valencia Writes

When a belief system assigns a higher human value to certain individuals, and a lower value to others, then you must question that belief system and those preaching it.

When a faith teaches more about who to hate than who to love, then you must question that faith. If those touting their belief in such a faith don’t want to be questioned, then should you believe in it? Should you believe in them? Are you the good person you believe yourself to be if you blindly follow those leaders?

When your political ideology mocks empathy and compassion, beware: they’re about to do something they know you would find immoral, and they don’t want you to stop it.

If you want to institute a law, but you wouldn’t want that law to apply to yourself or your family, then you need to question the ethics and/or morality of that law.

Consider this:

• When you identify with someone, it’s harder for you to hate them.
• When you identify with someone, you can’t brutalize them.
• When you identify with someone, you can’t enslave them.
• When you identify with someone, then their life has meaning, and you won’t impose harm upon them. You won’t allow others to impose harm on them, either.
• When you identify with someone, you can’t discriminate against them.

One of the first steps in convincing an entire population to accept something horrible, is tell them it is a moral action, a Christian action, and that it will keep them safe. You might also tell them it will improve their lives.

By doing this, you can impose laws that strip some citizens of their humanity.

To remove someone’s humanity, you forbid learning about them because you know people fear what we don’t understand. Stripping a people of their history, also strips them of their identity. Without knowing their origins, their language, their culture, they may become mired in the stereotypes imposed by other people. They can lose respect in themselves. If you don’t believe a person respects themselves, then one loses respect for them.

After doing all of that, a person, a group, a legislative body can do whatever they want and justify that action without significant resistance.

Hope is the most powerful tool in one’s arsenal, and that’s why authoritarian leaders who believe in a social hierarchy insists their actions are ordained by “God.”

The reality is that hope can change anything. Don’t forget that.

We must also ask our leaders the following:

“On Judgement Day, when you stand before God the Father and Jesus the Son, will you be proud to say that you separated families, imprisoned them, made money from them, enslaved them, stripped people of their basic human rights, denied education to children, demonized love, refused to house the homeless or feed hungry children?”

If you are about to draft legislation that impacts others, and you can’t say “Because that’s what Christ would do,” then you’re not a Christian. You are using Christianity as a shield to protect yourself from criticism, and a sword to brutalize those you despise.

Without Christ, it’s not a Christian action; it’s blasphemy.

Blasphemy has a moral price.

Are you willing to pay it?

If immigrants aren’t welcome in your house, what makes you think God wants you in His?