Is a deported person a terrorist? Or ‘father of the year?’ It actually doesn’t matter in the eyes of the law and it shouldn’t matter to any ethical person. Every human in America legally has the right to due process and ethically every person has the right to be seen as a human being, no matter who they are or what they’ve done.

Sound difficult? At times, it is. 

That’s why decisions of one’s ethics must be made long before an ethical quandary arises, particularly one that makes one feel that must choose between self-preservation and loving one’s neighbor as themself.

I live five blocks from a memorial denoting a time America’s ethics failed its own people. At this spot, American citizens were interned. Interred is a gentle way of saying America gave them one hour to pack up a knapsack of their belongings before being whisked off to a concentration camp – complete with armed American soldiers guarding the barbed wire festooned fences.

The crime of these citizen prisoners? Being of Japanese ancestry and/or appearing Asian.

I spoke once about this horrific act to a Christian men’s group (don’t even get me started on Christian gendered groups) describing the nature of it as anti-human and anti-Christ in our history. I stressed the importance of us, as the American people and the voice of our own governance, to really the lack of moral ethics it took for allowing this to occur and that we needed to covenant to never allow such a lack of an ethical compass so that when faced with the next Pearl Harbor or 9/11 type moment, we didn’t once again feel the need to abuse people of a different race or religion or creed to salve our own emotional shortcomings.

I noted that our need to “get even” with someone of brown skin and muslim religious foundations after 9/11 ended up killing more Americans in Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with the terrorism on 9/11, than were killed on 9/11, as well as killing 300,000 innocent Iraqis. Side note: It also should go without saying that there have been far fewer Americans killed by undocumented people in the U.S. than those innocent 300,000 we destroyed for no ethical reason in the Middle East.

After that men’s group talk, an elder statesman of our local evangelical community approached me with a perfectly patronizing “congratulations” and advised me I simply couldn’t understand how much the Japanese scared Americans after Pearl Harbor.

“You understand, young man, God would want us to protect our family and our homeland.”

As we continued to chat I realized that this person couldn’t even fathom that a non-white, perhaps, non-acculturated person could truly be “American” and also have a stake in this “homeland.” He felt it was a gift of the white man to allow “those people” to live amongst us – despite my constant reminder to him that those imprisoned during WWII were American citizens and, thus, were his “family” by every definition of the command to “love your neighbor as yourself.”

Looking back on that moment I see it as a step in my realization that the ethics of Christian Nationalism, Trumpism and self-preservation over following the biblical commands to seek justice for the poor, the foreigner, the outcast/marginalized and widow/economically disadvantaged were embedded in American Christianity long before Donald Trump rolled down his golden escalator to the adoration of the mass majority of American Evangelicals.

Approve of a Muslim travel ban? Of course. They’re not of the right religion (or skin color.) That includes people of other religions like Hindus or Sikhs who face the penalty of our laziness and lack of curiosity to even know the HUGE difference between those religions white people consider “non-American.”

Laughing along with Trump and his administration as they, along with their pal, a vicious dictator from Central America, try to obfuscate their unthinkable act of sending a human being to a foreign torture prison without due process? Absolutely! Good fodder for chats around the Sunday morning church coffee klatch of the American Christian Church that prefers self-preservation over the teachings of Jesus.

Let’s imagine this through the ethics demonstrated in the Hebrew scriptural tale of Jonah. Most like to focus on the “big fish swallowing a man” part of the story, yet to do so is to miss the message the story truly encourages readers to apprehend.

Like American Christians, Jonah was a religious, racial nationalist. The Ninevites were a people group who’d long been in dispute with Jonah’s community. It’s quite likely Jonah had experienced violence from them, perhaps even injury or murder of a member of his own family. Thus, Jonah felt strongly justified in his hatred of “those ungodly people.” Hatred so deep, it sent Jonah in the opposite direction when told by God to go preach to them. Jonah later admitted he’d done so because he knew God would have mercy on “those people” that Jonah felt were unworthy of the grace he had received from god.

NOTE: Here’s where the fish enters as nothing more than miraculous transport back in the right direction.

“Come on, God,” Jonah said in the story once the transport spit him up on land, “do what’s right and avenge those of us who truly follow you. Make our country great again by destroying our enemies.”

Jonah then put a huge punctuation mark on the end of his whining.

“I’d rather be dead than live in a world where these people are considered human beings worthy of heavenly grace.”

The divine response was jarring – “Do you do well to feel this way?” This is an ancient version of the phrase – “Jonah, how’s that working out for ya?”

The hypocrisy of Jonah’s worldview was highlighted when he became angry at losing the comfort of a shady plant while not caring about the 120,000 people god says he created AND their livestock.

It’s interesting that few Christians ask themselves, when reading this story: “Am I a religious nationalist like Jonah?”

No, most Christians feel justified in whining about the shade plant (we can’t say “Christmas” anymore!) while participating in or being complicit to the pain and suffering of the immigrant, the queer person, the… well, anyone that doesn’t look, sound or think like us.

In a very disconcerting time in the world, it’s more important than ever to remember that wearing the name “Christian” means “one striving to look like Christ.” Truly saying “WWJD” means seeing as human beings the people we don’t like is not only ethically correct, but is a direct command told many times over – FAR MORE than any disputed verses about banning abortion or marginalizing queer people. Reckoning with this truth and making a decision to hold this moral ethic is a moral decision that must be decided upon and covenanted to long before a political character tells us that immigrants are “rapists and drug dealers” or are “eating the dogs” of our neighbors. Such an ethic can hold sacred that an October 7th can be horrible yet NOT justify the complete destruction of a people group.

“You mourn the death of things that give you comfort,” the god of the Jonah story says to us, “yet you care nothing about the lives of beautiful human beings and their livelihoods?”

Perhaps it’s time again to introspectively ask “Are we religious nationalists, in the spirit of Jonah?”

Today is not a day to celebrate the “disappearing” of human beings like Kilmer Abrego-Garcia, not if you’re an ethical person, and certainly not if you’re one who claims to follow Christ. Today is a day to hear: “Do you do well to feel this way?”