Are We Loving Our Neighbors?

We are ALL Humans

As I was leaving for work this morning, I heard a news headline that a 6 year old boy was stabbed to death near Chicago by his landlord because he is Muslim. I am sickened and grieved by this news and so many other stories of pure evil born of hatred for other humans. This hate crime was connected to the conflict between Israel and Palestine that has been festering for over a century and exploded this month into deadly attacks with mass casualties of children and adults on both sides.

Wadea Al-Fayoume, 6, was stabbed to death in a brutal attack (Image: @CAIRNational / X)

There has been a disturbing increase in hate crimes and mass shootings in the United States, often targeting people based on their skin color, their politics, their religious beliefs, or their sexuality or gender identity. Conversely, there is an uprising of love and fighting for the rights of targeted groups.

It occurred to me recently that, if you have been despised and rejected and you love people anyway, you have that in common with Jesus. God declared all of his creation good from the beginning. Humans later decided that some of his creation is bad, and decided certain people are in and certain people are out. This Us vs. Them thinking has caused hate to grow towards people we view as outside our circle. Father Richard Rohr said there has to be an “expanded circle to include all people.”

Over the weekend, I heard a lot about love during the Evolving Faith conference. Author Sarah Bessey challenged us to expand our imaginations to love the whole world. Podcast host Brandi Miller said she wants to heal from the existential crisis that for me to be something, someone else has to be less.

I heard Valarie Kaur on the Learning How to See podcast with Brian McLaren. She said that growing up she heard the “song of love” coming from “many spiritual teachers, social reformers, indigenous healers. Jesus, talk about a mystic, opening our hearts to love thy neighbor. Even Abraham, to open your tent to all, or Mohammed, to take in the orphan, or Buddha, unending compassion, or Mirabai, to love without limit, Guru Nanak, to see no stranger. The heart of all of the great wisdom traditions in the world is this mystical recognition that you are a part of me I do not yet know... What would it mean now for us to imagine that this time that we live in is perhaps our second great awakening? Those early prophets awakened us from an understanding of just other human beings in our tribe as human to a shared humanity. What if this era is when we get to put that into practice in a way that we never had before? What if we could structure our societies on the love ethic? What would that look like? What would it mean? Might that be the way that we steer humanity into the new way of being that is essential if we are to last, if we are to survive?” Valarie Kaur, from the Learning How to See podcast, Season 3, Episode 4, “Christianity as Neighbor”(Part 2).

As Martin Luther King said, we must fight hate with love. That’s the only way to win and to survive. Jesus loves everyone, everywhere, all at once. That is my life goal and my wish for the world.

My husband’s newest song is “Red, White and Blue” and encourages us to see all our neighbors as deserving of love and liberty.