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I Resist Him Because I’m a Christian

As a Christian, I take the words of Jesus seriously.

They matter to me.
I don’t think they’re theoretical ideas meant to be uttered for an hour on Sunday or kept locked in stained glass museums or contained solely in memorized prayers or resigned to live only in Twitter bios—I think they’re supposed to propel me out of privilege and prejudice, and into the places where grieving, hopeless, hungry, tired people are so that I can give comfort and be a help.
I think they’re supposed to cause trouble for the powerful and be good news for the poor.
I think they’re supposed to bring peace and justice and equity—even if they put me in harm’s way.

I don’t think I can call myself a Christian without living the words.

When Jesus says that I am to “love my neighbor as myself,” I see a religion that is bigger than my home or my neighborhood or even my country.  

When he says that “God so loved the world,” I see beyond the borders of America, outside of my faith tradition, and well past the comforts of my whiteness.

When he says that he inhabits the bodies of the forgotten and the poor and the oppressed, and that the measurement of my faith is the way I love the least of these—I see migrants and the undocumented and the uninsured. I see transgender teenagers and black people murdered on their couches and children separated from their parents and terminally ill people creating GoFundMe pages.

When I read about Jesus feeding multitudes on a hillside—not because they were citizens or because they believed the right things or because they were politically aligned with him, but simply because they were hungry—I realize how many hungry people there are and how little anything else matters if you have the means to feed them.

When I hear Jesus’s say that we are to give beyond what we are asked, and I hear his student John say that the person who has two coats should give one to the person who has none—I see a faith that isn’t built on capitalism or wealth or competition; one marked by abundance not scarcity, one defined by generosity and not by greed.

And it is because of the words of Jesus and my commitment to trying to emulate his character in the world, that I resist right now.

It is not a political affiliation that moves me, but a moral conviction, a spiritual agitation.

My faith compels me to push back.

I resist this Administration’s bigotry, because I see Jesus celebrating Samaritans and dining with beggars and touching the lepers and welcoming outsiders.
I resist its callousness, because I see Jesus embracing the grieving and healing the sick and defending the oppressed.
I resist the bloated arrogance and spitting malice and unrepentant cruelty of this Presidency, because I hear Jesus say that the peacemakers and the meek and the pure in heart, walk the path that good people are called to humbly walk.

I resist all of this because the Jesus I find in the gospels first resisted it. He opposed power, hatred, greed, and contempt for difference. That was the whole story: loving loudly and being willing to suffer and die on behalf of someone else.

Jesus lived a life fueled by compassion for hurting people, one fiercely devoted to bringing equity and letting more people come to the table. He dismantled the walls between people, leveled the ground that separated them, showed their inherent worth.

He wouldn’t be abiding white nationalism or gun-waving hubris or the bullying of gay couples or the defending of Confederate monuments. He wouldn’t be tolerating  religious people making their beds with dictators or a Church that cowered to hateful power.

These would be the very tables he would be turning over, so I too am upending them.

Resistance isn’t a hashtag or a catch phrase or a bumper sticker slogan and it has nothing to do with a party or a President.

It’s the most sincere prayer I can utter, the most tangible expression of belief I can offer, the clearest declaration of my faith that I can make in these moments.

Resistance to hatred is continuing the work of Jesus and so I do this work—so help me God.

 

 

 

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