Love Your Neighbor

In March of 2008, I spent a week working in Tucson, AZ, on the US-Mexico (AZ-Sonora) border with a group of students from the Presbyterian & Disciples of Christ Student Center at the University of Florida and an organization in Tucson called Humane Borders, which, among other things, provides water in the desert (see Isaiah 49:10). Our activities included clean-up of an abandoned migrant camp, painting water barrels (this helps keep the water cooler, even under the blistering desert sun), cleaning a storage shack with No More Deaths (another migrant relief organization) just south of the border, and sitting in on a court hearing. It was a really humbling experience all around, seeing how little people have and what they are willing to risk for a better life for their families. In court, there were men who had crossed the border and been caught multiple times but had nothing to go back to and so had nothing to do but try again to cross. (I'm not defending the illegality of their actions, but it's important to understand that these people aren't just doing this because they feel like it; it's a last resort kind of thing. They don't think there are any other options left, and there may not be. So many misconceptions run rampant in everyday American discourse, and so much is overlooked--so many people are overlooked because everyone's too busy with the politics of it.)

[Incidentally, during the trip, I was reading Art Spiegelman's Maus books, which are the story of his parents' experiences in World War II concentration camps and his own coping with that as a child and then as an adult. (They're graphic novels, and I highly recommend them both. You can find them in a one-volume set here.) Anyway, I ended up writing my weekly reflection for that lit class on the parallels between the treatment of Jews as depicted in Maus and the treatment of Mexicans and Central Americans on the border today.]

A while ago, a friend of mine asked what I think about. I told him about Tucson. Since then, I've realized that the real answer to what I think about has less to do with illegal migration specifically and more to do with the general lack of love in our society. We're so focused on doing what's best for ourselves as individuals that we lose sight of the fact that love is necessarily based in community.

(A lot of this is inspired by - and some of it stolen from - the writings of Shane Claiborne in The Irresistible Revolution and Jesus for President. He wrote it a lot better than I can so if you're not satisfied with what's here - and I daresay you won't be - read his books. Read them anyway.)

Biblically, we are called to care for one another. The Lord's Prayer, a prayer I've known since I was seven years old and getting ready to make my first confession, says "Give us this day our daily bread." (Matthew 6:11; emphasis added) It doesn't say "Give me this day my daily bread." It is a request on behalf of the group, for all of us, not just for myself. And yet, we overlook that, it seems. We are so worried about where our next meal is going to come from (or perhaps more accurately, the money for our next vacation) that we forget about our neighbors who are starving. And I don't just mean the people who live next door to me. They're doing just fine. But what about the families who visit the food pantry at my church? When do I think about them except when the pastor's wife announces food pantry pick-up hours or the bulletin asks for donations of egg noodles?

What does this have to do with illegal migration? We met a woman in Arizona, just this side of Mexico, who said we shouldn't put water in the desert because it will encourage "them" (migrants) to come. So what? For the record, the most water is put out in the summer months, but the most migrants come in the early part of the year. It's not a causal relationship. Migrants have been journeying across the desert of the southwest since long before Humane Borders started placing water barrels. If someone is wandering the desert in search of a better life, in search of a way to improve the plight of their family, they should not have to die of thirst in the process. In a truly Christian nation, a nation living after the teachings of Jesus Christ, the one who said that the greatest commandment is to "love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind" and that the second greatest commandment is to "love your neighbor as yourself" (Matthew 22:36-39), there would be no question of providing water. "When I was thirsty, you gave me to drink."

(This flag marks the location of water barrels. It flies 30 feet in the air, bringing hope to those in search of renewal.)

Living that kind of love would turn upside down the whole way this country functions. Yes, it may be difficult and uncomfortable to change how relate to the world around us, to our neighbors, to ourselves. We can do so much if we choose to follow those two great commandments and stop thinking only of ourselves. We do not live in a vacuum. We do not live or love alone.


Love is patient.
Love is kind.
Love is not jealous.
Love does not brag.
Love is not arrogant.
Love does not act unbecomingly.
Love does not seek its own.
Love is not provoked.
Love does not take into account a wrong suffered.
Love does not rejoice in unrighteousness.
Love rejoices with the truth.
Love bears all things.
Love believes all things.
Love hopes all things.
Love endures all things.
Love never fails.

(from 1 Corinthians 13)