Faces on Faith: Love the stranger
The recent murder of 11 innocent Jewish worshippers at a Pittsburgh synagogue brings home the very real presence of hatred in our society. The president has referred to the caravan of immigrants approaching our borders seeking shelter, freedom and opportunity as a “dangerous invasion of aliens.” He even suggested in a tweet that if some of these refugee aliens threw a stone at a border guard, they could be shot.
We are reminded that it was the Hebrew patriarch who admonished us in the King James Version of the Bible: “Thou shalt not oppress an hired servant that is poor and needy, whether he be of thy brethren, or of the strangers that are in thy land within thy gates.” It continues: “Love ye the stranger, for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt”.
The question of accepting refugees into our country often comes down to politics. The weekly Christian Science Monitor Magazine reminds us of the Jewish legacy of loving the stranger. A recent article states: “For Jews, Muslims, and Christians, it is a matter of moral commitment.” A shocking result of the synagogue tragedy was the targeted hatred of Jewish communities aiding refugees, and specifically HIAS, the Jewish non-profit that helps refugees around the world. Rabbi Richard Meyer was quoted as saying: “It’s both shocking and confounding because it’s just such a twisting of the narrative we know to be true, which is that this is our obligation, and really everybody’s obligation.”
The founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy speaks fervently about our brotherhood obligations in her seminal work “Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures,” when she writes: “The rich in spirit help the poor in one grand brotherhood, all having the same Principle or Father, and blessed is that man who seeth his brother’s need and supplieth it, seeking his own in another’s good.” Every major religion has some version of the “Golden Rule,” and Christians and Jews are taught the second great Commandment: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”
A hyper-militarized border and a toxic atmosphere of bigotry should awaken all of us in the faith community to remember that we are a nation of immigrants. We would do well to not only support our Jewish brethren, but to actually embrace and live out their legacy of “loving the stranger.”
June Sieber is affiliated with the Sanibel Christian Science Church.