Who was Mary Magdalene?

A prostitute…….probably not.

A sinner……..probably (we all are).

A wealthy patron……maybe.

The wife of Jesus……probably not.

A real historical figure…….probably.

A woman once possessed by demons…..probably.

An important companion of Jesus…..definitely.

The first person to encounter the risen Jesus…..definitely.

Mary doesn’t get a lot of ink, but she gets more ink in the gospels than many of the apostles. When the apostles ran and hid……even Peter…….she stayed close to Jesus. After his death, she went to the tomb with the intention of caring for his corpse. The apostles were sleeping in.

So what is the main thing that we need to know about Mary?

After his resurrection, Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene…….first……before Peter……before Paul……before the apostles…….before his family. This was his choice. He chose to appear…….he chose to appear to Mary. This was arguably the most important event in human history……..and he shared it with Mary.

He shared it with Mary because she was very important to him…….because she was the most loyal of his followers……..because he could trust her to handle the knowledge properly.

I think that Mary Magdalene…….and Mary Jesus’s mother are extraordinarily important characters in the New Testament. The fact that they get little coverage may be related to the position of women in society at that time.

But, they were important……to Jesus……and that is all that counts.

Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.

They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”

“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”

Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”

Jesus said to her, “Mary.”

She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).

John 20:11-18, ESV

We see it again and again in the Bible…….the family tree of Jesus. It is typically recited as a lineage…..from Adam through David to Joseph. Jesus’s maternal lineage……through Mary……gets very little coverage.

And yet the simple biology of the matter is this:

Jesus was the son of Mary.
Jesus was the son of God.
Joseph……….was an innocent bystander.

And yet, Joseph’s lineage is clearly important.

It is important……..because it is a fulfillment of prophesy.

It is important from a legal perspective.

It is important……..because fathers matter.

But

Throughout the Bible, when Jesus talks about his father…….he talks about God. He never mentions Joseph…….not once. Joseph is never quoted……not once. After the annunciation and the birth of Jesus Joseph gets 2 direct mentions. Once when he leaves Jerusalem……and forgets Jesus. Once when he flees to Egypt to escape Herod. Overall, the silence of Joseph and about Joseph…….is deafening.

This must be important…..but what does it mean?

God shaped and developed the spiritual life of Jesus. God, Jesus, and the holy spirit are distinct….but inseparable. On the other hand, Joseph tended to the physical needs of Jesus……food, shelter, clothing, and protection…….at least until he was an adult.

The only conclusion that I can draw from the profoundly limited coverage of Joseph in the Bible is that, compared to the spiritual development of Jesus, his physical development…….beyond his basic survival……was inconsequential.

So……..Don’t lose sleep over your physical situation during your short time in this broken temporal world. Your time here will be over in a flash. Focus on developing your spiritual situation……….because you have a soul that is eternal. Your spiritual self is going to last forever…….for better……or for worse.

So…

The lesson of Joseph?

Your spiritual situation is critical.
Your physical situation is inconsequential.

If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.

Jesus, Matthew 5:29, ESV

if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Jesus, Matthew 6:30-34, ESV

This week’s post is primarily directed at Christians. If you are an atheist or a committed secular humanist, you may find it helpful……..in understanding what is going on in our heads……in understanding what drives us……in making sense of what looks like foolishness.

Human beings do bad things…….little bad things……horrible bad things. Some of us do them occasionally…….some of us do them constantly. But, we all do them. Some of them we can rationalize…….justify. Some of them we do because we just enjoy them.

My homework assignment for this week will be hard, but potentially very rewarding. I want you to meditate on something that you have done……something that was wrong. You could choose something small……the parking meter that you didn’t feed. But, if you take the easy way out, you will gain very little. Rather, I want you to meditate on the big screw-up…….the worst thing that you have ever done. Worst, not because of the consequences…….worst because of the wrongness of it. This will probably be something that you have been dragging around for years….possibly decades. It may be something that you have never shared……something that nobody else even knows about.

Next, I want you to visualize your death. You float above your body. You move toward a bright light. You see old friends and relatives. And then you meet Jesus. And he walks up, gives you a hug, calls you by name, and says “welcome home”. And his welcome is absolutely sincere and completely defined by love. Because he either doesn’t know about your big screw-up…….or he doesn’t care. Because your big screw-up and all of your other screw-ups have been forgiven……forgotten……erased.

What’s the point?

The point is that the bigger your screw-up, the more precious the forgiveness of Jesus is. And that is the second part of your assignment. I want you to meditate on the worth of that forgiveness.

I once read an essay by a pastor. As young man, he got his girlfriend pregnant and pressured her into an abortion that she didn’t want. Decades later, he shared this with his congregation…….and was shunned. This severely damaged his ministry and may have cost him his job. He concluded, “Jesus has forgiven me……why can’t they”.

We are all dragging around past sins. We don’t talk about them because we are embarrassed. We don’t talk about them because others won’t forgive us. Even worse, we don’t let go of them because we can’t forgive ourselves. Everybody thinks that we believe we are pure…..better than everyone else…….but we know.

And yet, Jesus, the creator of the universe, has forgiven us.

When we drag around past screw-ups, we devalue what Jesus did for us on the cross. In a way, what we are saying…….is that we don’t trust in his forgiveness……..or we don’t believe in it.

This doesn’t hurt Jesus……he loves us unconditionally. But it is devastating to us.

So the final part of this week’s assignment?

Forgive yourself……and prepare for that hug……from a guy who loves you absolutely and unconditionally………..from a guy who either doesn’t know or doesn’t care about your big screw-up. Because what he really cares about is the relationship that you and he share.

That relationship is the most important thing in your life. And failure to embrace Jesus’s forgiveness interferes with your ability to embrace Jesus.

For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west,
so far does he remove our transgressions from us.

David, Psalm 103:11-12, ESV

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace,

Paul. Ephesians 1:7, ESV

“What I envy most about you Christians is your forgiveness; I have nobody to forgive me.”

Marghanita Laski, an atheist, reflecting on forgiveness

I recently saw a photo taken by the Hubbel space telescope. It was aimed at the Andromeda galaxy, the closest galaxy to earth. The number of stars in the image was shocking. So, I looked it up.

How many stars are up there?

200 billion trillion.

Of these, on a typical urban night, about 2,000 are visible. They are separated by large areas of black. But, the black isn’t empty space……. the rest of the stars are there……we just can’t see them with our eyes……or with our best multibillion dollar telescopes…….because they are too far away. In fact, if we could see every star, the night sky would be a uniform white with a few brighter spots due to the closer stars. Even with our best tools, we cannot see the entire universe. Furthermore, the light from the furthest stars has been travelling for a long time to get to us. Earendale, the furthest star found by the Hubble telescope is 28 billion light years away. Scientists estimate that it was 13 billion years old when it emitted the light we are seeing. It is a very large star which would typically have a lifespan of a few billion years. In other words, the star Earendale…….documented and measured by one of our most sophisticated telescopes……is likely already dead and gone.

What’s the point?

The point is that we cannot see everything that is real. The fact that we cannot see or measure, or analyse something does not mean that it is not real. Even worse, some of the things that we can see, like Earendale, are no longer real. The fact that we can see, measure, and analyze something does not mean that it is real.

The simple reality is that science cannot see or measure or analyse the entire universe. We cannot see, measure, or analyse the big bang and what followed it. We can detect radiation that was emitted about a half million years after the “big bang” but we are completely blind for the first 400,000 years and almost completely blind for billions of years after that. We fill in that blind spot……millions to billions of years……with assumptions, extrapolations, and theories. And even these assumptions change about once every ten years. The fact that this year’s theory as to how the universe began is different from last year’s theory means that last year’s theory was wrong. And next year’s new improved theory will mean that this year’s theory is wrong.

The greatest of the assumptions behind these theories are:

There is no creative intelligence behind it all.

Even if there is a creator, he is bound by the same rules of nature that we are bound by.

If we cannot measure it…….it isn’t real.

If we can measure it…….it must be real.

And that doesn’t even begin to deal with the mass and energy that are missing. The 90% of the universe……the so called “dark matter and dark energy”……. that science simply cannot find. Dark energy and dark mass are real…..but we cannot detect them.

This is the house of cards that secular humanism builds on when it tells us that there is no creator.

This is the house of cards that you are wagering your future on……..when you believe the scientist when he tells you that he has it all figured out…….when he tells you that there is no creative intelligence, no God, behind it all.

we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

Paul, 2 Corinthians 4:18, ESV

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.

Paul, Colossians 1:15-16, ESV

Sex….is for one husband and one wife.

There it is.

Arguably the most unpopular teaching of Christianity.

It is so unpopular that the vast majority of non-Christians reject it. Our civil laws clearly repudiate it. Our society does not accept it. Furthermore, a significant minority of Christians reject it.

Today, I will focus on same sex relationships. Extramarital sex between a man and a woman is a topic for another day. So what are the arguments for and against extramarital, same sex, intercourse.

For same sex intercourse:

The primary teaching of the Bible and of Christianity is love…….Love God…..Love man. There is no “but”. There is no “except”. We are to love everyone….from God at one end to our “enemy” at the other. To teach that it is wrong for a man to love another man is to reject the very heart of Christianity.

Homosexuality is inate….common….normal. I have no doubt that many of us are born with a natural, inate physical attraction to others of the same sex.

Same sex marriage is common and legal. This takes same sex intercourse out of the category of adultery.

Against:

Every reference to same sex intercourse in the Bible is strongly critical. The Bible uses descriptors like: abomination, unrighteous, shameless, unnatural, dishonorable, and immoral. These descriptions come from the old testament and from Paul in the new testament. Same sex intercourse is never once described in a positive light. This is repeated over and over. In the Bible, things are repeated……because they are important.

But, what does Jesus say? He never specifically addessses the issue of homosexual intercourse. When he gets close to the issue of extramarital heterosexual intercourse, he defines it as sin but is more concerned with repentance and reconciliation. Jesus clearly and unmistakably defines marriage as a rite involving God, one man, and one woman.

Conclusions

First, marriage is a rite of the church…….not a rite of civil government. Marriage was created by God before man created civil government. It is a contract between a man, a woman, and God. Nowhere does the bible define marriage as a union of same sex partners. Same sex marriage is a creation of our culture….of our laws. It is not a creation of God. It is legal……but, the fact that it is legal……. does not make it right. History is replete with laws codifying activities that we all would agree were and are wrong. Just look at Nazi Germany. Just look at “partial birth abortion”.

Second, regarding commonality. There are many common desires, innate predispositions, that are wrong. For a list, just read the ten commandments. The fact that a desire is common, even inherited, does not mean that acting on it is right.

Third, there is a distinction between love and sexual intercourse. We are to love everyone without exception. Sexual intercourse, on the other hand, is strictly limited to one man and one woman. Sexual intercourse outside of traditional marriage falls into the category of entertainment……..recreational sex.

What it comes down to is this:

The Bible and same sex intercourse cannot be reconciled. You must either reject same sex intercourse……or reject the Bible. If you reject the Bible, you are saying either that God, paradise, and hell do not exist……..or that you are smarter than God……. that what you want is more important than what God wants.

And that is a good working definition of hubris.

You must either trust your intellect, your desires, and your appetites……..or trust your creator.

Just because you want something……..does not make it right.

‘For this reason a man will leave his father and his mother and will live with his wife. The two will become one.’ So they are no longer two but one. Let no man divide what God has put together.”

Jesus discussing marriage and divorce
Mattew 19: 5-6, ESV

And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”

Jesus instructing a woman guilty of extramarital sex.
John 8:11, ESV

Can you imagine this:

You are in Washington, D.C. You walk down Pennsylvania Avenue and stoll into the white house. You walk into the oval office, sit down in President Biden’s chair……and make yourself at home.

How’s that for equality?

It is also unthinkable……absurd……impossible. Even if you could pull it off…….it would just be wrong.

The simple fact is that we live in a two (or more) tiered society. And we are OK with that. We recognize that there is a hierarchy…….that the hierarchy is essential to the function of our world. We recognize that when a large group of people ignore, defy, or even attack the hierarchy…….chaos ensues. Sometimes, out of the chaos, a new and better hierarchy arises. But, society cannot exist without a hierarchy. Society without hierarchy is anarchy. And there are organized groups in our society who want just that. Portland, Oregon……and many of our other cities are victims of this anarchy. They are emblematic of what happens to a society when the hierarchy fails.

We call this “the rule of law”. And the vast majority of us accept and follow the rules set up by the hierarchy……even when we disagree with them…….because we know that, taken as a whole, the rules of the hierarchy are essential to our well being.

Where we come into conflict is the extent of the hierarchy. Who is at the top of the pyramid?

Mom and Dad……the Mayor……the Governor……the President……….God.

We accept the reality of the hierarchy. But, what if our focus is too narrow? I propose that the true and most essential hierarchy is two tiered. The most essential hierarchy is not the multiple levels of human government.

The most essential hierarchy is the physical world and the spiritual realm. The consequence of defying, ignoring or attacking this hierarchy is the same as with our earthly hierarchy………..chaos. And it is hard to argue that the chaos in our world is not increasing. The chaos in our world is a direct result of the widespread denial of the spiritual realm…….of our creator, God……..of his two essential rules…….Love God and love your fellow man.

So……there is your choice…….our choice as a society:

Deny the spiritual realm……and enjoy chaos

Or

Accept the spiritual realm and our creator……and enjoy love.

“”You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Jesus……explaining Christianity in 3 sentences.
Matthew 22: 37-39, ESV

“What we have here…….is a failure to communicate.”

A line from the movie “Cool Hand Luke”

Last week, I sent out about a dozen text messages, several dozen emails, and left about 4 messages in voice mail boxes. This was a pretty typical week. Your week was probably similar. Technology has made it very easy to send information to another person. But, I am beginning to wonder…….has technology improved our ability to communicate? You see, half of those messages did not garner a reply. Half of my messages were not even acknowledged. Now, it’s true that sometimes a message does not require a reply. But, I don’t know for sure that the messages that I sent were even received.

Please don’t get me wrong, I’m not having a pity party. I don’t respond to every message. I certainly feel no compunction to respond to commercials masquerading as texts, voicemail, and email. But, I am going to try to be better with non-commercial messages. A message from another person…..sent to me should at least be acknowledged.

And that brings me to the point of this post.

I believe that God is far more involved in the details of our daily lives than we suspect. God probably intervenes in our lives many times a day. Sometimes, this is direct. Sometimes, he gives someone else a little nudge to do or not do something to us or for us. I can recall several incidents where I felt a little nudge to do something that was unusual…..something that was way outside of my typical behavior. Sometimes I act on the nudge……sometimes I ignore it. In either case, I believe that these acts were prompted by God. These tiny, subtle interventions are, in effect, communications from our creator.

My point is that daily, God sends us a message, a little nudge, perhaps even a gift, or maybe he spares us from a disaster. And it is like the texts that I sent last week.

I suspect that most of the time, when God reaches out to us…… he doesn’t get a reply. Most of the time, when God reaches out to us……..we don’t even acknowledge him.

Maybe God deserves a reply…….Maybe God wants an acknowledgement………instead of “a failure to communicate”.

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? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’

Jesus, Matthew 25:31-40, ESV

Success, Failure….and Sin

Years ago there was a weekly sports show. It began with a video clip of an athlete succeding and another athlete failing…..spectacularly. We live every day with success and failure. Typically we set a goal, work toward it, and we either achieve it…..or not. We succeed or we fail. By the time we get to work in the morning, we have succeeded or failed a dozen or so times: shower, leave the house, find a parking spot, arrive on time, etc. These are small successes. There are bigger goals…..bigger successes and failures: graduate college, find a mate, raise a family, retire, etc. Today, I want to focus on success/failure on an even larger scale.

Globally……is your life a success?

Taken as a whole, has your life achieved its goal?

I always told my sons, “the first step in solving a problem is to accurately identify the problem”. The first step in measuring the success of your life is to accurately identify your goal. If your life was a business, this would be your “mission statement”.

So, as a human being, what is your goal in life……your mission statement? I’ll give you a clue. If you can’t clearly state it in one sentence…..in the next three seconds…….you don’t have one. And if you don’t have a goal for your life, your life is going to be a failure…….even if you drive a Ferrari. This is why we have mid-life crises. This is why we lie on our death bed with regrets.

This is the great failure of secular humanism. SH has a great many short and medium term goals……many of them noble. What it lacks is a cohesive, global, achievable, long term goal……a goal that applies to every last one of us. The increasing conflict and craziness in our world grows out of us all pursuing conflicting personal goals. We abort our children……we bomb abortion clinics. We go to war.

Christianity is different. Christianity offers a unifying goal that applies to every one of us:

Draw closer to our creator……God.

How’s that for a mission statement?

Which brings me to the flip side of today’s post:

What is failure?

Failure, writ large, is like the guy on the ski jump. We set a goal and fail to reach it. Small goals lead to small failures. Medium size goals lead to medium size failures.

Global failures lead to failed lives.

If my goal is to draw closer to God, then anything that I say, do, or even think that doesn’t achieve that goal is a failure……..and it happens every day.

And failure to draw close to my creator is a very good working definition……..of sin.

For the Christian, the opposite of success……..is sin.

You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy (God). It does not matter how small the sins are, provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards will do the trick.

Indeed, the safest road to hell is the gradual one — the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, advice to a young demon

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Jesus, Mathew 6:33, ESV

But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you

Isaiah, 59:2, ESV

Today’s post is both for those who do not believe in a creator……..in God……..and for defenders of the creator. Because creation……bringing the universe out of nothing……bringing life out of nothing……is the defining act of God. Creator and God are synonymous.

Today I will focus on “how did life begin?”……..but the same argument applies to “how did the universe begin?”

Once I met a committed secular humanist. She asked, “do you actually believe in creation in seven days?” I said yes…….and she laughed. The encounter has caused me to spend years exploring my beliefs on creation……my “creation story”. The question that she asked was terribly effective……..secular humanists use it frequently…….because they find my “creation story”……..they would call it a “creation myth”…..to be laughable. And as Christians………we are intimidated………we are silenced. And that is the entire point of the question.

The secular humanist begins with the requirements that any explanation for the beginning of life must occur in a closed system and cannot rely on an outside intelligence or any phenomenon that current science cannot explain. Using those ground rules, the secular humanist tells us that intelligent design is laughably impossible.

Today I want to turn the tables……to ask the hard questions of the secular humanist. My first question is: “how did life begin?” The usual answer is one of the following:

Lightning struck a puddle of “primordial ooze” (simple, non-living molecules) causing them to come to life. Those simple molecules then assembled themselves into mRNA which then reproduced and generated proteins which then assembled themselves into living cells and reproduced.

Or

Primordial ooze coalesced into blobs which then assembled a surrounding membrane to become protocells which then became alive and reproduced.

The problem is that there is not a whiff of hard evidence that any of these things ever actually happened…….or that they are even possible. Even with the intervention of a scientist in a white lab coat (read…..intelligent creator), these explanations cannot be reproduced in a laboratory setting. Generations of scientists have tried.

And that brings me to the second question for the secular humanist:

Absent any proof that any of these things has ever happened…….absent any proof that any of these things is even possible……..why do you believe them?

The secular humanist will often reply with a barrage of interlocking theories, many of which do have merit…..but many of which rely on other unprovable theories and assumptions. This is a “primordial soup” of circular logic. When push comes to shove, if you throw out all of the unproven theories and assumptions, the hard evidence for the beginning of life out of non-living material simply does not exist.

If we are being honest. The “scientific” explanation for the origin of life is no more plausible than intelligent design.

There is only one honest answer to question number two.

The secular humanist believes in the “scientific” explanation of the origin of life……..because it has to be true. Because if it isn’t true their entire belief system fails.

So…….given two unproveable creation stories……..what drives the choice between them?

We tend to believe the ideas that serve us.

Secular humanism puts man at the top of the pyramid….we are in charge and can do as we please with impunity. The secular humanist wants power and control. Most of all……he wants to be in charge.

Intelligent design puts a creator who has expectations of us at the top. We are rewarded for meeting his expectations. We are punished when we fail. God is in charge……not man. Most of all…….the Christian wants eternity in paradise.

And what is God’s expectation?

Only that we recognize him and love him.

The choice, in the end, is a choice between living under external expectations……..that serve God…….and creating our own expectations…….that serve us.

And that is the way to answer……..when someone asks you about your belief in intelligent design.

And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

Paul, Hebrews 11:6, ESV

in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self………lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power.

Paul, 2 Timothy 3:1-5, ESV

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