From a religious point of view, the most tragic, unfaithful thing we can do is to create divisions by regarding our fellow human beings as "others" and therefore failing to treat them with love and compassion.
Benedictine monk Richard Rohr says "the job description of healthy religion is making one out of two -- reconciling everything; that there is one God, one world and all are children of God. Everything deserves respect."
We see reconciling respect in Jesus' behavior. He offered the same loving compassion to everyone -- righteous and sinner, clean and unclean, Jew and Gentile. He fed and healed outcasts and foreigners with the same generosity he gave his own people. The only ones Jesus got testy with were those who regarded themselves as right while dismissing others. He challenged those who oppressed the poor.
Jesus didn't just reconcile divided humanity Christians believe he also united humanity to the divine.
"I am in the Father and you are in me and I in you," he told us.
The apostle Paul continued in his tradition. The new community, Paul said, overcomes all divisions. We are to be united beyond the great human divisions. No more Jew or Gentile; no more slave or free; no more male or female. All are one.
In Jesus' name, Paul taught us to give special respect to our less reputable neighbors.
Paul saw Christ's reconciliation as universal. He reasoned, just as Adam's sin brought death to all humanity, so Christ's obedience brings life to all humanity. (1 Corinthians 15:22)
So, our fundamental orientation should be to regard every human being as God's beloved child, created in the image and likeness of God. We are all one. We are to love our neighbors as ourselves. The essential moral precept in every enduring religion is loving compassion. Christianity goes so far as to assert that "God is love." (1 John 4:8)
God is love. I am in God. You are in God. We are both one in God. That's the fundamental condition of creation.
The great religious vision asserts the essential union of God and all humanity in a relationship of love and compassion. The great human failure is to separate what God has united.
We do violence to ourselves through our selfish individualism. We do violence to humanity through our tribal divisions.
We break the world apart whenever we set up polarities -- me vs. other, us vs. them. We fail when we privilege ourselves and those like us while we disrespect those we regard as different. We create systemic damage when we let lesser loyalties trump our greater union.
I'm an Episcopalian who loves America, the Hogs and Arkansas. I'm white, straight, married and prosperous. But if I regard any of those identities as greater than my union with God and with all humanity, I do wrong. I create false divisions if I treat as "others" Baptists or Muslims, Central Americans or Africans, Longhorns or Sooners, Massachusetts or Texas, black or brown, gay or transgender, single or partnered, poor or unemployed.
I am called to love the other with the same respect I am to love myself. I am to want for them the same dignity as I desire for myself.
So when suffering families and children seek refuge and hope, sacrificing their homes and homeland, a compassionate country creates a fair and efficient way to welcome their faith and hope. When loving LGBT couples wish to commit themselves to the same fidelity that my wife and I vowed nearly 40 years ago, a just society honors their hope and love. When minorities of any kind face discrimination, teasing or threat, those of us in the comfortable majority advocate for their protection and for the full expression of their hopes. When people are hungry, we feed them; when sick, we heal them; when lonely or a stranger, we befriend them; when in prison, we visit and encourage them, like Jesus did. (Matthew 25)
The world is ripped apart by the competing claims of political parties, religious sects, nationalism, wealth, elitism and prejudice.
The Biblical cry is "Repent!" Stop what you are doing, turn around and go the other way. Stop defending an unjust immigration system and fix it. Stop privileging the privileged and give an equal chance for all to fulfill their potential. Stop treating your neighbor as "others," and love your neighbor as yourself.
Do not let any lesser loyalty blind you to the greater truth. We are all God's children. We are one.
LOWELL GRISHAM IS AN EPISCOPAL PRIEST WHO LIVES IN FAYETTEVILLE.
Commentary on 08/17/2014