change. Fashions can change. But, the real truths endure. If an idea that you once believed is no longer so (human slavery is OK)…….then it wasn’t the truth in the first place.

The truth has permanence. And this goes against the grain of our modern culture. Today, the ideas that we accept as the truth change. They change with the situation. They change with the people around you. They change with our appetites. We manipulate ideas……and we call them truths…. to get what we want.

An unborn child is not a human being.

If you were born a man……you can be a woman.

Walking out of a store with $800 in merchandise is not stealing.

Climate change is not real.

These are ideas that were absurdities when I was young. And yet today they are widely accepted as true…….they are even codified into law.

I can safely say that as a culture we have entered the “post truth era”. Truth has become malleable. We have become comfortable with amending the truth to satisfy our short-term needs. And the more that we accept ideas that are not true, the easier it is to accept the next untruth…….to use it as though it were true……in order to get what we want. And when that idea no longe serves us, we discard it and replace it with another idea…….a new truth. The greatest abominations of human history have come about as the result of people accepting as truth an idea that was false.

There is another way.

Instead of believing and acting on the current “truth du jour”………running our lives based on what our favorite “talking head” tells us to believe……today, we can follow a set of truths that have not changed for over 2000 years.

The teachings of Jesus are such a set of truths:

Love God

Love your neighbor

Bless those who attack you

Care for the dispossessed…….the soujourner

Most of the people around you will not be doing this. They may even find your behaviour confusing. But each day, you will touch someone. And, maybe, by some small act of kindness, you may change the trajectory of their life.

Such is the power of the truth.

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

Mark Twain

“If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Jesus…..John 8:31-32, ESV

“For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.”

Jesus……John 18:37, ESV

I used to keep a fish tank. It required some work but I really enjoyed my fish.Imagine that you had a big complicated saltwater fish tank. You designed it to be a perfectly balanced ecosystem: live plants to make oxygen, snails and catfish to clean out algae, and a mix of beautiful, compatible exotic fish. And you enjoyed your fish. You cared for them, worried about them, even loved them.

But, over time, things got out of balance. Unwanted species of algae, parasites, and bacteria moved in. You woke up one morning and your aquarium was an algae choked, fetid mess. You couldn’t see your fish for the scum. In fact they were struggling to stay alive. They had even begun to eat one another.

At this point you have two options:

Flush the fish down the toilet, dump the aquarium in the backyard, and take up stamp collecting.

Stick your hand down into the fetid, septic mess and clean the aquarium.

Option 1 is certainly the easy choice.

Option 2 is no fun. It even involves some personal risk. I know a guy who got a horrible infection cleaning his aquarium……almost lost a hand.

But, he saved his fish.

This is much like the quandary that confronted God toward the end of the old testament. Flush his creation, including us, down the toilet or clean up the mess…….at a significant personal cost.

God chose to clean up the mess…….our mess.

He stuck his hand into the fish tank. This is clearly not the face of God that dominates the old testament. This is not the God that Dawkins describes in “The God Delusion”:

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

I have often marvelled that Dawkins would unleash such a stream of invective at an entity that he doesn’t even believe exists…….a discussion, perhaps, for another day.

Jesus, in the New Testament. is a completely different face of God……but, make no mistake, he is the same God.

So, why the big change…….what was God’s motivation?

Justice

Persistence

Mercy

Love

Obviously, not Justice. Possibly persistence At least in part mercy.

But, behind that mercy, the driving force was, is, and always will be love. Love is the motivating force behind every act of God, from creation, to incarnation, to ministry, to resurrection, to pentecost, to paradise, and yes…….to hell. Jesus is that face of God incarnate.

Jesus is the love of God incarnate.

God’s love is a parental love. This is the central feature of God’s character. He wants…….demands…..relationship with us so that we can participate in his love. If we reject that relationship……..we reject his love.

And that is a good working definition………of hell.

In the story of Lazarus and the rich man, as told by Jesus, Abraham talks to a soul who is burning in hell. The tenor of the conversation is a sadness for the suffering of the soul in the flames.

I believe that God wakes up every day hoping that we will do better.

That hope…..is the reason why God hasn’t dumped the aquarium.

I believe that God is sad for the souls in hell…….sad that souls whom he loves are suffering. I don’t believe that God enjoys the reality of hell.

And the love behind that sadness is what drove God to stick his hand into a fetid aquarium two centuries ago.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.John 3:16, ESV