Last night, a friend asked this question on social media:
If Jesus walked this Earth today, do you think he would be jumping in the vans with ICE to assist in what they’re doing?
I appreciated so many of the responses that followed, including some from Christians. But some who profess to follow Jesus clutched their pearls with a lot of exclamation points attached in their comments. Some were beside themselves, because clearly we have to respond precisely in this way. But it’s the law, they say. If you break the law, you get punished, they say.
My friend’s question holds up a mirror, and I am saddened that anyone might answer, “Yes, this is what Jesus would be doing.”
Here are some more questions:
Aren’t Christ’s teachings about grace and freedom?
Do we actually have laws that require men to wear masks, carry no badges, and tear parents away from their toddlers, driving them away in unmarked cars to prisons where they may or may not get food or medications? Are we required to do that by law?
Didn’t Jesus say that what we do “to the least of them” we do “to him”?
Why would anyone have have less rights or worth merely because they exist in a specific geographical space?
Were you willing to vote for a person who has 34 felonies and was indicted on far, far worse — an actual insurrection — but didn’t go to trial because people were willing to make him President? Do those laws matter, or is that only for people with brown skin existing on one side of a line we made up?
— Renee Roederer
Smuggling Grace 