This past weekend, I was up in Bangor Saturday and Sunday at Stake Conference. It’s a regional church meeting where members of multiple congregation from the area come together for instruction and a worship service. We had a visiting General Authority (someone from the international leadership level of the church) come to speak to us this time. Saturday evening, he focused on a series of questions Christ asked His followers while He was on the earth, encouraging us to reflect on what our answers to those questions would be.
The weekend before was General Conference, 10 hours of talks from all the major leaders of the Church. I missed 2 of them because I was at an AI conference, but I watched the other 8. Again, a major theme of the conference (and pretty much every conference) was following Christ. I always look forward to the weekend. It’s a great reset button for my life and helps me gather my thoughts.
These days, my thoughts need a lot of gathering.
Yesterday on Facebook, I posted the following:
So, let me make sure I’ve got this right. The US is now sending people (without a trial or any due process) to a prison in a different country where they can be tossed and forgotten. There’s no need to prove in a court that they did anything wrong. We just need the administration to assure us of that. And if the administration sends someone there by accident, we get a whoopsie and that’s all that can be done?
And these prisons are overcrowded, the prisoners are let out of their cells for an hour a day, and there’s not even a time period they’re sentenced for? When does that imprisonment end? And now the administration is discussing the potential need to send “homegrown criminals” there as well? (Trump, today, recorded speaking with the President of El Salvador.)
And Republicans are good with this? Is it that they just blithely believe anything Trump assures them of, and so trials are unnecessary?
Just because it’s in a different country doesn’t make it anything other than a concentration camp. Germans sent their victims to Poland. We’re sending ours to El Salvador.
Hitler became Chancellor in January. The first concentration camp opened in March. The Gestapo started in April. Book burnings began in May. Jews began losing German citizenship in July.
This is not okay.
Not everything I post resonates with everyone, but this one was shared 49 times, so it clearly struck a chord with many who saw it. These days, not many Republicans come to my Facebook wall anymore (I think the algorithm has figured out they really don’t want to see anything I have to say), so I don’t get much in the way of arguing in response to my posts. However, many of my friends live in much more conservative areas and have a wider conservative friend base. I’ve been reading over the many responses to my post (without talking back, because getting into arguments with strangers online isn’t my idea of a fun time, and I don’t want to make things worse on my friends who have shared my post).
I can’t help but feel incredibly dismayed and disappointed as I read through everything. I’m honestly trying to figure out why and how people who share my faith can look at what’s happening and think it’s all not just acceptable, but good. Desirable. I keep wanting to see something that makes it all make sense to me. Yes, I realize that much of it comes down to what people decide to accept as truth, but so much of our religion is centered around things we supposedly all believe are true: first and foremost the importance of loving God and loving our neighbors as ourselves.
So what are the arguments I see people using to support their beliefs?
- The man in question is a terrorist and deserves to be in jail.
- The man was in the country illegally, and shouldn’t have come here in the first place
- Trump is keeping our country safe by keeping the “illegals” out
- Comparing Trump to Hitler is completely baseless. (I saw one comment that said the only circumstance they would begin to entertain the argument was if gas chambers started to be used. I am not making this up.)
- People who don’t believe Trump have TDS: Trump Derangement Syndrome. (At least there’s a name for it, even if Trump thought it up. I’m not sure it applies to who they think it does, however . . . )
The most reasonable justification I saw was that those who believe this situation is not okay are misguided, because we’re listening to the wrong sources of truth.
But truth is not relative. We don’t get to decide which facts we believe and which we can ignore. As a librarian, this is kind of a big deal to me. If someone makes a claim, they can and should back that claim up with evidence. If they can’t, then that claim is no longer equal to a claim that can. And evidence must be exactly that. Concrete. Verifiable. I’ve explained it to people like this: if they want to make an argument I will listen to, they need to use sources that carry weight. For current events, that means something inside the green box on this media bias chart, though the closer to the center top the source is, the more I’ll listen to it.
However, let’s set all of that aside for the moment. If I accepted as true that every single person in the El Salvador prison is there because they are a gang member, where would that leave me as a follower of Christ? The Christ I know–the one I’ve studied and the one I strive (so imperfectly) to emulate–was far from silent on these matters.
Matthew 25:34-45 isn’t exactly fringe doctrine. It comes up again and again in pretty much every Christian church context I know.
34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?
39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:
42 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:
43 I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.
44 Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?
45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.
I’ve read that many times, and I have yet to see anything about whether or not any of these people deserved to be hungry, thirsty, a stranger, naked, sick, or in prison. Christ speaks often about loving our neighbor. When people asked for a bit of clarification about who a “neighbor” was, He gave the parable of the Good Samaritan. All we know of the victim in that parable is “a certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves.” There’s no discussion of the fact that the guy really shouldn’t have been leaving Jerusalem in the first place, or asking why he was set on going to Jericho in the first place. There’s no splitting of hairs. None of that is important. He was in trouble, and the Samaritan helped him.
I see a real dissonance between this Christ and the justifications given by Christians for why they support the current actions of the administration. But this isn’t the first time that happened. When masking and vaccines were a huge debate, Latter-day Saint leadership came out strongly in support of both, and some members quickly started to talk about how church leaders weren’t really situated to talk about non-secular things.
When politics meets religion these days, politics often seems to win out.
I’m not sure what my conclusion is here. I don’t know of a way to wrap this up that will make sense to me. I’m fairly certain this post will/would come across as highly insulting to members who parrot Trump’s justifications. I’m not saying I’m perfect, and I’m not saying I follow these principles 100% myself. I guess all I’m saying is I wish at the bare minimum we would be speaking out unanimously for mercy and for humane conditions.
But we’re far from unanimous anymore, even in areas like this, and I find that unspeakably sad.