Matthew 25:40

“And the King shall say to them, 'I will tell you the truth, when you did it to the least of one of my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to Me.'” There are several ways to translate Matthew 25:40, but the jist is that Jesus told his followers whatever good deed or bad one performed for or against even the lowliest human being, was performed for or against Christ Himself. It seems pretty straightforward to me. We are charged to take care of one another. Whatever your belief system, this basic tenet echoes through all of us. To deliberately hurt, torture, maime, scar or kill is against this simple tenet. My dear Christian friends, America has lost its way. Hundreds of children separated from their families remain so. Women are being mutilated within our system. There are slaves in America right now—more slaves than the total number of Africans brought to the colonies. Too many people, most of them minorities in a still White-dominated society, are marginalized, forgotten or ignored altogether. Children go to bed hungry at night. Just one human being facing any of those situations in the greatest land on earth is our failure made manifest. This is not fake news. This is our legacy to our own children, ugly as it sounds, but it is not beyond correcting. I leave you with two more quotes: “We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people to judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.” John F. Kennedy. And from Theodore Roosevelt: “A vote is like a rifle: Its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.”