We need to have difficult conversations

How “Love Your Neighbor” can become an excuse to avoid difficult but much-needed discussions

Photo by Derick McKinney on Unsplash

I used to tell my students that demands for more civility in politics are not inherently wrong and that we should be as kind as we can to each other. Kindness and generosity of spirit are usually good practices for building and maintaining healthy relationships.

But I also told my students that calls for civil discourse are often intended to stifle dissent because people in power are sometimes reluctant to have difficult, honest conversations.

“Be civil” is often code for “be quiet.” “Be kinder” is often code for “let’s not discuss this topic because it might make me and others uncomfortable.”

During the recent election season, my church and others distributed “Love Your Neighbor” signs and encouraged members to put them in their front yards. The message was, “Be kind to each other and try to see each other, not as liberals or conservatives, but as children of God.” This is a marvelous message and one of the central tenets of the Christian faith.

I’m happy we reminded people of this important teaching. I know other churches did the same.

In the aftermath of the election, however, some Trump supporters here and around the country have distorted and weaponized this message to mean, “You must never be so rude as to suggest that my vote for Trump reveals something about the character and values of the movement I supported. If you do, you are being judgmental, unkind, and un-Christian.”

Well, I’m sorry to tell you, but just because I have a “Love Your Neighbor” sign in my front yard (we don’t because our HOA forbids them) doesn’t mean that my faith requires me to admire your voting decisions or accept the values that prompted them.

And that same faith does not require me to be silent about it.

Those yard signs refer to a parable — the “Good Samaritan” — that Jesus told about the sacred worth of every human, even undocumented immigrants. The neighbors in Jesus’s story weren’t those who lived next door, who were easy to love.

Jesus was talking about “the other,” the kind of “neighbor” Donald Trump campaigned against.

So, if you voted for a candidate who openly hates immigrants and threatens to round them up, separate them from their families, and throw them into concentration camps, that yard sign about loving my neighbor doesn’t compel me to bless your choice to vote for a spokesperson for racism, corruption, and cruelty.

That sign is a statement about the need to value every soul, and the inherent dignity of every person Trump and his allies despise. It’s not a shield to avoid the consequences of a vote, including legitimate questions about how seriously one takes a tenet of the Christian and Jewish faiths.

In recent days, we’ve been told by religious leaders and others to rely on our faith to sustain us during this period of anxiety and fear the election results have caused so many.

Well, here’s what my faith teaches and on which I rely: God loves every human far more than my capacity to love them. Loving unlovable people is hard, but I can only love God as much as I love those hard-to-love people. And love them, I must.

But my faith does not teach that love means never calling out injustice or oppression.

My faith calls me to love, not relieve people of the consequences of their actions.

My faith calls me to love, not absolve people of whatever guilt they experience because they abandoned their faith for a political ideology of hatred and corruption.

My faith calls me to love, not falsely assure some people that we have a mere political disagreement when, in fact, we have two entirely different sets of values.

Let’s be clear: Jesus never told his followers we shouldn’t notice when people when people aren’t heeding his teaching about loving others.

In fact, he gave us a handy way to tell. It’s in Matthew 25: ”Truly, I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” And, “Truly, I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.”

If Jesus made anything clear, it was that it’s easy to pick out the ones who aren’t imitating him.

If you’re a Trump supporter, some of your friends and associates have likely noticed that the candidate you supported pledges to enact policies radically opposed to the teachings of Jesus. That they observed this doesn’t mean they don’t value you as their “neighbor.” It probably just means they see very clearly what you value. And they probably see it more clearly than you do.

I suspect my friends and family see my contradictions and failings more clearly than I ever will. It’s usually that way.

You might take this as a personal attack, but please understand that I make these observations with profound sorrow for how Trump has persuaded so many good, well-meaning people to support some of the most anti-Christian policies man has ever conceived.

This is just my opinion, of course, but I don’t think anyone can say credibly that their vote for Trump was only in support of his tax policies but not his hatred for Black people, women, or immigrants. 

Without your vote, Trump’s mass deportation proposal is only a plan. Your ballot has transformed it into government policy. Trump made racism and violence the centerpiece of his campaign throughout the election, but especially in the last week. You couldn't have missed it if you’d tried.

So, I am slightly uncomfortable with putting “Love Your Neighbor” on yard signs because, like calls for “civility” in politics, the signs’ simple message can be twisted into a well-meaning excuse to dodge the difficult but much-needed conversations about all this.

What I know is that Jesus never sidestepped difficult conversations. He spoke up when he saw injustice, cruelty, religious bigotry, and hypocrisy.

He also did something about it. He usually named it, denounced it, and taught us that love — sacrificial love — was the antidote.

Jesus embraced oppressed and despised people. He walked with them, ate with them, defended them, blessed them, and healed them – all while knowing these acts would generate murderous scorn among the religious and political leaders.

He wasn’t afraid of the conflict this would cause. He wasn’t afraid of difficult conversations. He wasn’t scared of the truth. And those difficult conversations, especially in the last week of his life, led to his death.

The following is meant primarily for those among us who are active in a church or religious community:

Many churches around the United States should start having honest and difficult conversations about what it means to be a follower of Jesus in the current political and policy environment.

Those conversations may make the Trump supporters among you uncomfortable. Some will respond with anger and disbelief. They will assume they’re being attacked personally. And some will use those “Love Your Neighbor” signs and billboards against you. (I’m not sure why winning the election has made some of Trump’s supporters so angry, but here we are.)

And their anger may cause some church leaders to avoid the honest, challenging conversations we must have.

Those include: How will people of faith respond when Trump starts rounding up immigrants, maybe even some of them members of your congregation? What will we do to assist and defend the targets of Trump’s hatred?

And the answers to those and other questions will involve some difficult discussions. But we must have them.

I hate to tell you this, but if you ever wondered how your church or civic group might have responded when Jews were being rounded up in Germany in the 1930s, you’re about to find out.

I pray my church and others will take to heart these words from the German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “Christianity stands or falls with its revolutionary protest against violence, arbitrariness, and pride of power, and with its plea for the weak. Christians are doing too little to make these points clear. . . . Christendom adjusts itself far too easily to the worship of power. Christians should give more offense, shock the world far more, than they are doing now.”

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