Jesus’ followers care for poor, outcasts, refugees
Yes, Andrew Fiala, hatred’s on the increase, but passionate opposition isn’t hatred. Regardless of recent Orwellian assertions that there are no facts anymore, Breitbart’s opponents have the facts. To confront hatred isn’t to hate, as Martin Luther King Jr. showed from the Montgomery Bus Boycott onward. To imply otherwise is a false equivalency.
And while it’s true every major religion affirms the Golden Rule, that’s not the moral message of Christmas. For Christians, its message is that God cared enough about humankind to become intimately present in a child born to a poor, teen bride in a backwater country in apparently questionable circumstances.
He was born in unsanitary accommodations; threatened in infancy by a paranoid puppet tyrant; forced into exile as a refugee; lived a life of nonviolent resistance among the poor and outcast under occupation; was unjustly accused, convicted and sentenced to a death reserved for rebels, and yet rejected hate in all its forms.
His truly faithful followers today care for the hungry, the poor, outcasts, refugees, and victims of misogyny, racism, xenophobia, and homophobia. Those who trouble the powers that be with truth and love, who refuse to give in to hatred, are not unbiased, innocuous people.
Kim Leslie, Clovis
This story was originally published December 12, 2016 at 3:19 PM with the headline "Jesus’ followers care for poor, outcasts, refugees."