The other day I was watching comedian, Hasan Minhaj, interview the former governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie. My ears immediately perked up during this specific part of the interview:
It's a short clip - under two minutes long, but there's at least a couple things to unpack here. A policy question. And a moral one.
- Whose children are they?
- Who pays for caring for other people's kids?
Setting aside the policy question. Given the relentlessly scripture and Jesus commands us to care for of the downtrodden, the weak, orphan, widowed - I think there's pretty solid grounds that any society that consider itself a "Christian" society would make its priority the protection of and lifting up of these people.
And regardless of whether "society" decides they are our children or not, they're point-of-fact, God's children. And that should be enough for those of us who are in discipleship with Jesus to know the answer to the moral question.
Yes. They're our children.
It feels...weirdly controversial to say that. There was a time when that wasn't really something you had to convince people of. Many foundational American humanitarian programs ...for the children. Even for the children across our borders and across the ocean.
And there was a time when you didn't really have to convince Christians of this either. Christians historically were leaders in the exercise of radical hospitality. They were some of first people to express charity and hospitality to the destitute and oppressed - starting the first orphanages, hospitals, saving abandoned babies, founding and leading international aid organizations like the Red Cross. Now we're much better at defunding those institutions, suspicious of charity, and far more invested in building walls and protecting our borders that in protecting our values.
They are our children. They are God's image bearers, just as we are.
And if we choose to act like that's not the case, it is to our great shame and to our own impoverishing of our souls. For in denying this we lose both a part of the heart of God, and a pathway for him to work in us and remind us all over again that we once were alienated from Him. We were his enemies. Deserving wrath and punishment. And instead we were adopted.
God may we reclaim that gentle heart you have to draw near to the broken hearted, to seek the lost, and to bring close those who were far off.