Stranger Love

At what expense do you love

God commands us to love God Himself, our neighbor, and the stranger.

The “stranger” could be considered as humanity in general. Because most people are “strangers.” Unlike my “neighbor,” who would be the people close to me, or people in my “in-group,” as we psychology-type people might say.

God commands us to love the “stranger” because after all, it’s not natural to love people who are different than us. If I only love people who are like me, that would make me a “national chauvinist.”

I wonder if that’s the reason why the people three houses down from us incorrectly label us fascists. Fascism emphasizes the supremacy of race or nation (or in-group, you might say.) Perhaps to them, those of us who wave the American flag, and wear a cross emblem around our neck come across as people who only love our “neighbor” and not the “stranger” because we want to abide by certain laws.

Yet, their love of the “stranger” has come at the cost of love of the “neighbor,” in fact, neglecting them all together. Therefore, they judge, unfairly.

We are not to judge unfairly. We are to love unfairly. But we are to judge fairly.

You don’t love your daughter the same as you lover her rapist. But you are to judge the rapist fairly, whether that person is your daughter or her classmate.

We are to judge the “neighbor” as the “stranger,” yet people like the couple three doors down from us carelessly and erroneously use Scripture against us saying we are being unloving toward the stranger. Yet, what we are actually doing is judging fairly everyone by the same laws including border laws, theft laws, corruption laws, murder laws, etc., as an act of loving our “neighbor” and the “stranger.”