Dear HPUMC,

I rarely engage in political matters. They too often hijack the mission of the Church. Besides, they’re inherently divisive. Churches should be filled with a representative diversity of the political spectrum. That’s the way the world is. That’s one of the reasons I love the United Methodist Church. That’s one of the reasons I love our church. We have a little bit of everything. At HPUMC, mutual concern generally wins out over mutual agreement.

Sometimes, though, matters unmentionable become matters unavoidable. So it is with the issue of children being separated from their parents along the border. I realize there are widely differing opinions about border policy. And yes, I understand that “even Jerusalem had walls.” And yes, I lock my house doors at night. I get all of that. Boundaries are important. Boundaries matter. And the laws that govern boundary-making are vital.

But as disciples of Jesus Christ, we have a higher guiding question for every source of conflict in our life: What does love require of us? That’s the call of the Christian. I don’t always like the answer. But that’s solely and exclusively what Jesus said defines one of his disciples. And I cannot reconcile that, at this moment, love somehow requires us to cage children.

I am thankful and grateful that people from so many divergent and combative poles – political, theological, governmental, social – have aligned to arrive at the same place. The voice of mutual concern for children has a chance to overrule our collective failure to achieve mutual agreement on border policy.

The forced separation of children from their parents is antithetical to the love of God.

I’m heartbroken by the non-Christ-like nature of our actions, but particularly so by the leverage of Holy Scripture as a tool of its justification. If the present situation doesn’t merit a national disgrace, it has already triggered a theological one. The use of the Bible to justify the separation of children from their parents is as ignorant and egregious an offense to God’s Holy Word as I have seen in ministry.

Biblically, children are the most sacred of all gifts from God. After all, God became flesh as one. The number one metaphor Biblical writers use to describe God is as a relationship between parent and child. When the child is lost or separated from the parent, there is nothing God won’t do to see the child reunited with the parent. Jesus became infuriated when religious leaders made it difficult for children to encounter God’s love. And Jesus reminded his followers that unless they looked for the Kingdom of God through the eyes of a child, they might as well not look for it at all. Can any of us reconcile what we are doing to the children on our borders through the lens of Scripture?

On the subject of the Bible and the law, I go back to one of the first 10 given to us by God through Moses in Exodus. The third of the 10 Commandments – moral principles on which even the most hardened atheists seem to value - reads: “You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.” That means that God is concerned about the ways in which we talk about what God wants.

When I was a kid, I thought to take the Lord’s name in vain meant not to curse and add God’s name to it, or not to shout God’s name too loud so as not to offend the Almighty. But that’s not what it means at all. Taking the Lord’s name in vain literally means to falsify who God is and what God stands for. To abuse, misuse, or pervert God’s name by assigning responsibility for sinful actions under the false cover of God’s approval. Beginning with pastors, people of influence should be cautious, responsible and prayerful before we cite scripture. When we get this wrong, the damage we do to those seeking God is often irreparable.

This isn’t the first time people of faith have misappropriated scripture to excuse sin. Christians of great influence have done so since Jesus walked the earth. They did so during slavery. They’ve done so to lobby against practices like inter-racial marriage. Most recently, our church has received dozens of women fleeing from other churches that have assured them that being physically abused by their husband is sanctioned by the “compliance” and “head-of-household” passages in our beloved Bible. Thankfully, we know better. We have always allowed the Holy Spirit to mold and shape our thinking to make sure it complies, not just with the language of scripture, but with the higher language of Jesus Christ. Our safeguard: we perpetually ask – at this moment, in these circumstances, what would love require of us?

To pervert that standard dishonors our God and the high-cost God paid for salvation. The foundation of Christianity claims that we believe in the Word made flesh. We believe that Jesus is God and that his standard of living is the one to which we subscribe. And we make the love of Christ the plumb line for all moral choices. To a disciple, that plumb line drives the law, not the other way around. When our moral choices conflict with the love of Christ, we’re called to reexamine our choices.

My prayer for our church at this time is this: Would you join me in earnestly seeking God’s will and wisdom in our on-going response to this humanitarian crisis? Some 2,400 children remain separated from their parents. Would you join me in never straying from the faith-defining question: What does love require of us - in our prayers, our influence, our action. And, by all means, would you pray that the suffering of children caused by adults they will never know ceases. Thank you for being the church.