Would Jesus Need a Gas Mask?

“Send us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”

Those words are etched onto the most famous statue in the world, which stands in the harbor of America’s largest city. For centuries now, people have been coming to America from all over the world to escape dreadful, hopeless lives in their own homelands. They came and they made us better. Without them, we could not have grown to be what we have become. They, after all, are us and we are they–so many have lost sight of that. Now, under our current regime, America has become a hostile destination, the president’s support base is full of bigotry and paranoia, constantly stoked by the leader himself. This week, as tired, poor, huddled masses neared the U.S. border, hoping to breathe free, they breathed tear gas instead. Barefoot toddlers were seen choking and screaming as their terrified mothers desperately tried to pull them away from the noxious fumes emitting from the tear gas canisters sent their way from U.S. agents. As sickening as those images were, the most disturbing aspect to me was the reaction I saw from Trump’s supporters. In one poll I saw on social media, more than 70 percent of evangelical Christian respondents supported the tear gassing. My immediate thought when I saw that was that, if Jesus were walking the earth right now, it is very likely that he might have been in that crowd with those children–and if you look at it from a more spiritual sense, he was indeed there with them.

I am seriously disturbed by this. I am beginning to lose what little patience I may have had left. The irony is not lost on me. Those Christians who supported the tear gassing of those innocent little children are the very same people who vote solely on the issue of being “pro-life”. It’s maddening! Conservative Christian, you simply can not claim to be pro-life and applaud the tear gassing of children.

Suffer the little children to come unto me. If they make it past the tear gas, I have some very nice cages for them. Such is the Kingdom of Trump. 

How can any Christ-follower possibly imagine that Jesus could in any way look upon what’s happening at our border and nod in approval? How badly have politics clouded the discernment of so many otherwise loving people?

Or is it me who lacks discernment? Have I been in a flock of wolves in sheep’s clothing all along?

I’m beginning to wonder.

God save us from ourselves.