It's Christlike to Love Immigrants and Transfolk

Since writing my article on DHH, I've been getting an above-average number of emails in my inbox decrying my stance and public advocacy. And I have to be honest, I find it so weird, more than anything. It's confusing to me how many typical people—men of the same ilk as myself—want to play defence for the handful of millionaires and corporate executives and weird little guys. A lot of the time, religion will be invoked, specifically Christianity.

I'm a Christian myself, I've written my testimony before, and while I've had a wayward path, I know God meets people where they are.

And that's why it's so baffling to me that people would attempt to invoke Christ when they tell me (and these are actual quotes from emails I've received) that they have scorn towards the "underpaid illegal labor," and that they refuse to become "inline with transgenderism" and that their "empathy and compassion are finite."

It's baffling to me how the clear disdain for fellow human beings isn't obvious when they're spouting this rhetoric. And, perhaps more importantly, these kinds of beliefs are simply antithetical to the teachings of Jesus Christ in the Bible. Explicitly so. To go after the marginalized, to be anti-social justice, to support the rich? None of this is Christ-like.

Christ Touched the Untouchable

Let's begin when a leper came to Him, someone untouchable under the Law, and Jesus didn't keep His distance. Mark 1:40–41 says:

Now a leper came to Him, imploring Him, kneeling down to Him and saying to Him, "If You are willing, You can make me clean."
Then Jesus, moved with compassion, stretched out His hand and touched him, and said to him, "I am willing; be cleansed."

Christ touched the untouchable. In Luke 17, ten lepers stood at a distance, crying out for mercy. Jesus healed all ten. Only one turned back to thank Him, and he was a Samaritan, a foreigner and outsider.

Jesus said to him, "Arise, go your way. Your faith has made you well" (Luke 17:19). The outsider was the one who returned.

A woman, often interpreted as a sex worker, and known as a sinner wept at His feet, washing Christ's feet with her tears and wiping them with her hair. And Jesus did not recoil at all. He instead said, "Your sins are forgiven" (Luke 7:36–50). He let her love be the evidence of grace. And later, in Matthew 11:19, Jesus said of Himself:

The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Look, a glutton and a winebibber, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!'

He did not deny it. Christ has always been a friend of sinners.

Love Your Neighbor, and Love the Stranger

Scripture does not leave neighbour-love to our finite instincts. Leviticus 19:18 says:

"You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself."

And when a lawyer asked Jesus, "Who is my neighbour?" Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan. A man is beaten and left for dead. A priest and a Levite pass by. The Samaritan stops, bandages his wounds, and pays for his care.

The Samaritan was a despised foreigner.

Jesus asks, "So which of these three do you think was neighbor to him who fell among the thieves?" (Luke 10:36). Not the one who shared his language, culture, or passport. The answer is the foreigner, the one who showed mercy. Then Jesus says, "Go and do likewise."

The Law is explicit about immigrants. Leviticus 19:34:

"The stranger who dwells among you shall be to you as one born among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God."

And Deuteronomy 10:19 says:

"Therefore love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt."

This is clearly not about assimulation. God says to remember you were strangers, and love the stranger. Christ always touched lepers, forgave the sex worker, made the Samaritan a hero, and commanded us to love the foreigner as ourselves.

Christ and Those Outside the Binary

Christ also made room for the eunuchs. Those who were not fully male by the categories their culture recognized, barred by Mosaic law from full inclusion in the assembly of the Lord (Deuteronomy 23:1), and treated as neither one thing nor another. Bodies or identities which did not fit into the binary. And Scripture says not to condemn them, but to promise them a place.

Isaiah 56:3–5 says:

"Do not let the son of the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord speak, saying, 'The Lord has utterly separated me from His people'; nor let the eunuch say, 'Here I am, a dry tree.' For thus says the Lord: 'To the eunuchs who keep My Sabbaths, and choose what pleases Me, and hold fast My covenant, even to them I will give in My house and within My walls a place and a name better than that of sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.'"

God doesn't tell the eunuch to become something else before he's welcome. God tells him his exclusion is over. Better than sons and daughters. An everlasting name.

In Matthew 19:12, after His disciples balk at His teaching on marriage, Jesus says:

"For there are eunuchs who were born thus from their mother's womb, and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He who is able to accept it, let him accept it."

Jesus names those born that way, made that way by others, and those who choose it. There is no condemnation. He doesn't erase the differences. He says some people don't fit the categories everyone assumes, and that's alright with Him.

In Acts 8, Philip is sent out to the desert road to meet an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official, reading Isaiah in his chariot. This man is a foreigner, a Gentile, and a eunuch who would have been excluded from full worship at the Temple under Mosaic law. Philip does not hesitate. He explains the good news, and when they come to water, the eunuch asks, "See, here is water. What hinders me from being baptized?" (Acts 8:36). Nothing hinders him. Philip baptizes him on the spot. The very first Gentile convert recorded after Pentecost is a gender-nonconforming outsider. Christ's church opens the door wide.

Paul, in Galatians 3:28 writes:

"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

The categories the world uses to rank and exclude people, including the male/female binary used to justify so much hate today, collapse at the foot of the cross. If Christ's own body of believers has no use for "male nor female" as a line of division, then the transfolk in our pews, our families, and our replies aren't a problem to be solved. They're already inside the "all one" Paul is describing.

Given all this—the leper, the Samaritan, the sinner, the eunuch, the stranger—I struggle to find a single figure Christ excluded who was already reaching for Him. He was short with those hoarding power, and those turning away the vulnerable to protect their wealth.

Camels and Needles

And what of the rich? Let's not forget that the Omacom Foundation received over 18 million dollars, the majority of it coming from the personal bank accounts of millionaires. In Matthew 19:24:

"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

A rich young ruler asked what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus told him, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me" (Matthew 19:21). Of course, the ruler was devastated. For he had so, so much.

In Luke 12:15, Jesus said,

"Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses."

And He told the parable of the rich fool (Luke 12:16–21), the fool who built bigger barns for his surplus grain and said to himself, "Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; take your ease; eat, drink, and be merry." But God said to him, "Fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be which you have provided?"

In Matthew 6:19–21:

"Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

James 5:1–6 is even more direct:

"Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you! Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have heaped up treasure in the last days. Indeed the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out; and the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. You have lived on the earth in pleasure and luxury; you have fattened your hearts as in a day of slaughter. You have condemned, you have murdered the just; he does not resist you."

Empathy of the Spirit

Empathy and compassion are fruit of a Spirit that multiplies loaves and fishes. To attempt to desperately ration it, to instead prioritize those who look like you and act like you—sounds like the priest and the Levite, stepping around the body in the road because helping is inconvenient and beneath them. There is no love there. I don't hear Christianity. I hear Matthew 19's rich young ruler, walking away grieving because the cost of love was too high. I hear James warning the rich to weep and howl for what's coming.

Scripture, especially Christ's teachings, were always centered around loving those that society deemed the most difficult to love, and the easiest to hate. And Christ never promised the Kingdom of Heaven to the rich and powerful.

I know Gospel will continue to be politicized and weaponized for cruelty, I know that. But it is really an invitation, repeated across a thousand pages. It is not difficult to figure out how to practice Christ's teachings in the modern day. It is easy to see who is being shunned and cast out, and who are being rejected and targeted. It is up to followers to do the right thing and love, and to speak up against injustice and power the way Christ did. That is simply what it looks like to follow Him.

Go and do likewise.