I keep my piece of the Berlin Wall on my nightstand.
My partner was born on a British military base near Berlin and was there when the wall came down; she was just over 2 years old. She remembers being on her dad’s shoulders, striking the wall with a hammer. Her family honoured me by giving me the humble piece I have today.
I keep it close as a reminder that division, in the name of ideology, is overcome by enlightened minds and their conviction that united, we’re better off.
30 years ago we celebrated the wall coming down, today it is stunning that we tolerate a culture that thinks building new walls is the solution.
America’s problem
Any single statement about America’s problems is an oversimplification, but my attempt at summarizing the massive, general disease that courses through the veins of most American problems is this:
America suffers, almost exclusively, from a small group of rich, white men, abusing the system to make themselves richer, and poor/middle class white voters helping them do that by instead blaming their problems on poorer brown people.
Postchristianity
A wall on the southern border perfectly symbolizes and empowers this disease.
The shadow of the wall
My daughter is turning one year old this month, my question is will she grow up in the shadow of this wall? Whether the physical wall gets built or not is inconsequential, the question remains how will my mixed-race-child-of-immigrant-parents do in a nation that wrongfully blames its problems on brown people?
I personally declare that a southern border wall is a boorish, racist, waste of money. It is clearly opposed to the ethos that America was founded on but most importantly will not accomplish anything.
But those who agree with me come from a largely non-Christian coalition that represents a liberal ethos, where are my fellow Followers of Jesus?
Two Bibles
If you’re interpretation of the bible allows you to believe that we should physically separate ourselves from poor and needy immigrants/refugees, then you and I are reading different bibles.
There are simply too many verses that support unequivocal Christian resistance to a wall (AND family separation) at our southern border, but I point you to Jesus’ repeated commands to take care of the poor and refugee and the following from Ephesians 2:14:
“For Christ himself has brought peace to us. He united Jews and Gentiles into one people when, in his own body on the cross, he broke down the wall of hostility that separated us.”
Walls are Immoral
Unfortunately it appears that the faithful will go down in history as largely supportive of the wall. It’s stunning that the church, particularly the evangelical church, is not at the FOREFRONT of working to build more bridges rather than making higher walls.
As a Christian, you may rightly oppose the wall as a factor of your faith, but you have been curiously silent about that. You stand idly by as our brothers and sisters in Christ have hijacked the conversation, falsely declaring that Christ followers support the wall: a heresy. Your silence makes you complicit.
Remember what this wall symbolized:
Separation and human suffering for the sake of ideology. Governmental authority usurping the will of the people. A primitive medieval structure demonstrating that diplomacy and conversation on both sides has broken down. The chunk of concrete on our nightstand symbolizes that all of this was shattered.
But in 2019 everything the Berlin Wall represented is rising again. I am asking you to commit to voting out the disease in Nov. 2020 working to rebuild the Berlin Wall on our southern border. I am asking you to shatter Trump ideology not only in the voting booth but to join me in being more active about your views between now and the election: begin a conversation with me here below, or share this blog, and begin the difficult debates with others who are apologists for this ideology.
If we don’t fight, walls like the Berlin Wall will rise again.
Postchristianity 